No news is good news • Hacker News Board

Re: No news is good news

#21

Post by vinyl7 » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 3:19 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #10

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…

> 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. I would not say so. But, I would expect you to NOT be outspoken and confident when someone else starts to speak about stuff related to current issues. And I would expect you to check yourself especially when it seems like the other person is saying s…

That's the second part of de-stressing. First, stop watching news. Second, stop having an opinion on everything because at the end of the day nobody's opinion matters.

Re: No news is good news

#22

Post by rootusrootus » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 3:22 PM UTC

IMO news comes in two flavors, one of which should be avoided like the plague it is, and one which you should pay somewhat close attention to (relatively). The first, national and international news. And the second being local news. We should embrace the local journalists who shine light on local politics.

Re: No news is good news

#23

Post by twic » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 3:23 PM UTC

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…

Wikipedia's current events portal goes back one week, and there's a link at the bottom to more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

Re: No news is good news

#24

Post by kgwxd » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 3:24 PM UTC

dwiel wrote: post #7

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've actually found that Improve the News [1] is good for something like that. It has sliders to let you select what kind of new you are looking for with one of the sliders which controls "shelf life" ranging from short to long and "recency" from evergreen to recent. Not exactly what you are looking for, but I've found it can serve a similar purpose. [1] https://www.improvethenews.org/

I think that left/right categorization thing actually makes it worse. I'd like a "just the facts" option.

Re: No news is good news

#25

Post by beaconstudios » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 3:25 PM UTC

mdb31 wrote: post #19

beaconstudios wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

oh yeah I wasn't disagreeing with you, just trying to think about what you meant. I agree, you probably want to know the basic pop-cultural and international goings-on in order to not be left out of conversations.

Re: No news is good news

#26

Post by depaya » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 3:26 PM UTC

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…

I agree with the general concept that, at the individual level, news consumption is bad for your mental health and pretty much useless. At the societal level though... if everybody took this approach there would be no accountability for politicians or corporations.

How do we find a healthy middle ground?

Re: No news is good news

#27

Post by 1270018080 » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 3:26 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #10

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…

> 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. I would not say so. But, I would expect you to NOT be outspoken and confident when someone else starts to speak about stuff related to current issues. And I would expect you to check yourself especially when it seems like the other person is saying s…

If you ask me my opinion on most issues my answer is going to be "I don't know" or "I don't care".

And that's the right answer that should be used by more people.

Re: No news is good news

#28

Post by haswell » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 3:34 PM UTC

mdb31 wrote: post #19

beaconstudios wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

I’m still not seeing the need for “The News” here. There’s no reason not to follow your interests/hobbies. And there are other ways to catch up on world events without the daily drip of sensationalism. The author isn’t saying you shouldn’t read anything ever.

But you don’t need to read the front page of CNN every day to stay up to date on the latest music. In fact, you’d be much better served by reading publications focused on that - the opposite of consuming the content meant for mass consumption.

People quote things that I don’t recognize all of the time. This is likely to happen for all kinds of reasons, e.g. generational gaps and not just because you stopped reading the daily headlines.

I think what you’re highlighting is that getting off the news hype cycle might make people around you notice. But a different response to that would be to have a conversation about why you unplugged.

That’s what I do, and it leads to some interesting conversations.

Only you can decide if the personal cost of continuing to consume is worthwhile just to maintain a certain vocabulary so you can continue socializing as you always have.

This isn’t a value judgement by the way, just an observation.

Re: No news is good news

#29

Post by redleggedfrog » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 3:36 PM UTC

I would have commented on this post except I didn't see it.

Re: No news is good news

#30

Post by superbaconman » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 3:39 PM UTC

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 are usually news programs on Sunday that will go over the past weeks worth of news. I like Bloomberg radio, which airs like 3 or 4 different weekly recap shows on that day.