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Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#381

Post by Novosell »

DasCorCor wrote: post #233
parliament32 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All fair points. I'm having trouble understanding how this relates to the outrage-centered media, however. Current top stories on the CNN frontpage are: > Trump's effort to end birthright citizenship is blocked nationwide > Trump’s Gaza plan is the most outlandish in region’s peacemaking history > China is building a giant laser to generate the energy of the stars, satellite images appear to show Is your child not a…

So your argument to not engaging is that my argument isn’t sufficiently updated to the onslaught of news today? RFK passed committee yesterday . Trump planning to use our military for a middle east genocide isn’t something that I should worry about?!? Where were you on 9/11?

Will worrying stop Trump? I believe that is the overarching point here.

Stressing over things you can't/won't impact is largely a waste of time and energy. Your worry wont help Gaza.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#382

Post by the_snooze »

upcoming-sesame wrote: post #345
the_snooze wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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

I looked into that recently, and Calibre with this plugin is a viable option. https://github.com/mmagnus/Pocket-Plus-Calibre-Plugin

You can schedule periodic content pulls in Calibre, and I believe you can also automate sending the resulting EPUB to an email address (like the Kindle's send-to-email feature). I would use this, but I prefer EpubPress's formatting and I'm too lazy to tweak Calibre's.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#383

Post by djh85 »

lykahb wrote: post #332
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…

I think that the social media is okay as long as no algorithmic feed gets involved. Visiting a few select tech subreddits doesn't affect me negatively. On other platforms the feed can't be avoided as easily.

True. Curate who you follow carefully, and stay away from that "for you" tab

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#384

Post by HEmanZ »

slg wrote: post #359
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…

>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 many people alive today were around for. >Will this even register as a trivia question in 100 years? Is a framing I ask myself when I’m mad about something in the world. To me, this is an utterly nihilistic framing that renders one's entire…

How are you making the jump from calibrating your emotional response to distant political changes that have no immediate significance on your own life, are par for humanity, and don’t matter in the long run, to nihilism in your immediate experience of meaning?

I don’t connect distant political to my own personal experience of meaning in the world, so i can’t follow this line of reasoning.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#385

Post by fritzo »

munchler wrote: post #209

Scientific American used to be a great magazine and should get back to what made it so valuable: Covering important ideas in science without watering them down. Their website now describes it as "the essential guide to the most awe-inspiring advances in science and technology". Blech.

Have you tried Science News? I currently read neither, but at one point I switched from the fluffy Scientific American to the no-nonsense Science News.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#386

Post by hansonkd »

sandspar wrote: post #365
hansonkd wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> NYT is just as blatant as Fox News is to you After this past election cycle I don't see how people can make that comment with a straight face. Media in general is very right leaning. Some like CNN and NYT are maybe slightly more left than far right fox news, but there aren't many "left leaning" mass market news sources that are essentially felating one party for millions of people. NYT and CNN, etc are all very cri…

Interesting to be around for the birth of a false fact like "the media is right leaning". Overnight you see people start parroting something that's clearly untrue.

> clearly untrue

Maybe you haven't been paying attention the past 5 years, but there has been a dramatic shift to the right in media. Companies change ownership and the new owners take advantage of the historical left leaning nature of the media.

The magic trick fox news and conservatives has pulled is by being so far right that center/slightly right parties look far left. The normalization of the MAGA movement is evidence of this right leaning media machine.

Look at who owns the "left leaning" media companies. CNN is owned by conservatives.

Joe Rogan, Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson audience dwarf most other channels these days. fox news has almost 3-4 times the viewership of CNN which is the preferred example of a "left leaning" network to balance them.

The rights constant raging against mainstream media is an attempt to distract from the fact that mainstream media is in fact conservative.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#387

Post by genewitch »

yowayb wrote: post #9

Those of us in the west tend to forget that much of what we see is a form of propaganda, whether by governments or businesses, or even a large number of people. When you keep this in mind, everything you see becomes an opinion and your mind can comfortably (or at least not emotionally/hurriedly) form your own opinion over time.

It ostensibly used to be better in the US, and then the smith--mundt act was changed/repealed and now who knows.

I do like the "that's just like, your opinion, man" as an answer to news stories, though.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#388

Post by Aurornis »

niceice wrote: post #234
ge96 wrote: 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…

> I checked reddit recently for the first time in a while, and I was shocked by how radicalized its become.

Reddit has always had these elements, but they were previously isolated to certain subreddits.

I noticed the biggest change when the app and website became aggressive about getting people to join other subreddits and inserting posts from other subreddits into people's feeds. Suddenly the isolated subreddits I followed were full of low effort content and angry comments.

Reddit's front page is shockingly bad. The amount of misinformation and ragebait that gets upvoted to the front page is almost hard to believe.

It's also interesting that many subreddits have embraced the ragebait. Subreddits like /r/AITA have been clear about how they don't care if stories are real or not, but legions of Redditors engage with obvious ChatGPT spam as if it was a real situation they need to weigh in on.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#389

Post by sporkydistance »

JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B wrote: post #324
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.

I'm here to talk about technology and it's usage. I'm not here to socialize, I don't know your name, don't care, and haven't even looked at your username. You're just a sentence to me. It's more impersonal than the old newsgroups. How is it social?

We're literally socializing right now. We're a special interest group meeting to communicate about special interests. The opposite of socialization is isolation. If you hadn't posted, you wouldn't be socializing, but here we are, socializing.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#390

Post by palmotea »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #315
Glyptodon wrote: post #290

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 fee…

I decided that other people are far more organized than I am and can respond more effectively, so I'm outsourcing political action in the form of donations. I've earmarked 3% of my income every month for a list of selected charities that currently includes the ACLU, the HRC, and a short list of smaller ones. I encourage you to do the same!

> I've earmarked 3% of my income every month for a list of selected charities that currently includes the ACLU, the HRC, and a short list of smaller ones.

I don't think that's a good investment, considering how badly those organizations failed in order to bring us to today.

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