Should I care about this?

I am a curious person by nature. It's rare for me to find a topic I'm not interested in, even if just superficially. Whether we're talking science, technology, engineering, design, architecture, psychology, you name it. Everything is interesting if you have an open mind. But more and more lately, I found myself asking a question internally while reading or listening about a topic: Should I care about this?

At a very broad level, the answer is obviously yes. I should care about things in general because the alternative is to go through life not caring about anything. And clearly, that's not ideal. There are things I need to know—with a very loose definition of need—for my work, things I need to know because I'm part of a society and things I need and want to know because are passions of mine. But the more content I consume, the more I'm wondering if my time could be better spent in other ways. Maybe something can be interesting but also not worth consuming from a personal stand point.

I was reading about the current Basecamp debacle the other day. The situation is interesting from multiple perspectives and the debate around it is a debate worth having. But I can't stop thinking that really, fundamentally, I don't care about it. And this thought, this mindset, is getting more and more insistent. Maybe it's just the effect of this very odd year we've just gone through or maybe it's the result of years on the internet. Who knows.

What I do know is that I should probably spend my time consuming more in depth content about the few topics I care deeply about rather than bouncing around, chasing things that are superficially interesting but won't probably stick around in my mind for long.