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Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

scientificamerican.com

341–350 of 980 posts

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find LinkedIn a healthy collection of professional accomplishments with minimal news. It’s also not very addictive. However, shitty newsfeeds like Google news are my bane. I can’t stop.

I find LinkedIn to be the worse of the social media sites. My feed is full of wannabe “thought leaders”, people posting about a meaningless vendor certificate they got, recruiters giving advice, people who can’t get a job or were recently laid off, etc. But now, politics is getting involved because people are having government job offers rescinded and the entire federal government is in a free fall like a 3rd world b…

> My feed is full of wannabe “thought leaders”

Block them, it's easy. I have only close friends and coworkers that I don't hate on that site.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#342

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…

digital junk food. I haven't stumbled across this term and I gotta say as someone whose right on the edge between millenial and genz this term summarizes what most "public" social media is. I'm old enough to have grown up mostly with TV, with Internet being my escape hatch and twitter/facebook/tiktok/insta feel waaaay closer to old schoold programming TV than Internet. Anyway I'm an Internet person, not a TV person, so I've quit using all of them (I do have some "just in case" unused in years accounts everywhere because I suffer from a bad case of FOMO...)

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#343
Not exactly a social network but I am kind of addicted to the Google Home curated list of news - that thing on Android (maybe just Pixel?) when you swipe all the way to the left.

I read it every morning in bed.

It contains all the topics I'm interested in as it knows me probably better than I know myself.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#344

Earlier 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.

I need examples

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#345

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…

>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. This 100%. If a piece of news is truly important, then it'll be important tomorrow or even a week from now. You'll even get clarifications and corrections along the way. I like to use Pocket to bui…

If that could somehow be automated that would be cool

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#346
post #196

> Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk alone; you don’t want to “go out of your way to make trouble.” Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, f…

Similarly:

If you’re waiting for a moment where you’re like “this is it,” I’m telling you, it never comes. Nobody comes on TV and says “things are officially bad.” There’s no launch party for decay. It’s just a pileup of outrages and atrocities in between friendships and weddings and perhaps an unusual amount of alcohol.

from "I Lived Through Collapse. America Is Already There." https://gen.medium.com/i-lived-through-collapse-america-is-a...

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't care a whole lot if someone told me they weren't in IG, FB, Snap, Twitter, etc. However, if someone told me they never bothered with Linkedin, it would be hard for me to resist bowing at their feet.

Wait, really? I must be old. I technically have a LinkedIn but haven't really been on the site since the last time I was in the job market 8 yeras ago. Very occasionally a potential client messages me through it but they are almost very low quality contacts.

I mean that's the correct way to use LinkedIn: it's a job board.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#348

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.

Not GP, but feel similarly. I'll offer my 2 cents: > but with the dial turned down a little. Exactly for this reason. Yes, HN is a social network. And if it follows the same enshittification path as the others, I will be gone from here too. But until then, to me (YMMV) it still provides a bit of entertainment and news without rotting my brain. Even the analogy works. Fast food is not that bad... in moderate quantitie…

HN remains distinct from Reddit almost entirely due to dang's hard work moderating the site. Spend a few minutes with showdead turned on and you'll see real quick what that site might turn into without effective moderation. The site would be full of politics and flamewars.

I believe a good portion of Reddit could have had been the same. However, the way moderators are chosen-- in other words, whoever creates the sub first gets to rule the roost-- has left that site with almost universally unqualified moderation.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#349
post #85
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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I call spades, spades. It's not my job to prove to you the object is actually a spade. At some point you have to tell disingenuous people spouting nonsense to go eff off. You're not obligated to provide counterexamples to their nonsense. Time is valuable. You're not obligated to let idiots waste it.
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