Hi, I’m Ranty Em.

Is it me or has social media turned the internet into an outrage-filled hellscape?

It’s noisy. It’s infuriating. It’s addictive. And it is purpose-built that way. In my teens and twenties, I was an angry, impulsive, reactive online insane person. However, communicating was kind of my thing. I’d been writing my whole life. Sometimes referred to as a “compulsive writer,” getting pen on paper was how I processed information and learned to articulate my thoughts. It’s why growing up, Edward R. Murrow was my hero. It’s why I got my undergraduate degree in journalism and communications. But online? I was a mess.

This began to evolve in 2006, when of all things, I saw an HBO comedy special that fundamentally changed how I processed information. We’ll get into that soon so stay tuned.

In 2009, I was laid off from a public relations job I hated. I took the opportunity to go to graduate school, studying public policy and administration. I thought I’d merge my interests into a public affairs career. And while my career took a different path, my experience in digital communications and with the public sector turned into this mission to figure out how to contextualize information in an age of information overload. To transform online outrage into positive outcomes. 

So here I am, creating content no one asked for that search engines likely won’t rank. Why? Because we are drinking from the information fire hose, and we aren’t wired to process it effectively. Because the opportunities these tools present are tremendous but also extremely vulnerable to exploitation. 

Because we are living in a digital world, and I am a digital girl.