A man came to me not long ago and said something that made me very happy: "Are you Kobe?"
He asked.
"I'm G's son. Know that father thanks you very much for what you told him. It really saved him."
I of course smiled from ear to ear and rested his hand in mine, trying to remember exactly what I said to G, who is a friend of mine who lives abroad. G and his wife recently went through a long and complicated divorce story. I of course remembered that I talked to G about the matter and even remembered that I made an effort to respond appropriately, to comfort him about the crisis and to say the right words, but it makes no sense to be asked to compliment me on friendship clichés such as "that's the way it is", "I'm with you" and "life is not an easy time".
There must be something else here that I can't remember.
Since curiosity was killing me, I couldn't help myself and asked the kind guy: "What did I tell dad?"
"When the crisis with my parents happened," he told me, "you called my father and told him: listen to me C, no one is talking about you or gossiping about you. For three days all the guys talked only about this - and that's it, it's over. Move on to talk about Other gossip. We barely remember what happened."
For some reason, he says, it was this sentence that gave him some strength to get back on his feet and shake off the crisis.
Wow, interesting.
I don't really remember telling him that, but I do think so and I most likely did shoot that news at him.
The inflation of information does indeed create a tremendous and unprecedented intensity of news engagement, but because of the large amounts of information something else happens: the time to engage with it is shortened to a minimum, because the list of news is getting longer and more pressing.
The attention window is small.
There is no room for more than one central image.
And when news chases news and a piece of gossip chases a piece of gossip, a balance is created that in some place can be really healthy: every insignificant piece of gossip receives tremendous exposure, but fades and disappears a moment later and gives way to the next matter.
Of course, you can go back and dig into the matter, and it will happen some time later, when the sentence is handed down, during the next wedding, when another detail is revealed, but until then - who cares.
You don't have a moment where there isn't something new and it's a shame to invest in something that is already trite and chewed up.
Lately I've been busy writing an advocacy article about social networks and what they do to our lives.
I'm a bit tired of the general fun and I'm looking for bright spots.
Here is one of them: we don't spend too much time on unimportant things, since we have to make time for other unimportant things.
It's totally dumb, I know, but admit there's a line here too.
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