Circling the Rabbit Hole & Knowing When to Exit the Quest for Useless Information

I spent 2 hours this morning researching the validity of the claim that Theresa Graves was Whitney Houston’s biological mother. I scrolled the conspiracy theories on Reels and found myself getting deeper and deeper and deeper into the “Rabbit Hole”. Meta kept feeding me the data with a sprinkle of Jay Z and Beyonce’s impending fall from grace. The algorithm is good. It sucks you in and it took a lot of discipline for me to exit and start my day. It does not surprise me that the conspiracy theorists are growing in numbers. If I was not EXTREMELY mindful of verifying information, I would also be in the danger zone. To my defense, Whitney has been an idol since I was 12 years old. She was my first concert (my Mom insisted on chaperoning) and my walls were plastered with her posters. Yet, this morning's activities were still completely inane.

Speaking of useless information…I know that oboes are the instruments that tune the orchestra. I do not play any instrument but I do know that. I cannot say where I picked it up. Perhaps from a crossword puzzle or a passing line in a documentary. The thing is, I have a lot of these useless facts circling in my brain. I have a photographic memory and not merely as it applies to what I read but also what I see visually. It is a gift and it is a curse.

My Mom died from Alzheimers and my biggest fear is that all this useless information will clutter up my hard drive and crash it. Are we seeing a rise in dementia and early onset Alzheimers because of an overload of information or is it unrelated? I wish I could do a regular defrag and data dump to keep my brain clean. I am fairly certain that knowing whether or not Whitney’s biological Mom is Cissy Houston or Theresa Graves is not going to impact my life. Actually I know it won't. Yet, these are the "rabbit holes" I can go down. The hours this morning are 2 hours I will never get back. What are your idiot time sucks?

If you are interested in how the algorithms lure us into rabbit holes, this NYT’s The Daily series was really good. I have listened to it several times.