Hadn't heard of Theo Von, but that is exactly right. Or at least, everything that's said is true to my experience. But there's more than just that.

A lot of comments to this post have a core message I might summarize as:

I get that. Makes logical sense. There's definitely upside I can feel to that strategy, vs the default.

However, the 'grossness' for me is more than that. It's not enough to eliminate assholes, as much as possible, from your attentional field. There's something about the barrage of voices and opinions and takes, and the effects it has on my inner world, that corrodes over time. It reminds me of accounts I've read from autistic people describing the overwhelm they feel when they sit on a bus, or go to McDonalds. Not as extreme as that, but in that direction.

And the mode that comes with it, switching attention, checking things, going down rabbit holes, spinning up entire new research agendas in my mind, adding things to the list of Really Interesting Shit I Want To Understand Better. It fills me up with ghosts, not just the ghosts of the people and their voices, but the consequences of what the voices say. Entire architectures of ghostly construction, in a constant state of accumulation and disrepair.

This all sounds v dramatic and weird, I realize. And based on the conversations here, I'm more convinced than before that I'm at some extreme. Which is why I'm so interested to hear other accounts of how people 'live' online, and what the sociality of it means to them/you. What, aside from just controlling the dose, I might be able to steal to get more out of it. Or less.