There is a long-brewing malaise that has accelerated sharply since 2024. Scholars call it media fatigue, information overload, or data smog. We are increasingly repelled by the miasma of recycled digital sludge swirling around us. That is the good news – sort of. The bad news is that many cannot see a way out. We cannot “think outside the box” because the box has become us.

Media fatigue predates the internet and is the result of psychological exhaustion from relentless streams of news, posts, and alerts. The web, however, supercharged this phenomenon, accelerating patterns observed by a weary colleague decades ago: “There is nothing new in news anymore.”

Fatigue inevitably leads to avoidance. A Reuters Institute study found that in 2023, 39% of people surveyed worldwide generally avoided the news, up from 29% in 2017. In the UK, two in five people say they feel “worn out” by it.

News participation is also falling. Between 2015 and 2022, global surveys show a 20-30% drop in activities like sharing, commenting, and discussing news. Comment sections, once messy but vibrant, have in many cases collapsed into mindless recriminations, devoid of gravitas or insight. This is partly due to another factor, as the next section illustrates.

Trolls come in many breeds: the insecure, the self-validating, the ideologue, and the hired gun. Some are simply paid to sink........

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