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Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#281

Post by keybored »

baal80spam wrote: post #7
parliament32 wrote: post #2

Personally, 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

Of course you can affect your country’s government. You can take five minutes every few years to decide who to vote for (spending more on that seems like a waste of time considering the payoff).

More than that though. You can protest and organize however much you like. There’s no cap on that.

And that is how insidious “news” is. The news broadcasts the hegemonic mindset. The same mindset that says that citizens’ only role is to vote every few years. Other than that they are supposed to stay home. Certainly not make a ruckus or anything.

And that’s what many conclude. That they are only supposed to be political in a direct, consequential sense by voting. Then it is clearly absurd, from a cost-benefit analysis standpoint, to stay ever-constantly informed on politics all the time.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#282

Post by keybored »

ryandrake wrote: post #89
dageshi wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it depends on the individual, but I never found it possible. The news just made me sad, sad and angry most of the time, it's just a stream of 24/7 misery and if there's not enough misery going on locally the news will find misery from around the world to fill the run time.

What helped me is to realize: Sadness and anger come from within, not from the outside. Nobody can "make" you mad. They will do what they do, and it's up to us to decide if and how to emotionally respond to it. We are not amoebas that simply respond to stimulus. We have agency over our own thoughts and feelings. This is something I try to teach my kid, and I think it's also helped her deal with others who she would p…

The simplest way to control your inner life is to not let whatever miserable output in. In other words turn it off.

It’s really entitled (by whom? who knows) to say that people have control over their inner lives as a response to the News being misery-inducing (according to them). Yeah. So turn it off. You don’t own the outside world your attention.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#284

Post by Klonoar »

tejohnso wrote: post #257
blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I discovered the same recently and have abandoned it. It's unfortunate because the potential is there for a real city wide or nation wide group discussion platform. But who moderates the moderators?

I don’t have too much issue with Reddits politics at the moment, but I do think it’s odd that such a powerful platform in society is managed by volunteer (mostly) anonymous moderators.

I will be explicit in that I am not condoning doxxing Reddit mods. I just don’t think we’d be fine with this in normal day to day life.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#285

Post by arp242 »

miki123211 wrote: post #162

I 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…

This seems completely pointless as the entire reason of news is to be informed of what's going on, and you can't do that in "tweet-sized news stories". For starters, simple "fact"-based news like "X happened" is really not bias-free, as there is a lot of context on why "X happened", or things leading up to it, or stuff like that.

Never mind of course there is an inherent bias in choosing what to publish and what not to publish.

So it's not forcing journalists to "only include the information that actually matters", it's forcing journalists to exclude tons of information that really does matter. In fact, it's worse than pointless: it's actively harmful to mislead people with these "unbiased facts", because they're not.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#286

Post by icedrift »

dschuessler wrote: post #264
karaterobot wrote: post #17

Avoid following the news constantly. Check in every once in a while—a couple times a week at most. Get your news from long articles, not tweets. Actually read the articles, don't just learn about the world from hot takes. > ... people have found that, actually, outrage can be useful. It actually can help you identify a problem and react to it. But it can also be harmful if you’re experiencing it all the time and beco…

I've implemented this into my life via the "In the news" section of the Wikipedia start page. It served me well the last couple of months.

Am I on the wrong page or were there only 4 articles on North America for all of January?

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#288

Post by hecanjog »

icedrift wrote: post #286
dschuessler wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've implemented this into my life via the "In the news" section of the Wikipedia start page. It served me well the last couple of months.

Am I on the wrong page or were there only 4 articles on North America for all of January?

This is the one I like to use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#289

Post by Klonoar »

vaylian wrote: post #268
sporkydistance wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you exclude HN from your list? It is literally social media, but with the dial turned down a little. Yet, you don't have to dig to deeply to see flamewars, outrage, and trolling. I mean, look at many of the garbage comments in this very thread that are on par with /.,xchan.

If HN is social media, then old online forums from the time before "social media" are also social media.

Well, yes.

That’s not really a gotcha statement.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#290

Post by Glyptodon »

I don't have outrage fatigue. Outrages are outrages and they are what they are. Are there many exaggerations and fake outrages? Sure. But things like the USA's current constitutional crisis are real.

What I struggle with isn't fatigue at outrage, it's knowing what to do about it.

I think violence is going to become more common, but I don't particularly think it will be effective.

So less so than outrage, it's the feeling that we're trapped in a real life doom loop with no clear off ramp that I struggle with.

I would like to do something... But what?

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