I think this is close to what is going on, but it’s more, this person has a need to be superior. He needs to be the ‘giver of information.’
But, IRL, he doesn’t really have information others don’t. He leads (so far as I can tell) a life that is flat out ordinary and in a rut: he goes to work, he goes home and watches television, occasionally he goes out drinking with his friends. He has no interesting hobbies, he doesn’t have a family (in the immediate, creating day-to-day annecdotes sense), he isn’t taking night classes, he apparently doesn’t read or watch anything out of the ordinary magazines and common broadcast television shows… Basically, he does none of the things that might give him things to talk about that aren’t already common knowledge – and yet he seems to hunger to be the one ‘informing’ others, I guess as a way to reinforce his (false) image of himself as a more educated, knowing person than the common herd around him.
Which is pathetic, so I should feel sorry for him, and be more tolerant. I’ll try.
But having an entire half-hour newscast parroted back to you gets extraordinarily irritating.
Maybe I’ll take to wearing headphones during my breaks. Then I can just pretend he isn’t there.