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'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

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191–200 of 305 posts

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#191
post #23

I don't like the implication that mental health is just feeling good. Maybe if more people would read and understand the news, and feel bad about it , they'd be willing to do even trivial things like wear a mask. In my opinion, good mental health should be considered to be that your feelings align with reality. If reality sucks, it's not mentally unhealthy to feel bad about it. Feeling bad should spur making changes…

It's not like the "news" is the source of truth etched in stone, is it? I imagine most people were reading and probably understanding the "news" in March. That's when Dr. Fauci, the U.S. Surgeon General, the World Health Organization, and The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention all made "news" by stating there was no reason people in the U.S. needed to wear a mask. Politicians making the "news" by eating in Chinese restaurants. I recall the "news" taking time to chastise the hoi polloi who chose to ignore the "news" and wore masks anyway. I think the general mantra was something on the order of "masks only help frontline professionals, blah blah blah... you uniformed morons". I'm sure it's healthy to have a healthy skepticism of the "news".

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#192
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thousands of school districts are integrating material into their curriculum that claims slavery was capitalist. Chattel slavery of the type practiced in the early US and elsewhere was part of the dominant Western system of the mid-19th century for which critics coined the term “capitalism”; what else would it be but capitalist?

It may be "capitalist" in the sense that things are being bought/sold/owned sure. But it's being portrayed as a concept/occurrence that is mostly if not entirely a product of capitalism. Which is plain wrong because we've had slavery and various forms of it in a multitude of situations and political systems throughout history, a lot of which were in no way capitalist. It's white-washing a lot of our collective histor…

[deleted]

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#193
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree. Reading a book before bed slows my mind and removes the days anxieties. I’m currently reading The Lost Fleet sci-fi series. Pure entertainment.

For sci-fi I really enjoyed the Three Body Problem series

Thanks! I have a couple books left in this series, then I'll check our your suggestion.

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#194
post #96
post #59

I deleted my Twitter a few months ago and my life is better for it. The need to be “in the know” was powerful, but I realized that I was consuming vast amounts of shallow information that resulted in shallow, uninformed opinions. I’ve been reading a lot more long-form articles and books; I’ve finished reading three books in the last month or so. When my Twitter habit was strong I would often start a book and give up…

The problem I've been facing recently is that long form also turns out to be a waste of time after you go through the most informational/influential pieces. Lots of the articles thread the same water, dive into totally unnecessary details, or just tell a story that, while fascinating, does not really give you any important new information, or bury it in a few casual sentences, never elaborating on them. For books it…

Lindy effect, stuff worth reading is stuff that has been filtered by time.

Reading old books is worth it. New ones are hard to filter and many will turn out to be completely unnecessary.

Leaves you on the sides of contemporary culture but at least you're reading efficiently.

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production. The means of production is usually defined as tools, machinery or technology, not people.

> Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production. No, capitalism is a particular real-world economic system that existed in a particular time and place; it is true that private ownership of the means of production is a central element of that system, but it's not it's only feature. Slavery was, in fact, an element of that system identified by the people who identified the system and coined the term ca…

People are gaslighting me by telling me resurgent Marxism isn’t a real thing, and yet here I am having people quote Marx at me to define capitalism.

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get it, I really do. Negativity is shit. The world is a messed up place. Sure, we shouldn't be bombarded by this fact day in and day out, but I personally think it's a good thing to remind yourself now and then how fucked up the world we live in can be - to maintain a sort of tether to the "reality" of the world's current messed up situation; it puts a lot into perspective. Any thoughts? Am I wrong for thinking thi…

I agree with you. Actually I watch news regularly since my childhood and I've also heard the sentence "I don't want to see this (people suffering), this is terrible" Basically this would be actively looking away. The world is indeed a pretty messed up place and it's sad we need Corona to be reminded of a lot of long-standing issues as they affect also other groups now: - lack of universal health insurance/insufficien…

>Actually very few news outlets even attempt to give global coverage, BBC is the only one I know of that somehow gets close to this.

Far fewer still, are news outlets covering child sex trafficking. But hey, "I don't want to see this, this is terrible, let's call it a conspiracy and move on".

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#197
Unfollow anyone who retweets outrage tweets, or posts low-effort content, follow people who post original, high effort content, and never go to the twitter's home page -- read only the latest tweets in chronological order. This will considerably reduce tweets that target emotional triggers or simply waste time.

