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Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#481

Post by vaccineai »

dralley wrote: post #153
zo1 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Playing by those rules, it's nearly impossible to change any big law or enact any drastic change to an existing law unless you have some world-changing event. The rest is just the slow march towards the mean which is controlled by the people that can bully others into silence and agreement. The mean is controlled by those that control the conversation and by those career politicians and bureaucrats that "play the gam…

>It should be clear as day to anyone that is unbiased that fixing the US/Mexican border was ridiculously easy (it's essentially been done in 2 weeks and they didn't even have to finish building their stupid wall). The only reason it didn't happen till now was precisely because the whole thing is broken and not really an expression of the peoples' will. Fixing the border happened 8 months ago. Nothing meaningful has c…

> Nothing meaningful has changed at the border since June 2024

That's a big lie. border encounters dropped 60-90% since 1/20. https://newsfactsnetwork.com/fact-check/fact-vs-fiction-did-...

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#483

Post by eloisius »

nonchalantsui wrote: post #292
niceice wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is just the consequence of the API protests. Despite people claiming it had no lasting impact, admins coming in and making sweeping changes to mod teams replacing them with loyalists, alongside ramping up centralized feeds to serve more ads onto meant content quality took a nosedive. This is obvious in most subs if you actually look at who is submitting the threads (something the app and All/Popular pages hides…

RDDT was a good buy, but the site is absolutely going to be destroyed. That’s what’s valuable. I’m not selling until Reddit is Facebook-tier garbage.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#484

Post by yowayb »

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 Minimum Effective Dose applies. I quit most media for 4 years. The next 2 years were 2 hrs/day on Reddit for jokes. It was the best.

But 1 year into that, I read an article by Swyx on how to use social media. I tried but gave up for another 2 years. But the end of that last 2 years was the election...and I was curious...so I went to X.

Within 3 days my opinion of the outcome flipped.

And...since I already read Swyx's article, I was ready to effectively navigate other topics of interest.

But the key to effective media usage is to ALWAYS be on guard. Your mental filters have to be running all the time. The second you drop your guard, you're vulnerable because the stream never lets up.

But when you do this, you find that you quickly run out of truly interesting things to read. Luckily I've also got physical hobbies. I now spend a TOTAL of 2 hrs/day across all media, and my mental health is just fine!

But also I find it highly rewarding in many areas such as investing, history (the X format works so well!), international (language, culture, politics).

I also highly recommend taking a second to put each post in scale or context. This does 2 things: helps decide importance of post, and slows scrolling so your brain doesn't get DDOSed into a mental health crisis.

And the (increasingly cheap, powerful and ubiquitous) LLMs can be used to either save time or power you further into the conversations.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#485

Post by khana »

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…

[dead]

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#486

Post by medellin »

intended wrote: post #456
urda wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit, by far, is one of the worst echo chambers on the internet. I've seen hundreds of death threats at one political group on there, but if any veiled threat is made against the "reddit approved party" it is instantly removed or accounts suspended. This really peaked during 2020, when open calls for violence stayed up, some with reddit admin approvals. It used to be a good site, but that was many years ago.

Did people forget the_donald? What do people think others will do, when they see that the_donald behavior gets rewarded by electoral and political support? If its not clear, everyone is going to radicalize, because its getting success.

Likely take a break from social media and talk with some real people. Lots of people voted for trump aren’t radical actually none that i know are. I come from a small town in a red state and yes they completely disagree with democrats on pretty much everything but the stuff you read on reddit is so far fetched and extreme I don’t know how anyone would take it seriously.

They believe people hate Americans and everyone should be ashamed traveling overseas. As someone who travels all the time to multiple continents not just Europe i have never encountered anyone who asked or even cared. Most people don’t live in a political bubble where they need to stop being friends with people over politics.

Anyway a lot people are choosing to live in an angry little bubble. It is really sad to see.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#487

Post by sien »

lbarron6868 wrote: post #239
nineplay wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively carefully curate your social media accounts. My reddit home page is all books and formula 1. I'm quick to hit 'show me less like this' when anything drifts in from the front page. My Facebook feed is all friends and family who don't discuss politics and ads for nerd shirts. I've purchased a few. It is also easy and effective to hit show me less of this. I agree about LinkedIn and don't go there unless I…

This is how I've dealt with Instagram. My IG account is literally nothing but cats. it's actually very refreshing to look at for five or ten minutes. But it takes work. IG wants to keep feeding me their BS reels. Sometimes I don't think it's worth it, they really make you put up a fight.

Adding animal feeds to whatever is a very good way to tone things down.

Otters, dogs, cats, snow leopards, red pandas whatever floats your boat.

Also, as you say the big platforms will still try and get you into an outrage loop.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#488

Post by lenerdenator »

returningfory2 wrote: post #464
andy_ppp wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did these organisations make people vote for Donald Trump?

By successfully pressuring Democratic politicians like Kamala Harris to publicly adopt progressive positions that are unpopular, but highly favored by the kind of people who donate to and operate organizations like the ACLU. For example, the (unfortunately very successful) Trump ad “Harris is for they/them, Trump is for you” ultimately originates with the ACLU. In 2019 they successfully got Harris to pledge governmen…

In 2019? That was before 2020, and that election resulted in Harris being vice president.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#489

Post by xvector »

intended wrote: post #456
urda wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit, by far, is one of the worst echo chambers on the internet. I've seen hundreds of death threats at one political group on there, but if any veiled threat is made against the "reddit approved party" it is instantly removed or accounts suspended. This really peaked during 2020, when open calls for violence stayed up, some with reddit admin approvals. It used to be a good site, but that was many years ago.

Did people forget the_donald? What do people think others will do, when they see that the_donald behavior gets rewarded by electoral and political support? If its not clear, everyone is going to radicalize, because its getting success.

[flagged]

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#490

Post by xvector »

svnt wrote: post #352
AznHisoka wrote: post #294

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.

I deleted my LinkedIn several years ago. I can only recommend it if you are independently wealthy, want to become an ascetic, or more broadly, your goal is to never be hired or really even evaluated for much in the business world again. None of the rest of the social networks serve as a sanity check on your resume/application/meeting.

It is scary that one platform has so much control over people's lives. If LinkedIn were to ban me for whatever reason tomorrow, finding a job would become virtually impossible.
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