Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product • Hacker News Board

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#61

Post by evolve2k » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 12:53 AM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #37

I'm slowly trimming away the means I acquire news, because it's all becoming so editorialized. Twitter is bombarded with bots and flamewars, reddit is a lost cause, and news.google.com is mainly driven by larger syndications that have mastered the "Big Headlines Sell" strategy. That leaves HN and my little local papers, Mountain View Voice and its ilk. Great for local stories and tech news, but I feel like I'm missin…

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Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#62

Post by ben_w » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 12:56 AM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #37

I'm slowly trimming away the means I acquire news, because it's all becoming so editorialized. Twitter is bombarded with bots and flamewars, reddit is a lost cause, and news.google.com is mainly driven by larger syndications that have mastered the "Big Headlines Sell" strategy. That leaves HN and my little local papers, Mountain View Voice and its ilk. Great for local stories and tech news, but I feel like I'm missin…

I'm in a similar situation in the UK, however in my case it's mocking Trump and being outraged about Brexit (other than the BBC, Brexit outrage/derision is omnipresent regardless of if the news site or story author is pro or anti).

Unfortunately, I can't look to local news, because that's either "goose removed from river Cam after attacking cyclist" or "parking in car park now more expensive than fine for parking illegally". And those are both genuine stories.

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#63

Post by arkis22 » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 12:59 AM UTC

I would have thought it was sex

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#64

Post by banned1 » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 1:02 AM UTC

Dobbs wrote: post #48

banned1 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. CNN has gone the way of MSNBC (i.e. liberal, one-sided, pretty much echo-chamber). HN is the same way when it relates to political news (i.e. liberal, one-sided, pretty much echo-chamber). Fox News is, well, Fox News. NPR is, well, for the most part, the Fox News of the left. So on and so forth. In a world of two echo chambers (The Right-wingers and The Left-wingers), it's up to you to make up your mind.…

I'm not sure how NPR and Fox News can be compared in good faith. Yes NPR has a liberal bias, but for the most part it attempts to reasonably source its articles and publish a journalistically accurate news report. Fox News is not a news channel. They have one or two news programs mixed in with "entertainment". Sean Hannity is not news, but entertainment pretending to be news[^1]. [^1]: https://www.dailykos.com/storie…

Is DailyKos the pinnacle of Liberal unbiased sources?

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#65

Post by d1ffuz0r » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 1:08 AM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #37

I'm slowly trimming away the means I acquire news, because it's all becoming so editorialized. Twitter is bombarded with bots and flamewars, reddit is a lost cause, and news.google.com is mainly driven by larger syndications that have mastered the "Big Headlines Sell" strategy. That leaves HN and my little local papers, Mountain View Voice and its ilk. Great for local stories and tech news, but I feel like I'm missin…

Mix of Local news + RT(Russia Today) or Al Jazeera works pretty good

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#66

Post by Swizec » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 1:11 AM UTC

nowarninglabel wrote: post #54

Swizec wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Joy is fleeting, fear is forever. Manufacturing joy is easy, yes. Tie a counter to a semi-random process that's semi-controlled by a human and they experience joy when the counter goes up. The so called slot machine. THis is how HackerNews karma, Facebook notifications, your email inbox, and other addictive activities are designed. You experience momentary joy. But fear, fear is forever. How many fears have you been…

I think that's a fair point, but would argue that it's likely not true for a sizable amount of the population (e.g. my childhood fears have mostly left me). But further, there are lots of services which actually sell getting past your fears, perhaps they are just not selling well enough yet to overcome the amount of fear being produced continuously? Mainly, just questioning how much it is "forever" fear vs. a constan…

Maybe it's not a matter of introducing new fears but of reinforcing old ones and reminding you of them.

Everyone's afraid of random unexpected death that's out of their control right? Well most of us on some level at least.

So media spends a lot of time reminding us that we could die any moment. Terrorists, natural disasters, wars, car crashes, shootings, all these things that have a low chance of happening to you in particular but that nonetheless happen every day and could happen to you.

Or take social exclusion. We all fear being cast out of society. So media keeps reminding us of all these things the cool people are doing that wr arent. Potentially things we can pay to do.

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#67

Post by mxfh » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 1:12 AM UTC

Ygg2 wrote: post #26

mxfh wrote: post #18

A not so convincing conservative (counter) narrative that lumps up the arguably questionable nature of trigger warnings with a russian imposed nuclear doomsday scenario? That assumption that a russian bomb was merely a copy of the the American effort, spying helped it speed up, but mostly prevented costly mistakes for the soviets is just another example of american exceptionalism. Would rather watch Adam Curtis' Powe…

> A not so convincing conservative (counter) narrative that lumps up the arguably questionable nature of trigger warnings Conservative? Can trigger warning exist without fearing something? I think the author describes evolution of fear.

I wouldn't call this fear, but a, yet to be proven effective, strategy to avoid retraumatization.

The motivation, as I understand it, is actually to enable and prepare more people reading things they would be otherwise afraid of, so quite the opposite of fear.

Besides some right wing people seeing this as one of the horsemen of the end of free speech, this relatively obscure and confined practice simply doesn't warrant mentioning it on level akin with national doctrines like MAD.

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#68

Post by jacobolus » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 1:15 AM UTC

d1ffuz0r wrote: post #65

komali2 wrote: post #37

I'm slowly trimming away the means I acquire news, because it's all becoming so editorialized. Twitter is bombarded with bots and flamewars, reddit is a lost cause, and news.google.com is mainly driven by larger syndications that have mastered the "Big Headlines Sell" strategy. That leaves HN and my little local papers, Mountain View Voice and its ilk. Great for local stories and tech news, but I feel like I'm missin…

Mix of Local news + RT(Russia Today) or Al Jazeera works pretty good

Neither RT (Russian government propaganda) nor Al Jazeera (Qatari governmennt propaganda) is sufficient by itself, if you want to figure out what’s going on in the world.

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#69

Post by hkmurakami » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 1:16 AM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #37

I'm slowly trimming away the means I acquire news, because it's all becoming so editorialized. Twitter is bombarded with bots and flamewars, reddit is a lost cause, and news.google.com is mainly driven by larger syndications that have mastered the "Big Headlines Sell" strategy. That leaves HN and my little local papers, Mountain View Voice and its ilk. Great for local stories and tech news, but I feel like I'm missin…

I enjoy my local MV, LA, PA papers too. Thankfully I read and subscribe to WSJ and Economist, which cover the controversial/poorly conceived policy of the administration but very little of the tabloidesque gaffes. I was at dinner with friends yesterday and I was struck by how little of the "this person said this ridiculous or ill-informed thing X" I knew compared to my peers.

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#70

Post by tormeh » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 1:16 AM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #37

I'm slowly trimming away the means I acquire news, because it's all becoming so editorialized. Twitter is bombarded with bots and flamewars, reddit is a lost cause, and news.google.com is mainly driven by larger syndications that have mastered the "Big Headlines Sell" strategy. That leaves HN and my little local papers, Mountain View Voice and its ilk. Great for local stories and tech news, but I feel like I'm missin…

The Economist is good, if you can swallow their ideology It's very open about it, but it does not conform to most people's idea of what news should be.

Süddeutsche Zeitung is good in Germany space, although it may do a bit too much of normal and national news.