This is an edition of the newsletter Pulling Weeds With Chris Black, in which the columnist weighs in on hot topics in culture. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Thursday.

Just over a week ago, The New Yorker published a story, “What’s Missing from Belle Burden’s Strangers,” that sent a certain corner of the internet into an absolute frenzy. The story probed the financial side of Burden’s hit divorce memoir and turned Twitter and Reddit into a battleground of amateur multi-generational wealth analysts, hotly debating money dynamics in relationships, prenuptial agreements, and the eternal question of memoir’s relationship with objective truth. Did Burden’s ultra-rich ex-husband have a crisis PR person leak sealed court documents to a writer at The New Yorker? We will probably never know how the nooks and crannies of a divorce settlement were made public, but the online debate on Sunday night was raging, on both sides: those who called her a fraud and the book a lie, and a more measured “Who cares, this book rocked” contingent were locking horns in long and winding Twitter threads. This sort of thing is happening at a neck-snapping pace these days.

I wrote about Bravo’s Summer House “scandal” a few months ago in Pulling Weeds, when news broke of an affair between West Wilson, a once-lovable Midwestern doofus, and Amanda Batula, an Jersey-bred graphic designer looking for a way out, that had the internet going nuts. Since then, it has been an absolute timeline spiral—seemingly normal people doing forensic investigations of old episodes, hawk-eyed fans who hang out in West Village bars updating Deuxmoi on the new couple’s every move, and, more importantly, a new kind of moral grandstanding. Watching reality TV, much like reading a great memoir, is about entertainment. I am not particularly concerned with the ethical standards of what mid-thirties young professionals in head-to-toe Zara do after having 14 Negronis at a bar in Montauk. To be clear, people aren’t just laughing this off after getting off a few silly Tweets on the couch; they are treating it like a personal affront, like their ex-situationship fucked their friend from a TV show where they get ostentatiously paid to behave poorly for our entertainment.

A few weeks ago, I traveled to Tucson, Arizona, for a weekend event put on by the popular running brand Satisfy and Adidas to celebrate the release of a collaborative shoe, the Adizero Adios Pro 4. The main event, deemed “The Circle Pit,” had all of us separated into heats running on a skatepark pump track while hardcore bands (Drain headlined) played on stage. Much like Brice Partouche, the founder of Satisfy, I grew up listening to hardcore, so even though I didn’t love the event name, nostalgia was in my favor. Overall, I had a good time; everyone was cool; the music was good; and the workout, at least for me, was challenging. As photos trickled out online, the running community went apeshit, fire-breathing mad about how corny it was and how expensive the product is. For what it is worth, Partouche likes to mix it up online and is quick to say when he thinks someone has ripped him off. The debate was intense and filled with crudely-made memes (some very good, I must say).

These three things are not connected in the slightest, but all share one distinct throughline: people acting absolutely insane online about something that just doesn’t matter that much. Burden’s book was great—a must-read. I don’t care if she has a trust worth $65 million; it was captivating. West and Amanda getting caught holding hands in Rome is not offensive to me; they made a bad choice, and the people in their lives will act accordingly. The running community will continue to clock 100-mile weeks and share Strava scores, whether or not you think a brand activation was stupid. We are all, myself included, just too invested in things that don’t matter. Maybe we need a distraction from our mundane lives, or we are simply, after years and years, still too logged on. But as a guy who gets mad about meaningless stuff for a living, even I have a line. All this chatter only helps the thing you hate. Burden is going to sell more books, Summer House reunion ratings will have Andy Cohen looking for a fifth house, and Satisfy’s Shopify is filled with francs. But the point is, we cannot be this invested; sometimes it’s ok to shake your head, get a few good quips off in the most active group chat, and move on—without logging into Reddit, cracking knuckles, packing a lip, and writing 10,000 words on a “controversy” we will all forget about tomorrow. I will never stop paying attention, but maybe we should try to process things a bit differently.