Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed
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Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed
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Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed
#2Personally, I fixed the problem by not bothering with "staying informed" at all. I ditched media outside of local news entirely, and just don't engage with things that I can't do anything about. It would boil down to "focus on things you can control." Sure, it's fun to be outraged together with your friends about "X leader in Y country does Z crazy thing" but.. can you do anything about it? Does your opinion matter? Is there value in engaging with it? Turns out the answer is almost always no (unless you're suffering from main-character-syndrome, of course), so what's the point?
Focus on you. What are you doing today? What do you need to reflect on from yesterday? What do you need to plan for tomorrow? Don't waste cycles on things that are out of your scope.
Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed
#3>> It's been like what, only two weeks? This shit is exhausting already.
> It's meant to exhaust you.
* https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1886247034664964548
Ezra Klein:
> That is the tension at the heart of Trump’s whole strategy: Trump is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president. He is trying to substitute perception for reality. He is hoping that perception then becomes reality. That can only happen if we believe him. […]
> What Trump wants you to see in all this activity is command. What is really in all this activity is chaos. They do not have some secret reservoir of focus and attention the rest of us do not. They have convinced themselves that speed and force is a strategy unto itself — that it is, in a sense, a replacement for a real strategy. Don’t believe them.
* https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...
Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed
#4One thing is read the article, not just the headline. Get the nuance, learn what’s actually happening, see what people are doing to react. You’ll not feel as frozen if you understand that a fluid situation has many directions it can take and it’s not set in stone.
Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed
#5Personally, I fixed the problem by not bothering with "staying informed" at all. I ditched media outside of local news entirely, and just don't engage with things that I can't do anything about. It would boil down to "focus on things you can control." Sure, it's fun to be outraged together with your friends about "X leader in Y country does Z crazy thing" but.. can you do anything about it? Does your opinion matter?…
There is an equilibrium to find. democracy isn't just showing up every 4 or 5 years to drop a piece of paper in a box.
Most countries have rights to protest, organise, strike, for a reason. Most of these rights were gained after long fights in which single individual was meaningless but together they moved contains. You have to know when to pull back but you also have to know when to dive in
Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed
#6Just view a topic on Reddit then on X. You can't be outraged both ways and it should cancel out.
Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed
#7Personally, I fixed the problem by not bothering with "staying informed" at all. I ditched media outside of local news entirely, and just don't engage with things that I can't do anything about. It would boil down to "focus on things you can control." Sure, it's fun to be outraged together with your friends about "X leader in Y country does Z crazy thing" but.. can you do anything about it? Does your opinion matter?…
> It would boil down to "focus on things you can control"
If it only was so simple. How to define such things? Case in point: the biggest "outrage factor" seems to be politics. Well - _can_ you control your country's government? Yes, you can - however not directly. And this means that "I don't care about politics" stance is bad.
edit: spelling
Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed
#8I basically just get my news from the onion now.
Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed
#9Those of us in the west tend to forget that much of what we see is a form of propaganda, whether by governments or businesses, or even a large number of people. When you keep this in mind, everything you see becomes an opinion and your mind can comfortably (or at least not emotionally/hurriedly) form your own opinion over time.
Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed
#10>> It's been like what, only two weeks? This shit is exhausting already. > It's meant to exhaust you. * https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1886247034664964548 Ezra Klein: > That is the tension at the heart of Trump’s whole strategy: Trump is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president. He is trying to substitute perception for reality. He is hoping that perception then becomes reality. T…
These quotes and articles are awful. Both sides are so insanely annoying to me. The media has gotten completely out of touch with reality and with people.