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The power of ignoring mainstream news

joel.is

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Re: The power of ignoring mainstream news

#21

Post by spindritf »

v0cab wrote: post #16
fecklessyouth wrote: post #7

I've stopped going Reddit, for a similar effect.

I keep Redditing, but unsubscribe from most of the default subreddits, and subscribe to TrueReddit, TrueAtheism, and whatever else holds my interest.

That way you put yourself in a bubble, I found reddit to be much more interesting when I installed RES http://redditenhancementsuite.com/ and used the filter to hide all the crappy or uninteresting subreddits and browse r/all. Some new, small communities are absolutely spectacular, see http://www.reddit.com/r/standupshots for example.

Re: The power of ignoring mainstream news

#22

Post by MattGrommes »

I stopped following the TV news years ago and almost never browse news websites. I use my social feeds (Twitter, HN, Facebook) and the Reddit frontpage as a high-pass filter for what news events I might care about digging more into. This cuts out almost all "X is bad for you!" scaremongering and celebrity nonsense (which I have almost a separate filter for mentally). When something like the recent anti-Islam movie fiasco happens I hear about it and dig in more. It's very freeing not to have to hear distorted stories about how everything's going to hell.

Right now the local mayoral election has made me pay more attention to the local news and I almost always regret that additional noise, even though the local organization I use (The Voice of San Diego) is about as good at journalism as I've seen.

Re: The power of ignoring mainstream news

#23

Post by ahquresh »

I feel the same way about the information that we are bombarded with on a daily basis. He is right, in the sense that much of it is very negative, though I also feel some of it is information that everyone should know. With that in mind, I would like to know where everyone goes for their information. It seems that alot of the information and news that everyone should know, be it positive or negative, is very difficult to find. This raises the question, how do we get this information into the mainstream media? The biggest problem for me is the lack of control, users have over the information that they are presented with. Even Google is able to show us the content they want us to see, or think we want to see. I think that this control is really destroying our ability to change as personalities in the online and offline world.

Re: The power of ignoring mainstream news

#25

Post by Wilya »

The more mainstream news is, the easier it will reach you, whatever you do, whether you spend time looking for it or not. That's kind of obvious, in hindsight, that's why it's called mainstream. Consequently, watching and reading news is useless, since you will always find someone eager to talk to you about the important stuff, and you can always double check the facts afterwards.

Reading already curated sources of info, preferably quite a few of them, coming from varied backgrounds, and doing a more focused research afterwards if it seems worth it, beats mainstream news most of the time.

And by curated, I mean low volume sources. My rule of thumb is that if an rss feed (which is where most of my news comes from) gets more than four or five updates a week, it's probably not worth it (or I subscribed to it because it's a type of noise that I like, but it's still noise).

Re: The power of ignoring mainstream news

#26

Post by pixelmonkey »

Here is the kernel of good advice in this post: consuming news can be addicting, can create a negative worldview, and might not provide the informational content you think it may.

However, the author then makes a series of suggestions for all the things you should be doing with your time, such as: (a) playing videogames; (b) mentoring other startup founders; (c) building your own startup; (d) writing on your blog; (e) going to the gym.

All of these suggestions for what you should be doing with your time are... surprise, surprise... things that the author does with his time, instead of reading the news.

The reflection I got out of this post was perhaps the opposite of intended: I need to stop reading HN!

Re: The power of ignoring mainstream news

#27

Post by agumonkey »

v0cab wrote: post #16
fecklessyouth wrote: post #7

I've stopped going Reddit, for a similar effect.

I keep Redditing, but unsubscribe from most of the default subreddits, and subscribe to TrueReddit, TrueAtheism, and whatever else holds my interest.

I pruned my subscription lists too, and now it's as if it's frozen. Beside those 2 you mentioned what else is time worthy ?

Re: The power of ignoring mainstream news

#28

Post by howcan »

I do not mean to disagree with the OP, but here's a thought:

What would happen if we required someone like Warren Buffet to ignore the news?

What if he was prohibited from reading a single newspaper?

What would happen?

I know many people who read multiple newspapers every day, without fail. If they were not allowed access to the news, I think their ability to function in their chosen profession would be severely impacted.

Re: The power of ignoring mainstream news

#29

Post by tzs »

I found that when I let mainstream news go and tried to stay informed via social media, blogs, and Reddit, I felt informed.

Then I got a Kindle and tried a mainstream newspaper subscription.

I quickly noticed that the newspaper often disagreed with what I'd "learn" from Reddit and blogs, and upon further investigation the newspaper was almost always correct. Apparently the Reddit circle jerk is not as good at news as professional journalists.

Re: The power of ignoring mainstream news

#30

Post by w1ntermute »

zerostar07 wrote: post #14

I recently had the opposite revelation: Most social sites are too much of a distraction, feeding us with pointless weakly-written opinions and things that have zero effect in my life. Their signal to noise ratio is definitely lower, and is not compensated by the higher amount of info they pile up. Humans are by nature curious about what's happening, and no matter how much one bulks up at the local gym, they are proba…

> I recently had the opposite revelation: Most social sites are too much of a distraction, feeding us with pointless weakly-written opinions and things that have zero effect in my life.

I don't think TFA is suggesting that you replace mainstream news with social news - just that you should cut mainstream news out of your information diet.

> Humans are by nature curious about what's happening, and no matter how much one bulks up at the local gym, they are probably not quenching their thirst in that way.

Humans are "by nature" a lot of things, many of which we've come to fight quite successfully. There's no reason why this would be any different.

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