Live data from Hacker News

Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

scientificamerican.com

241–250 of 980 posts

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#241
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thank myself for having avoided social media so far. I've also developed a keen eye for headlines that lead to "outrage articles" which I avoid.

> I've also developed a keen eye for headlines that lead to "outrage articles" which I avoid. That's critical. My YouTube rule these days is to block any channel with a video name or thumbnail that says something like "This is why you fail at XYZ" or other statements designed to evoke an emotional response from me. And on top of that, I try to only click on videos where the title/thumbnail is properly informative, ex…

Another dead giveaway is "X is outraged by Y."

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That’s not really comparing apples-to-apples though: a cable TV network aimed at the undereducated masses versus a prestigious broadsheet newspaper pitched at the educated classes There’s plenty of right-of-centre magazines and websites aimed at educated right-wingers: e.g. First Things, Commentary, The American Conservative, the Spectator

Fair point, but it was the OP who first mentioned Fox News and the NYT in the same sentence.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#243

If you're outraged by anything that does not directly impact your life you're doing life wrong. We all have limited time and energy. I have never been able to understand people who get emotional over things they read online that have no impact on their day to day life.

I know, but what do I do about global warming and microplastics? Our leaders don't seem to care.

Assuming this is not a joke, do whatever makes you feel best knowing that you as an individual have negligible impact on the outcome. Personally I don't worry one bit about these two issues because (1) they do not seem to effect my daily life except when I need to drink through a crappy cardboard straw (2) I do not expect them to impact my daily life in the foreseeable future (3) most important I as an individual can not change the way things are and I find I am happiest when I don't worry about things I can't control so I choose not to worry and some how despite my indolent individual choice the world goes on and the sky doesn't fall. (4) I personally believe the harms of these two things have been greatly exaggerated by people with an interest in doing so. (5) my time on earth is limited why waste it being manipulated by words and pictures I see on a screen to be pointlessly anxious or outraged for someone else's benefit at the cost of my own happiness?

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This statement is ridiculously out of touch.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#245

One thing to consider for those of us who are more sensitive to online outrage is to just quit social media all together. I’m technically gen z and I’ve been off of social media (aside from HN, WhatsApp and discord) for years and you wouldn’t believe how great it’s been for my overall state of mind. Reddit, instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, Threads, etc are all the equivalent of digital junk food and I’d argu…

I basically agree, which is why it's kind of funny to see all the discussion in other threads here with people arguing about why can't ban AI or how Facebook was good because it created market value or whatever. Most of those platforms would be better off just outright banned.

I do think, though, that for at least some platforms it's possible to use them in a limited way where you confine yourself to relatively small communities that are focused on some common interest that genuinely brings together people who enjoy sharing it. You mentioned Discord for instance and that's one, if you can find the right servers. I think it's possible to do that on Reddit too. You just have to never visit the "front page" and stick only to subreddits that you actually get value out of. It's harder approaching impossible with ones like Facebook that are more doggedly algorithm-driven and don't put moderation in the control of users in the same way.

Of course, the lurking issue is that putting moderation in the control of users is building the platform on free labor and those good subcommunities are at risk of imploding when cracks emerge in the dike separating them from the wider platform userbase. And that's likely to happen because even those "safely usable" platforms are ultimately beholden to VC money that's going to demand enshittification eventually.

Cohost was by far the best attempt I've seen for many years, but sadly couldn't make a go of it in the toxic ecosystem we've got.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

User groups you would be interested in get hijacked by whatever the overall sentiment of Reddit is. Threads that aren't political suddenly get political for no reason. It's completely dead in there - content quality is brutally low.

I just bookmark subreddits for things I'm interested in, and visit them individually. I hardly ever see any political content doing that.

The key is to stay in smaller, dedicated subreddits and avoid anything remotely popular or generic.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#247
post #123

Earlier 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 "…

I checked reddit recently for the first time in a while, and I was shocked by how radicalized its become. An echo chamber of hateful people and perhaps GPTs that are agitating the big subreddits. The contrast is stark with all the "no place for hate" in the rules and endless banning of microaggressions. I saw dozens of death threats. Even an explicit death threat thread with over 40,000 upvotes before reddit stepped…

Agreed. There is exactly one way to think and believe on Reddit. The "outrage" might be tolerable or even informative in some cases if it was equally distributed.

It's disheartening when the one-track politics infects every square inch. It's a good point about bots because 1) they can be sold or rented to advertisers, 2) they are more valuable with higher karma, and 3) the easiest way to get a bot to harvest karma is by agreeing with the hive. So they're amplifying "the message" without even intending to.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#248

One thing to consider for those of us who are more sensitive to online outrage is to just quit social media all together. I’m technically gen z and I’ve been off of social media (aside from HN, WhatsApp and discord) for years and you wouldn’t believe how great it’s been for my overall state of mind. Reddit, instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, Threads, etc are all the equivalent of digital junk food and I’d argu…

I basically agree, which is why it's kind of funny to see all the discussion in other threads here with people arguing about why can't ban AI or how Facebook was good because it created market value or whatever. Most of those platforms would be better off just outright banned. I do think, though, that for at least some platforms it's possible to use them in a limited way where you confine yourself to relatively small…

> Most of those platforms would be better off just outright banned.

In general, the goal should be improvement of humans, not avoidance of negative stimuli. Something has to exist where humans are rewarded for aligning to truth and reality, rather than emotion.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#249

One thing to consider for those of us who are more sensitive to online outrage is to just quit social media all together. I’m technically gen z and I’ve been off of social media (aside from HN, WhatsApp and discord) for years and you wouldn’t believe how great it’s been for my overall state of mind. Reddit, instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, Threads, etc are all the equivalent of digital junk food and I’d argu…

Is WhatsApp really considered social media? I mainly use it as my sms alternative.

Depends how you use it. Once there were groups, it became quite similar - but since Telegram became so much better at it and I used it for some special groups and contacts - I now suddenly had lots of groups with subgroups and notifications for people liking my posts or replying to it - that suddenly I had social media again. What works for me is uninstalling it once in a while and only come back if I feel a specific need.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I basically agree, which is why it's kind of funny to see all the discussion in other threads here with people arguing about why can't ban AI or how Facebook was good because it created market value or whatever. Most of those platforms would be better off just outright banned. I do think, though, that for at least some platforms it's possible to use them in a limited way where you confine yourself to relatively small…

> Most of those platforms would be better off just outright banned. In general, the goal should be improvement of humans, not avoidance of negative stimuli. Something has to exist where humans are rewarded for aligning to truth and reality, rather than emotion.

> Something has to exist where humans are rewarded for aligning to truth and reality, rather than emotion.

I more or less agree. Thus the humans who created and enshittified such platforms should be correspondingly punished for their disalignment to truth and reality. It's not just about rewarding "consumers" of stimuli; the creators and promulgators of stumili also need to be incentivized (and disincentivized) in just the manner you mention.

Post reply on HN