The Curated Information Diet
Aggressively curate your feed to defeat Brandolini's Law and see reality clearly.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 62%
Because bullshit is far cheaper to produce than to refute (Brandolini's Law) and the brain fixates on negative signals (negativity bias), an unfiltered feed systematically over-represents low-effort, hostile, and extreme content, leaving you with a distorted and depressing view of the world. The curated information diet is the deliberate response: treat feed curation as attention hygiene rather than as unfair censorship of others. Judge accounts by information density, mute the low-signal ones that muscle out thoughtful voices, block the rude, and cap how many people you follow so signal stays high. Gurwinder frames blocking and muting liberally as the difference between Twitter being a 'hell site' and a 'digital Disneyland'; Chris describes limiting himself to 99 follows as the best thing he ever did.
Origin
Synthesised by Gurwinder Bhogal and Chris Williamson from Brandolini's Law and negativity bias. Chris's practice of capping follows at ~99 and running a mental 'strike' counter for irritating accounts illustrates the method.
Core principles
- 01Your feed is not reality; it over-represents the surprising, negative, and low-effort.
- 02Bullshit is cheap to produce and expensive to refute, so it dominates by default.
- 03Negativity bias means one hostile comment outweighs ninety-nine kind ones.
- 04Curation is not censorship of others; it is protection of your own attention.
- 05There are too many people online to have time for nonsense.
How to run it
- 1
Audit by information density
Review who you follow and ask, per account, how much useful information a single post actually gives you. Flag the low-density ones.
- 2
Mute the low-signal
Mute accounts with low information density, especially those that crowd out more thoughtful voices on your timeline, even if they were never rude.
Pro tip Muting rather than blocking is the gentler tool for people who simply add noise.
- 3
Block the hostile
Block accounts that are rude or hostile to you. There are too many people online to spend attention on nonsense.
- 4
Cap your follow count
Set a deliberate ceiling on how many accounts you follow so every slot has to earn its place and the feed stays high-signal.
Pro tip A hard cap forces a swap: to add someone new, you must drop someone existing.
- 5
Run a strike system
Track, even loosely, how often an account annoys or misleads you, and cut it once it crosses your threshold.
Watch out Curate for signal, not just for agreement, or you risk building an echo chamber.
In the wild
Chris limited himself to following just 99 people and calls it the best thing he ever did for his experience of Twitter. He now mostly sees articles he is genuinely interested in and rarely encounters retweets of low-quality content. He keeps a mental strike counter, and when an account irritates him too many times within a month, a slot opens up and a new, higher-signal account can take its place.
→ His feed shifted from a stress-inducing hell site to a high-signal, enjoyable resource.
Common mistakes
Refusing to block on principle
Treating blocking as unfair to others keeps low-value and hostile accounts in your feed. Curation protects your attention, not theirs.
Curating only for agreement
Cutting everyone who disagrees builds an echo chamber. Filter for information density and civility, not ideological comfort.
Is it for you?
Best for
Heavy social-media users who feel their feed is making them anxious, cynical, or misinformed.
Not ideal for
People whose work requires monitoring hostile or low-quality sources they would otherwise mute.
From the transcript
“block and mute a lot liberally, then you'll find that Brandolini's law is not so influential on your life anymore”
“Best thing I ever did was limit myself to 99 people that I follow.”
From the episode
15 Mental Models To Understand Psychology - Gurwinder Bhogal - #385
Gurwinder Bhogal