I deleted my Twitter a few months ago and my life is better for it. The need to be “in the know” was powerful, but I realized that I was consuming vast amounts of shallow information that resulted in shallow, uninformed opinions. I’ve been reading a lot more long-form articles and books; I’ve finished reading three books in the last month or so. When my Twitter habit was strong I would often start a book and give up…
The feeling of reading through well-written long-form articles is very satisfying. Do any HN’ers have recommendations for websites with well-written long-form articles?
'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle
101–110 of 305 posts
Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle
#102Interesting that the "More Stories From NPR" right below the article is a clear invitation to continue your doomscroll-workout. /s
Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle
#103I don't like the implication that mental health is just feeling good. Maybe if more people would read and understand the news, and feel bad about it , they'd be willing to do even trivial things like wear a mask. In my opinion, good mental health should be considered to be that your feelings align with reality. If reality sucks, it's not mentally unhealthy to feel bad about it. Feeling bad should spur making changes…
If you were paying close attention to the news in Feb-April, you were being told not to wear a mask.
I live in a country where that's still the mandate.
Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you were paying close attention to the news in Feb-April, you were being told not to wear a mask.
Even if it were as simple as you make it sound, which I disagree with: so what? Our understanding of the world improves over time.
Not really. Almost all of the research that supports masking was done years ago. I spent March getting shouted down in various places because I read that research and concluded that people should be wearing masks. It took a machine learning researcher of all people to bring people around to what was obvious to anyone who spent a few hours reading scientific research.
The average reporter for a newspaper simply doesn't have the time to actually understand a topic. They talk to a few people, and with the current political environment, everything they hear is agenda driven.
Spend your information gathering time in a more productive way. If you really feel you need to be up to date, read the week in review section of one of the national newspapers.
Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle
#105I deleted my Twitter a few months ago and my life is better for it. The need to be “in the know” was powerful, but I realized that I was consuming vast amounts of shallow information that resulted in shallow, uninformed opinions. I’ve been reading a lot more long-form articles and books; I’ve finished reading three books in the last month or so. When my Twitter habit was strong I would often start a book and give up…
The feeling of reading through well-written long-form articles is very satisfying. Do any HN’ers have recommendations for websites with well-written long-form articles?
Hard as it may be to believe, https://digg.com is amazing for this kind of content these days. In particular the Long Reads section https://digg.com/longreads
Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but with varying pace. Let's hope it doesn't get even faster.
Is it happening faster or are you consuming it quicker?
Hmm. Probably both.
On the second thought, it seems like that's a very good question, for these two processes are maybe in a positive feedback loop. This year we pay more attention to news, and this makes us both more susceptible and more exposed to things like "the moment to act is now".
Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle
#107I deleted my Twitter a few months ago and my life is better for it. The need to be “in the know” was powerful, but I realized that I was consuming vast amounts of shallow information that resulted in shallow, uninformed opinions. I’ve been reading a lot more long-form articles and books; I’ve finished reading three books in the last month or so. When my Twitter habit was strong I would often start a book and give up…
> The need to be “in the know” was powerful, but I realized that I was consuming vast amounts of shallow information that resulted in shallow, uninformed opinions. I'd like to applaud you for admitting this to yourself. I feel like a vital part of successfully navigating the internet age is to realize this very fact.
This is a good way to look at it. I’ve given up Twitter and much shortform news for mental health, and haven’t had a good response to others saying it’s my “duty” as a citizen to stay informed.
You can stay just as informed without giving in to doombait articles. You are just as valuable in the public sphere if you don’t succumb to attaching yourself to the firehose of daily information and tweets.
Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle
#108I deleted my Twitter a few months ago and my life is better for it. The need to be “in the know” was powerful, but I realized that I was consuming vast amounts of shallow information that resulted in shallow, uninformed opinions. I’ve been reading a lot more long-form articles and books; I’ve finished reading three books in the last month or so. When my Twitter habit was strong I would often start a book and give up…
The problem I've been facing recently is that long form also turns out to be a waste of time after you go through the most informational/influential pieces. Lots of the articles thread the same water, dive into totally unnecessary details, or just tell a story that, while fascinating, does not really give you any important new information, or bury it in a few casual sentences, never elaborating on them. For books it…
> For books it is usually just the same story told over and over again with the character names and forms changed.
actual new things are by definition rare. each thing can only be done once for all of humanity. after that, its an iterative process with the occasional leap forward.
if you're thinking about technical or even worse self-help books: yes - there are very few that actually bring anything worthwhile to the table. thats simply because it becomes common knowledge if its correct to a degree where it has a significant effect.
if you're however thinking of story-books than ... you're just reading similar things. there is a lot of written stories around - they admittedly usually have things like `conversation` in common, but how else would you write a book? by leaving everything blank?
Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle
#109I deleted my Twitter a few months ago and my life is better for it. The need to be “in the know” was powerful, but I realized that I was consuming vast amounts of shallow information that resulted in shallow, uninformed opinions. I’ve been reading a lot more long-form articles and books; I’ve finished reading three books in the last month or so. When my Twitter habit was strong I would often start a book and give up…
The problem I've been facing recently is that long form also turns out to be a waste of time after you go through the most informational/influential pieces. Lots of the articles thread the same water, dive into totally unnecessary details, or just tell a story that, while fascinating, does not really give you any important new information, or bury it in a few casual sentences, never elaborating on them. For books it…
I would say that the ability to recognize true novelty is hard to train without experiencing a fair amount of repetition.
Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle
#110Yeah reading hacker news since 4 hours and didn't even planned to open it. Now the world is more dangerous and don't know if people are commenting or GPT-3 bots. Any solutions to find sleep?
Read a really charming and escapist novel. Worst case, you end up staying up too late because the book is so good, but I haven't found anything more reliable for making me disconnect from the world and its churning. Substituting a book for Twitter for the hour before bed has markedly improved the overall quality of my life. To get yourself into the habit, don't read anything on your "to read someday list of important…
Anecdotally, I've had much better sleep when reading a book just before bed than anything else. Even just cutting of twitter/ screens before bed didn't get me the same kind of relaxed, gentle sleep as reading, say, 50 pages of sff.