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A third of college students embrace communism This sounds a lot scarier when you don't realize that, among the same set, there is all but ubiquitous contempt for "tankies", i.e. the very same Stalinist-style sort of thing you're worried about. Newsmax won't tell you that, because why would they? Keeping you frightened keeps you doomscrolling their ads. I know about the tankie hate because I know a bunch of the peop…

I appear to arguing on HN with people who are repeating Marxist critiques of capitalism back at me, so I don’t think my fears are at all irrational. Also, see: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1996/04/14/w... > McCarthy, as his subsequent history would show, knew little about communism, on this side of the ocean or the other. This loutish, duplicitous bully, who carried, not the names of Reds but bottl…

It's hardly Marxist to note that slavery and capitalism are compatible, although he may have been the first to explicitly do so. Capitalism isn't special in that regard; slavery can exist, and in various forms has existed, under every economic system known to man. Chattel slavery appears to work especially well with capitalism, as indeed has been amply demonstrated in US history, so that was what I talked about.

Granted, any such discussion omits the moral enormity inherent in any form of slavery. Economic discussions are like that. I'll grant you that the moral and economic dimensions of the slavery-and-capitalism question tend not to be too clearly separated in the public discourse of the moment, but that neither surprises nor concerns me. As I mentioned earlier, what you misidentify as "resurgent Marxism" is in fact a reaction to the totally untrammeled capitalism I called by the name "Reaganism". Considering the myriad and grievous harms that system has produced in four short decades, and considering also that that system's own proponents happily describe it just as "capitalism" without the courtesy of such qualifiers as I use, whatever misidentification or misblame it may receive seems to me well earned. Besides, it's not as if counting slavery among the crimes of Reaganism is in any way erroneous. Have you seen the US prison system?

To the rest, it should be hardly a surprise to anyone that there were Soviet agents in the US government at any point from about the early 1930s through the late 80s. Just like there were US agents in the Soviet government. And Chinese agents in both, and vice versa, and so on. The existence of espionage, and the existence of a vast Red conspiracy of subversion on a national and generational scale, are in no way the same thing, and to argue from one to the other requires a good deal more substantiation than either you or Tailgunner Joe appear inclined or indeed able to provide.

Granted, one can sometimes use the former to frighten uninformed people into believing in the latter, despite a total inability to demonstrate that the latter actually exists. You seem to want to talk about gaslighting. Has it occurred to you that, unlike merely having people argue that you're wrong about something, this sort of specious, fear-based deception may in fact qualify as such?

Btw, I just spent a little while poking around Newsmax, something I hadn't previously done since the Bush administration. I don't know whether you really do read a lot of that stuff, but if you do, maybe seriously consider cutting back, and replacing at least some of it with something from outside the filter bubble it appears strongly designed to create and enforce. Or, I don't know, use an ad blocker at least? If you're going to let that stuff monopolize your brain and your political philosophy, I'd at least like to think you're doing it for its own sake, rather than so that somebody can make money off of you.

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#199
post #144

As of a hundred comments, none seem to have mentioned that this is not inherent in social media but in media in general. Remember to take breaks from the news cycles (whatever flavor of news and outlet you prefer) and try to not get emotionally engaged in what is really quite distant from your actual life. The news, wherever they come from and regardless of what they are about are mostly just a distraction from what…

I realize this trick won't work for everyone, but a couple years ago I figured out a nice technique to combat all these problems, while still allowing myself to read the news: I made a pact with myself to only actively consume the news in a language I don't speak fluently.

If nothing else, I'm improving my language skills, so the time spent doing it is edifying, even when the piece itself isn't. The concentration involved in deciphering the article inserts some emotional distance that helps me not to get too worked up about what I'm reading. And, since reading in a language one doesn't understand very well is tiring, the whole exercise is self-limiting. It's literally impossible to get sucked in.

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production. No, capitalism is a particular real-world economic system that existed in a particular time and place; it is true that private ownership of the means of production is a central element of that system, but it's not it's only feature. Slavery was, in fact, an element of that system identified by the people who identified the system and coined the term ca…

People are gaslighting me by telling me resurgent Marxism isn’t a real thing, and yet here I am having people quote Marx at me to define capitalism.

No one is gaslighting [1] you. People are arguing that your interpretation of current events is in error. By calling that "gaslighting", you implicitly claim that disagreement with you is in itself an abusive act.

Calling anyone who disagrees with you abusive seems like a pretty wild flex.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting

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