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Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#371

Post by genewitch »

jonathanlb wrote: post #187
flyinghamster wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, 40 years ago, if we weren't getting our news from the TV, we quite often got it via weekly news magazines and Sunday newspapers.

Someone I spoke with recently mentioned that it used to be that you could read a newspaper end-to-end and feel like you were informed. Now, it's an endless stream of information. I would posit that our brains weren't intended to consume that much information, but I'll leave that as uninformed speculation.

"used to be"? when? I had an L.A. Times subscription in high school and there was no way, even with 2 hours of bus ride a day plus lunch and breaks to finish that paper.

I think a lot of discourse is colored by the midwest. The midwest influenced movies (what does a US neighborhood look like? are there hills/trees/snow?), TV, radio, and literature. I imagine midwest newspapers to be like southern newspapers, 2-3 broadsheets per section if that.

I wonder how many words i can write on this subject

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#372

Post by upcoming-sesame »

genewitch wrote: post #370
upcoming-sesame wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that could somehow be automated that would be cool

you mean like Time magazine or LA Weekly?

I meant a curated list of interesting articles for me sent as an epub to my kindle weekly...

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#373

Post by genewitch »

scelerat wrote: post #363
gadders wrote: post #218

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.

Examples, please. If you are trans, you were just de-personed by executive order and your passport was invalidated. If you also happened to be an incarcerated female, you are being transferred to male facilities. These are actions which will have life-altering consequences. That's only one thing among many others (ICE immigrant raids which also sweep up legal immigrants and citizens who don't "look American") just in…

so things that affect less than 1% in the former and less than 0.01% in the latter, of the population, that's what we're basing "large pain" on? I'm not entirely sure you want to play this game.

edit: and vis a vis the USAID thing the former president of Kenya summed it up "Why you are crying? you don't pay american taxes! we need to take care of ourselves!" https://www.msn.com/en-xl/africa/other/us-aid-suspension-wak...

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#374

Post by zombiwoof »

joshdavham wrote: post #42

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…

Isn’t this how they win? I mean the people in Germany in 1930 just said , this is crazy , it doesn’t feel right, but hey I have outrage fatigue so the concentration camps are just fine

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#375

Post by [deleted] »

scelerat wrote: post #363
gadders wrote: post #218

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.

Examples, please. If you are trans, you were just de-personed by executive order and your passport was invalidated. If you also happened to be an incarcerated female, you are being transferred to male facilities. These are actions which will have life-altering consequences. That's only one thing among many others (ICE immigrant raids which also sweep up legal immigrants and citizens who don't "look American") just in…

[deleted]

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#376

Post by tapoxi »

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?

Users moderate the moderators, if they don't like the tone of a subreddit they split off into another subreddit.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#377

Post by HEmanZ »

magicalist wrote: post #367
HEmanZ wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just using your example tho, I feel there are two kinds of framing. 1. This is literally a worse outcome than the alternative you prefer. You should care enough to try to fight it politically, especially if you are well positioned to do so. 2. This case (and 99% of cases of political outrage I see on the news) is trivial in the context of what is “normal” for human political history, even the political history that m…

> Will this even register as a trivia question in 100 years? My family could be murdered in front of me and it wouldn't qualify as a trivia question for you or most other people in one year. This feels like a version of stoicism that missed the point of stoicism.

You’re making such an absurd comparison in situations. The death of your own family has an immediate and extreme impact on you personally.

99% of what you see on the news you would never know happened if it wasn’t presented to you.

And I’m not saying not to care. I’m saying put big things into perspective. You don’t need to become catatonically depressed because the US changed its foreign aid in a way that you would never know about unless presented to you.

As I write this I’m thinking about one of my best friends, who literally has been so depressed because of world news he reads on Reddit this year that he can’t get out of bed, stopped going to work and got fired. There are appropriate and healthy levels to care about things.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#378

Post by Venkatesh10 »

Consuming quality content over overconsumption is the key. Plus if you have already crossed multiple levels of outrage fatigue, then at that point you should be aware of it, hence becoming more calm in future. If you see what is in front of you and know you cannot change anything, why outrage? why fatigue? just move on.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#379

Post by trimethylpurine »

DFHippie wrote: post #111
33MHz-i486 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> a department within his purview That's not how it works in the U.S. If an executive branch department was created by the legislature, it is up to the legislature whether or not it exists, not the executive. If the legislature has passed laws regarding how its resources are to be used, its employees treated, the executive is not free to disregard those laws. The legislature is the source of laws in the U.S., not the…

It's actually not up to the legislature anymore. And that's a huge problem in this country. The legislature exited stage left by handing way too many powers and responsibilities over to the executive branch. Now the courts determine if the executive branch has been previously allowed by congress to do something stupid or not. By the time the legislature can agree on exercising power on one item or another, the shit has already hit the fan.

It doesn't need to be a coup. Congress sold us out to presidents long before most of us were born.

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