Pet theory: social media became much more intense and notification-y during the years 2006 to 2016, years when liberals were used to being frustrated or angered but rarely terrified by the news. After all, we were in control of the House, the Senate, the White House or all three. Things got better and worse but rarely took a huge jump for the worse.

So being bombarded with a lot of information about the state of the world was easier to bear for a majority of those who initially liked and adopted it.

Now the habit of bombarding ourselves with maximum input has been locked in... and in the Trump era, all this extra data — meaning all these extra camera angles and echoes of the same thing — has become a curse. "Total situational awareness" of a frightening situation is not good for you.

You need sufficient awareness to assess the problem and decide what you can do about it. More than that is an express train ride to burnout or worse.

Of course I'm posting this to One Post Wonder, which shows I was thinking about this a while ago, but it was a whole lot more theoretical then.