Consider Taking Intermittent Breathers from The Madness

Breather Ideas (lists included): Comedy / Satire Websites, Cartoonists / Web Comics, Artwork, Individual Artists

What madness?

The 24/7 news cycle, social media outrage culture, the daily inbox grind, perhaps most of all, at this moment— the 2024 Presidential Election.

Waking up tired, staggering exhausted through days, going to bed rattled with thoughts racing… I wish I could say this can’t go on forever… but that’s not my personal experience. Is this healthy? Absolutely not.

We need outlets that provide momentary relief.

Scrolling on Instagram (while holding my breath without realizing it) is not a terrific solution. And I actually like a bunch of the content… but social media simply isn’t a good outlet. It’s far more likely to make your mental health worse. Studies have been pretty clear about this. That being said, scrolling individual accounts may not be such a terrible idea. What’s essential is acting with intention.

A near crime at this point is to simply “let the algorithm decide”. I’ve heard plenty of people say they’re happy with algorithmic selections… but it’s well-known that algorithms trend in particular directions. They trend towards blandness (Spotify) and they trend towards extremes (YouTube).

Some of them are trending towards accidental obsolescence (Facebook). Ditto Instagram.

Seriously, what at the people at Meta doing with these algorithms? They’ve absolutely ruined any semblance of a remotely decent user experience. Of course, good UX design for free? No. We know the deal. If you’re not paying for the service, then you are being sold something. Much like Matt Damon’s character in the ’98 film Rounders (a movie with a poker-centric plot) says, “If you can't spot the sucker in your first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker.”

These corporations have a bad habit of forgetting how much they require the end user (us, humans). This is going to be true for “AI” (that is, what we’re calling “AI” right now)— at least in the near-term.

Enough.

I’m sharing recommendations that still require screen time… but, let’s face it, it’s hard to get away from screens. At least while you’re staring at one of the many screens that likely surround you at a given moment, let’s make the best of it.

Let’s get to some potentially positive, thought-provoking, or at the very least genuinely entertaining outlets for when we allow ourselves to take an intermittent mental health breather from The Madness:

o   Comedy / Satire Websites

1.     The Onion

2.     The Hard Times

3.     Reductress

o   Cartoonists / Web Comics

1.     New Yorker Cartoons

2.     Asher Perlman

3.     Seth Larksen

4.     Will Santino

5.     Poorly Drawn Lines

6.     Tyson Cole

7.     Ellis Rosen

8.     Tommy Siegel

9.     Jason Adam Katzenstein

10.  Navied Mahdavian

11.  Amy Kurzweil

12.  Last Place Comics

13.  War and Peas

14.  twonks

15.  Rusty

16.  David Ostow

o   Artwork

1.     Juxtapose

2.     Hi-Fructose

o   Individual Artists

1.     Aron Wiesenfeld

2.     Sim Sim

3.     Jamie L. Luoto

4.     Alannah Farrell

5.     Hilary Harkness

6.     Aleah Chapin

7.     Laure Mary

8.     Paul Fuentes Villagomez

9.     Jenna Gribbon

10.  Matt Hansel

11.  Emma Steinkraus

12.  Bill Mayer

13.  Alessandro Malossi

14.  Eric Yahnker

15.  Chris Haggqvist

16.  Kehinde Wileyx

Let’s keep the conversation going.

What outlets have you found take take a breather from The Madness?