Stop Reading News (2013)

I don't actively follow the news, as I found it had a negative impact on my mental well-being. However, this doesn't mean I'm uninformed. I still stay updated through conversations with family, friends, and colleagues. This approach might've even improved my listening skills and relationships. Without being bombarded by every viewpoint on issues that often have little relevance to our daily lives, I avoid falling into the trap of lecturing or debating based on half-informed opinions.

We are figuratively being bombarded with information nowadays. It's not good. And almost all of the news we consume doesn't significantly affect our personal lives. And it's all like propaganda, even if it wasn't the intention.

Sigh. Why is it that people seem to think that the only alternative to one bad thing on a continuum is a bad thing at the opposite end of the continuum.

There's a lot of room between "obsessively read everything" and "you didn't know about the tornado warning until your house blew over".

I get that it's hard to find the best spot on the continuum. And that best spot is probably not the same for everyone.

It's interesting that this article was written 10 years ago. Social media was already not great even by then, but it was nowhere near as polarizing and engagement-centric as it is now. Subscription models for online newspapers weren't quite as pervasive as they are now.

So I don't know... honestly I couldn't make it all that far through this article. It was so filled with absolutes, no nuance, no acknowledgement that there are choices between everything and nothing. Exhausting.

I think the biggest point here is that the news will very rarely help you make better decisions in your own life.

And that's true. Following the wars in Ukraine or Israel/Gaza isn't going to change anything about my life for the better, even if I feel bad saying out loud that maybe I just shouldn't read about it -- that makes it sound like I don't care. Reading about the antics of Trump or Biden or Schumer or Johnson or Jeffries or McConnell isn't going to change what I do day by day, at least not for the better. Getting angry at Ken Paxton or the Texas Supreme Court for their utter disregard for human life brings me down, not up, and there's nothing I can do about that situation anyway.

An argument I can think of for keeping informed about that sort of thing is that it's one of the factors I might put into the next time election day comes up. If a particular candidate had a good response or bad response to these things, it might help me decide who to vote for. But the thing is, I don't need to follow these events in real time to get that help. I can wait until a month or two before the election, and start reading things, nicely summarized, about the candidates' positions, reactions, voting record, etc. on these topics. And I'll spend a lot less time doing it, too.

(Let's ignore for a minute whether or not voting is a productive activity; I'm going to vote because I feel like I have a responsibility to do so, regardless of its efficacy.)

And here I'm just talking about political news. There's so much other news, and I can't see how much of that could be any more useful to my day-to-day.

Agreed, maybe something like https://pastevents.org/rss/keyword ?

>I have no idea who it comes from

It was written by Thomas Jefferson.