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Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#41

Post by hkpack »

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?…

Unfortunately, I'm not sure that it is a viable strategy long term.

When you finally decide to pay attention, there is a chance that you will not be able to easily absorb everything that leads to the situation so you will lack any perspective of the past events.

We live in an extremely dense and complex times, staying informed is very difficult as it is even when you try to pay attention.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#42

Post by joshdavham »

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 argue that we’re all a lot more negatively affected by it than we think. There’s a reason ‘brain rot’ was word of the year.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#43

Post by bende511 »

meheleventyone wrote: post #32
bende511 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you already had Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. what more immiseration could you really be hoping for

The guys a fan of Tommy Robinson (at least from a glance over his post history) so y'know they probably weren't extreme enough.

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Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#44

Post by breakingrules3 »

browningstreet wrote: post #19
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.

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..

my advice to you that cant breathe it in is leave your fantasy where propaganda is pollution and join reality where it does not impact you. also if you live in reality instead of the fantasy, you will just be less outraged in general.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#45

Post by yostrovs »

taylodl wrote: post #39
yostrovs wrote: post #25

What is actually outrageous is that Scientific American publishes articles like this. It's an institution that, like so many, is destroying itself by getting into politics, especially the politics of outrage.

Scientific American started "getting into politics" in the mid 20th century, so your comment is about 70 years late.

[flagged]

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#46

Post by okeuro49 »

wesselbindt wrote: post #24
okeuro49 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This happens in the US too [1,2,3]. In fact, regarding freedom of the press, they rank 55th in the world, well behind the UK, which ranks 23rd [4]. And if you think Trump is anything but the standard neoliberal order accelerated, I've got a bridge to sell you. For example look at the Laken Riley act. A blatant and complete teardown of judicial order (punishment for being _suspected_ of crimes), and 58 democrats helpe…

I'm comparing the UK with ten years ago.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#47

Post by crispyambulance »

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.

I had used ublock-origin on youtube to disable the right-hand sidebar of "recommended" videos so that I could just view the stuff in my subscriptions. A couple of years ago, they started detecting and blocking ublock-origin, so I stopped using it (ublock).

It's not really the ads that bother me. It's the "recommended videos". Is there a way to customize my view of youtube to avoid the shit I don't need to see?

The thing about youtube is that it's very easy for propaganda/click-bait to creep in during moments of weakness.

Maybe it's time to go cold-turkey? Failing that, maybe it's worth it to try and take some control over the experience?

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#48

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

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

Not that it would've ever changed my vote, but the candidate was going to win my state regardless of how I voted. Even if I and every other person who is psychologically capable of choosing the other candidate... they were always going to win this state. So no, I can't control my government. I've known this a long while now, I'm not a fool.

>es, you can - however not directly. And this means that "I don't care about politics" stance is bad.

Though you might not be aware of it, you're repeating propaganda that actually aids some nebulous group of people. It seeks to recruit me and my efforts to further their purposes, none of which overlap my own significantly. I can't exert significant indirect influence either. And if I were to pool my insignificant influence with others (such as you suggest) to influence government, it would almost certainly be towards ends I do not agree with. I can be used by others, so to speak, but no one's on my side.

I might get to watch one group I don't agree with go killdozer on another group I don't agree with, and it will be entertaining to watch supposing I can maintain enough distance from the carnage.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#49

Post by mckirk »

I can recommend https://newsasfacts.com for at least having a news source that, thanks to its matter-of-fact tone and lack of imagery, is useful for staying informed without getting overwhelmed so easily.

It also puts things into a bit of a global perspective, when you realize how much stuff is going on around the world all the time. Though this of course also means you'll learn things that are on the news everywhere in your country only after they've become relevant enough to register on a global level.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#50

Post by dgacmu »

yostrovs wrote: post #23
bende511 wrote: post #20

[flagged]

[flagged]

That's the point: We didn't need to, because they had a process they followed and it worked. It was probably fairly bureaucratic, which is reasonable when we're talking about trillions of dollars. Treasury moves slowly but they do move in the right direction - TreasuryDirect was kinda early and had an absolute klunker of an interface, but it's been improved a bit over time and is now usable if still chonky. Federal and treasury-mediated transfers went through. People's confidential payment information wasn't disclosed. That's kind of what I and most others ask of the treasury -- even if I occasionally took to social media to scream about their terrible password entry interface and the annoyance of dealing with medallion guarantees. :-) And they got on FedNow pretty quickly once it rolled out, though of course I wish either the treasury or the fed had provided an instant payments system like a decade earlier. (But that's on the fed.)

But I'm OK with the idea that change speed is somewhat inversely proportional to value at risk. Might be better if it was 1/log(value).

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