Happiness is an inside job. Sitting with your emotions is very important. That's not to say we can tolerate an unlimited amount of information. But rather to highlight that we can become the observer of our emotions, rather than be consumed by them.
Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed
221–230 of 980 posts
Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're absolutely correct, but you're missing an important detail. I'm assuming you're more aligned politically with the left. If you're not, I apologize for the assumption. To someone who is more right-wing, the bias of e.g. NYT is just as blatant as Fox News is to you, and Fox may come off as "fair". This is because the propaganda is specifically intended to land with their own audience. It's tuned to your sensibil…
To someone who is more right-wing, the bias of e.g. NYT is just as blatant as Fox News is to you, and Fox may come off as "fair". This is because the propaganda is specifically intended to land with their own audience. It's tuned to your sensibilities. This isn't really a matter of subjective opinion, though. Objective surveys have consistently shown that Fox News viewers are worse-informed than people who don't pay…
By the way, I read Fox News as a comparison for NYT. Reading the comments on Fox News articles is a very weird experience. You'll get this mixture of comments from "I support Trump but this particular idea is terrible" to "We must do everything Trump says to bring about the next revolution" to what appears to be blatant propaganda/manipulation from foreign agents and literal outright racism and sexism. What you don't see is nuanced communication, while in the NY Times, comments are often from knowledgeable people who have experience communicating online, can make good arguments, and back up their ideas with facts.
If the fox news comments in any way represent true opinions of trump supporters, then our country is truly screwed.
Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed
#223Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're a citizen of a democracy and you only focus on you, then when it comes time to vote you'll be voting randomly. Or maybe you don't vote and thereby cede control to your neighbors to make decisions for you over the environment in which you live. Assuming you decide to vote then, and since you don't live in a vacuum, your vote will be based on whatever random stuff leaked through to you during the time you wer…
> when it comes time to vote you'll be voting randomly Not at all, I think citizens have an obligation to vote, and an obligation to do their research when it's time to vote. But let's say that takes you a week. Why bother being focused on the outrage during the rest of the term? What value is there to you being mad at whatever politician on week 15 of their 208 week term? If anything, I'd say "staying informed" is a…
There might not be much of a difference in your mental health condensing 2-4 years' of rage into just one week.
Perhaps another strategy could be to maintain an awareness of the motivations and tactics of publishers/content creators, and that could be enough as an inoculation.
I imagine a clown on the street trying to enrage me, and I being aware of what it's trying to do, instead just laugh at it.
Today I walked into a restaurant with a cable TV news channel blaring on about the "invasion of men" into women's college sports. They offered no proof, just a continuous barrage of commentary. As I waited for my sandwich I watched one after another, with just continuous outrage. No proof, no on-site reporters, no B tape, nothing at all to support the claims being made. It was like watching bad science fiction of an alternate universe. I chuckled nervously as I looked around and wondered if the others there actually believed it. None of them were laughing.
Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed
#225Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed
#226I wish there was a modern "news wire" service to help with this problem. I'm thinking tweet-sized news stories, a few per day at most, no threads, no images, no links, nothing but 140 characters of pure text. You could even deliver them as texts or unclickable push notifications. That format heavily discourages clickbait (because there are no clicks to be had) and forces journalists to only include the information th…
I subscribed to International Intrigue, which sends a digestible summary by email every day.
Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're a citizen of a democracy and you only focus on you, then when it comes time to vote you'll be voting randomly. Or maybe you don't vote and thereby cede control to your neighbors to make decisions for you over the environment in which you live. Assuming you decide to vote then, and since you don't live in a vacuum, your vote will be based on whatever random stuff leaked through to you during the time you wer…
> when it comes time to vote you'll be voting randomly Not at all, I think citizens have an obligation to vote, and an obligation to do their research when it's time to vote. But let's say that takes you a week. Why bother being focused on the outrage during the rest of the term? What value is there to you being mad at whatever politician on week 15 of their 208 week term? If anything, I'd say "staying informed" is a…
Do you know about referendums? Recall elections? Snap elections? Midterm elections? Strikes and protests? Or how about just letting your representative know how you'll vote in their next election to deter bad behavior they're conducting in the current moment?
Must be nice for the current American administration to have 4 years of no democratic oversight to do whatever they want.
Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that most messaging is propaganda, but that doesn't really counter the real pain that is being inflicted upon large populations of people by these government (and corporate) moves, and being cheered on by pretty large masses of people. The propaganda is like environmental pollution -- hard not to breathe it in. That said, I have no answer here..
There was just as much "large pain" being inflicted on people in the previous 4 years, it just didn't affect you personally.
Dude, lets be real here: most people would say the economy is shit, while still being comfortable with their lives. Anyone's general assessment of the economy based on gut, is meaningless. Unless you were on food banks/stamps, you were doing pretty good for all intents and purposes.
Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed
#229[flagged]
[flagged]
> Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
> Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
What’s that saying… “you aren’t stuck in traffic; you are the traffic.”
Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
I quit reddit too recently, I still look at it for info but I'm not logged in/scrolling through it I find myself reaching for something when I have YouTube/chilling at my desk at the end of the day, can't code anymore/make something just on till I sleep. Sometimes have the desire to play a video game (I have a gaming rig too funny how that works) I've been trying to read HN or IEEE, TechCrunch stuff like that as my "…
> It's unfortunate people expect you to have social media like a girl asks me if I have Instagram and I'm weird to not have one Outside of reddit/discord/hn, I haven't had any social media since roughly 2010, and I don't use reddit or discord for anything remotely "social media"-ish. While I still get the occasional look as if I'm wearing a tinfoil hat when I say "I don't have FB. No, no insta either. No... not snapc…
I agree. In my 40s and at work most people my age do have fb instagram and TikTok but everyone’s super understanding when I say I like my privacy