Florence was fresh out of graves in 1348.
Florentine writer Giovanni Boccaccio described bad news everywhere. He guessed 100,000 dead from plague inside the city walls.
Gravediggers stacking bodies in trenches like cargo in a ship’s hold.
With bad news that thick, he dreamed up ten young Florentines who outlawed it. They would be heroes of his new work, the Decameron.
His fictional ten skedaddled to a palace outside town. They told the servants:
Sorry folks, no doom talk, only good news here.
Every afternoon in the garden shade, the ten swapped bawdy tales... a crook who lied his way into sainthood, a monk who snuck a girl into his cell. A hundred doom-free stories in 240 hours.
A doomscroll ban dreamed up in the 14th century... fictional, sure, but smart.
Maybe we need one.
I once had an anonymous political account on X... a staggering 1,525 followers.
(thank you thank you, so kind.)
One January morning I stared at that number. “The heck am I doing?” Arguing, anger, negativity, stifled creativity... sad.
Next day I launched Past Passport and banned my own bad news. Probably time you banned yours.
Social Media, Inc. serves you sloppy buckets of anger because anger sells like hot tea in January in Siberia.
Plus, it buys Zuck another gas-guzzling yacht, plus an armada to support it.
Don’t be Zuck’s pawn.
Today we dig into what a plague-year storyteller can teach you about banning your own bad news.
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Boccaccio fights the plague with a pen
Boccaccio was 35 when the plague wrecked Florence in 1348. A banker’s son who’d rather scribble poems than count florins.
His dad, Boccaccino, died the next year, probably of plague.
He grabbed his pen and spent five years crafting the Decameron. He wrote it in blue-collar Florentine Italian, the language of the market stalls, instead of scholars’ Latin. (Latin snobs, look away.)
His opening pages tell us who the work was for: women cooped up in “the narrow compass of their chambers,” idle and stewing in gloomy thoughts. While the carefree men rode off hunting and trading.
Bored, anxious, and stuck indoors. Sound familiar?
Boccaccio’s cheer-up plan caught on. Florentine merchants copied all 100 tales out by hand.
Petrarch, the most famous poet alive, loved the Griselda story so much he translated it into Latin in 1373.
Chaucer later retold it in The Canterbury Tales.
In 1559, the Church slapped the book on its Index of Forbidden Books... too racy, with too many randy monks.
More than 670 years later, the Decameron’s still in print. Netflix was impressed and turned it into a comedy series in 2024.
Florence built through its grief. Plague victims willed so much gold to the shrine at Orsanmichele that the chronicler Matteo Villani accused its captains of skimming.
Plenty of coin was left anyway. Orcagna spent 1352 to 1359 carving a marble tabernacle there, and it still glows in the gloom of that old grain hall.
Within a century, the survivors’ grandkids were raising Brunelleschi’s dome.
Florence had the plague and soldiered on. We have a phone full of negativity knocking us off-kilter every time we’re bored.
I bring good tidings, because the fix for what ails us is in our hands.
Four doom-free days, and the ideas flooded back
Ninety-six hours after I quit negative social media, around January 21, I was lying in bed.
Texas sun poking through the oak branches, Butterbean the dog snoring on my right.
Pop... pop... pop. Story and book chapter ideas popping in my head like corn in a hot kettle.
Stumbled over my flip-flops to the study, smacked my temple on the wall, and typed and typed before my half-asleep brain lost the thoughts.
What was going on here? UC Santa Barbara researchers have the answer. They found creative ideas increase when the mind is free to wander.
Yours can’t wander while you’re cooking up zingers to “win” an argument with Crazy Guy with 27 followers. Mine couldn’t either.
Decided to knock that off. My brain said THANK YOU, and my creativity soared.
You got the same in you... trust me.
Ban your own bad news for four days
Negative social media is bad. You know that. I know you know.
Many brainy people know and scroll merrily anyway. Because whatever your IQ, the feed is engineered to keep you pissed and hooked.
Example: starting in 2017, Facebook’s algorithm counted an angry-face reaction as worth five likes.
We almost ENJOY being outraged and angry. (It depresses us too, though. A 2024 Flinders University study tied doomscrolling to existential dread. Facts.)
So knowing isn’t enough.
Unfollow five negative or political accounts. Like, right now. Go on.
“But my friends are on my socials (and my enemies)! I’m not addicted or anything, but... I don’t wanna.”
I hear you. That’s me on Jan. 16, 2026. Arguing was my hobby... my friends, my frenemies. I kinda liked it. And hated it.
Do it anyway.
Next step:
Replace them with something beautiful or something you enjoy... art, stamps, Beanie Babies, Soviet bus stops (yes, that’s a thing, look it up). Heck, even dumpster photos.
For me? It was art, great books, ancient battles, and pretty, historic places.
Then fill the hours you get back with whatever you love. (Making stuff? That’s the next free article.)
Four days later, report back in the comments. Tell me what changed.
The world’s problems won’t vanish when you unfollow Crazy Guy and replace that time with something productive.
But I’ll wager good things will roll your way when you go Doom-Free Zone for four days.
Ten Florentines banned bad news for ten days.
Try four.
(You’re welcome.)
Social Media, Inc. wants us addicted to online bickering and squabbling. Zuck needs another mansion and helicopter.
Don’t be their mark.
Swap the negative junk for art, beauty, history, and a little creativity juice of your own.
Go paid for $5 a month and get three doom-busting essays a week on ancient battles, great books, art, and historic places. Your first week’s free.
On X, follow @Pastpassport for Doomscroll Buster, your daily dose of jaw-dropping art, ancient battles, great books, and historic places... beauty to fight the doomscroll.
And keep an eye out. The Doomscroll Buster videos are headed to Substack soon, so you can binge the whole series in one spot.