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No news is good news

thomasjbevan.substack.com

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Re: No news is good news

#11

Post by droopyEyelids »

inanutshellus wrote: post #3

I'll come out of my shell a few times a week and won't understand what's going on. News sites just tell me the last 18 hours' worth of updates... So... I either disengage entirely and can't carry on a conversation or I stay engaged and worry about events I cannot affect. I'd like a "I haven't checked the news in [7] days and some guy at work mentioned [Ukraine talking to the UN], what's that all about?" website. I gu…

I believe you'd have a far more satisfying and productive time coming out of your shell if you redirected Joe's conversation to asking about him, or his kids, or his hobbies- keeping it local like the article concludes.

Unless it's your job, neither of you really understand whatever is happening with Ukraine and your conversation will be mostly limited to repeating what you've been told to each other, which doesn't enrich either of your lives.

Re: No news is good news

#12

Post by sjmulder »

inanutshellus wrote: post #3

I'll come out of my shell a few times a week and won't understand what's going on. News sites just tell me the last 18 hours' worth of updates... So... I either disengage entirely and can't carry on a conversation or I stay engaged and worry about events I cannot affect. I'd like a "I haven't checked the news in [7] days and some guy at work mentioned [Ukraine talking to the UN], what's that all about?" website. I gu…

There's an "out of the loop" reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/outoftheloop

It's not quite for this use case but could be of help. I regularly use it to find out what that thing is people are joking about on Twitter or such.

Re: No news is good news

#13

Post by beaconstudios »

mdb31 wrote: post #9

Yeah, well, no. You can't really function in society these days without following 'The News' to at least some extent. That doesn't mean you should buy into the '24h News Cycle' or the 'Extremism-inducing-filter-bubble', though. Myself, I don't pay any attention to 'The News', except as delivered on paper once-a-week via The Economist(1), and daily via their 'The World in Brief' email. So, this morning, I learned that…

In what way can you not function in society? Is that just in the sense that the news creates common cultural touchpoints for people to chat about around the water cooler? If so, as you say you don't really need to be that engaged to know the gist of what's going on. An occasional glance at a reputable, less-doomscrolly news source like the Econ, BBC, NYT or something like that should suffice.

Re: No news is good news

#14

Post by beaconstudios »

time_to_smile wrote: post #8

> News makes you scared of highly dramatic and highly unlikely events (plane crashes, shark attacks, terrorism etc) while also being oblivious to insidious and creeping risks that are low-key and hard to make dramatic and visual (say antibiotic resistance or indeed chronic stress caused by being in a news-induced perpetual state of physiological arousal). This is perhaps one of the most important points in this post…

The media is owned by powerful corporations and individuals, but at the same time it's profitable to keep people in heightened emotional states. So on one hand they want to induce fear and anxiety, but at the same time they don't want to give anyone real concerns about the world we live in that might cause them to want to disempower the media's owners.

Re: No news is good news

#15

Post by watwut »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #11
inanutshellus wrote: post #3

I'll come out of my shell a few times a week and won't understand what's going on. News sites just tell me the last 18 hours' worth of updates... So... I either disengage entirely and can't carry on a conversation or I stay engaged and worry about events I cannot affect. I'd like a "I haven't checked the news in [7] days and some guy at work mentioned [Ukraine talking to the UN], what's that all about?" website. I gu…

I believe you'd have a far more satisfying and productive time coming out of your shell if you redirected Joe's conversation to asking about him, or his kids, or his hobbies- keeping it local like the article concludes. Unless it's your job, neither of you really understand whatever is happening with Ukraine and your conversation will be mostly limited to repeating what you've been told to each other, which doesn't e…

I think that OP meant Joe Biden. Timeline checks out. It is unlikely OP is in position to talk about presidents kids and hobbies.

> Unless it's your job, neither of you really understand whatever is happening with Ukraine and your conversation will be mostly limited to repeating what you've been told to each other, which doesn't enrich either of your lives.

A bit of very practical issue here is that Russian troll force is in full force right now, at least where I live. Trying to affect general opinion of people, in order to influence future elections and to make NATO/Eu passive due to pressure from population. The money were in fact flowing from Russia toward our right-wing nearly fascist or clearly fascist parties.

I dont think "everyone else should be passive" is good strategy here.

Re: No news is good news

#16

Post by glitchc »

Articles that engender good feelings, either by revealing a positive story or reporting a positive event, do not receive nearly the same level of engagement.

Anger sells. Outrage sells. Media companies have known it since the dawn of the newspaper. Bad news generates anger and outrage, hence all news is bad news. It's a natural consequence of the human condition.

Re: No news is good news

#17

Post by georgeecollins »

h2odragon wrote: post #5

Far away problems are so much more interesting than those nearby. You needn't really do anything about them, and its much easier to assign your own valuation to anything you do. Your successes can be trumpeted as much as you like and your failures need never be known to anyone but you.

Yes! And unlike nearby problems you know you can't really do anything about them. How many people in the US would read a national story about crime or education without knowing who the police chief is of their city, or who is on the school board, or even who is on their city council..

Re: No news is good news

#18

Post by shantnutiwari »

1270018080 wrote: post #2

I have: - Deleted facebook - Unfollowed any news accounts and use Ublock to block suggested content on Twitter - Unsubscribed from any news subreddits - Of course never check news sites And honestly feel better overall and less stressed. Sure you can claim being apathetic/ignorant towards global current events makes me a bad person, but I do not care. To me, no human is designed to handle as much information input as…

> Sure you can claim being apathetic/ignorant towards global current events makes me a bad person, but I do not care.

100% agree. The Media complex is the one that keeps pretending news is important-- its like a drug dealer saying drugs are important.

Re: No news is good news

#19

Post by mdb31 »

beaconstudios wrote: post #13
mdb31 wrote: post #9

Yeah, well, no. You can't really function in society these days without following 'The News' to at least some extent. That doesn't mean you should buy into the '24h News Cycle' or the 'Extremism-inducing-filter-bubble', though. Myself, I don't pay any attention to 'The News', except as delivered on paper once-a-week via The Economist(1), and daily via their 'The World in Brief' email. So, this morning, I learned that…

In what way can you not function in society? Is that just in the sense that the news creates common cultural touchpoints for people to chat about around the water cooler? If so, as you say you don't really need to be that engaged to know the gist of what's going on. An occasional glance at a reputable, less-doomscrolly news source like the Econ, BBC, NYT or something like that should suffice.

I'm not sure we disagree? If you read The Economist weekly, you should be fine (although you can still be caught out not knowing about, say, today's Oscar's scandal.

But completely disconnecting from 'The News'? That won't work at all these days, I'm afraid. I quite vividly experienced this a while ago when I returned from living in the US to my native Netherlands: I was completely unaware of some extremely-popular local hit songs. So, when people quoted these to me, I just didn't get the reference, like, at all. This caused quite some awkward moments.

Now, magnify that experience to the world stage...

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