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Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#661

Post by madeofpalk »

majgr wrote: post #570

Living in Poland ruled by trumpists for 8 years I have these experiences: - Get subscription of high value newspaper or magazine. Professionals work there, so you will get real facts, worthy opinions and less emotions. - It is better to not use social media. You never know if you are discussing with normal person, a political party troll, or Russian troll. - It is not worth discussing with „switched-on” people. They…

> - It is better to not use social media. You never know if you are discussing with normal person, a political party troll, or Russian troll.

Completely valid, but there is a middleground of very deliberately curating your social media:

- Avoid using services that are engineered for outrage and views

- be ruthless with who you follow and block (someone trying to drum up some unimportant javascript outrage? get them off your feed)

- for twitter-likes, mute phrases from your timeline like crazy (included in my muted words is plainly trump, kamala, elon, gop, democrats, doge, dei, covid, etc)

- always be skeptical that everyone else online is some PSYOP effort, even those that share views you politically align with

It is possible to use social media, but you must have agency over it and not allow it to just happen to you. That's why I'm much more enthusastic about decentralised/open and non-commercial social networks because they currently give users much more control.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#662

Post by marxisttemp »

xvector wrote: post #568
deathanatos wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Subreddits like r/pics are packed full of thinly veiled death threats towards the sitting president or Elon Musk. This is just blatant misinformation. Since r/pics is the only example you've chosen to give us, let's evaluate it: I've scrolled through the current first 50 posts in Hot, and 0 of them are death threats, thinly veiled or otherwise. "Packed full", indeed. And here, so it isn't simply my word vs. his; th…

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Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#663

Post by marxisttemp »

xvector wrote: post #568
deathanatos wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Subreddits like r/pics are packed full of thinly veiled death threats towards the sitting president or Elon Musk. This is just blatant misinformation. Since r/pics is the only example you've chosen to give us, let's evaluate it: I've scrolled through the current first 50 posts in Hot, and 0 of them are death threats, thinly veiled or otherwise. "Packed full", indeed. And here, so it isn't simply my word vs. his; th…

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Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#664

Post by intended »

medellin wrote: post #486
intended wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hey, this is a PSA: this was going to happen.

I’ve seen this sequence of events play out before.

In many was ‘go outside’ is dismissive of what many people feel is happening, that to within 15 days of this new presidency. This is a low key way of saying you don’t like people protesting.

While at the same time others are saying people aren’t protesting enough.

If you aren’t ok with all of this, I strongly suggest deleting all social media, including hacker news. Take your advice and go outside. Be good to your neighbors and your mental health.

There is zero space for passive consumption when one of the biggest cultural and economic forces in English speaking Internet land is dismantling itself.

There is going to be very little space for any tolerance of nuance - because Trump is going to continue to escalate. He is going to follow a plan which was known, and it aims at gutting the US, and justifying it with DEI or whatever the cassus belli of the month is.

This is eventually going to result in ‘riots.’

Which will feed the righteousness of the conservatives, which will result in a new round of “well you were so happy when the year started, where are you now.”

It will escalate into attacks on democrats as the devil. And HN will swing from left outrage to right outrage.

At that time the roles will be reversed, and the positions will switch.

Again - If you or anyone reading these comments is tired on Feb 6th - leave the internet right now. This is your tornado / natural disaster warning.

This isn’t meant to be hurtful to you, or to be any defense of anything.

I always assume I am wrong, and I hope I can look back at these comments with embarrassment over what looks like histrionics.

The problem I have is that i deal with social media and online safety as work and as research. Papers on this topic are my fun reading when my brain isn’t fogged up.

This is going to be worse than brexit. And that’s if we are all lucky.

I was asking bankers if there’s any slack in the financial system in November - and I asked this in multiple countries.

The answer was no. So when the trade shocks start hitting the system, expect a downturn.

This is aside from the walking dead syndrome which america will face after gutting multiple systems in-flight.

I wish you luck and the very best. Sorry.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#665

Post by Tade0 »

myrmidon wrote: post #634
majgr wrote: post #570

Living in Poland ruled by trumpists for 8 years I have these experiences: - Get subscription of high value newspaper or magazine. Professionals work there, so you will get real facts, worthy opinions and less emotions. - It is better to not use social media. You never know if you are discussing with normal person, a political party troll, or Russian troll. - It is not worth discussing with „switched-on” people. They…

Out of curiosity-- does "trumpists" mean PiS? Are the "trumpists" still in power? What is the current trend (toward trumpists or away?). > Get subscription of high value newspaper or magazine. Professionals work there, so you will get real facts, worthy opinions and less emotions. This is excellent advise. I'm worrying that post-paper news have a really strong incentive nowadays to drive outrage, and that the current…

They've lost majority in the 2023 elections.

The current president (serving his second term) is a big fan of Trump though.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#666

Post by Terr_ »

caminante wrote: post #655
Terr_ wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> stereotype [...] innuendo [...] slippery slope No need for histrionics, it's simple: Someone doesn't need to actively desire a terrible outcome to be morally culpable of making bad choices , ones they should-have-known would enable or encourage it to happen. Multiple such people can and do form groups. It's not limited to politics either, which is how we get idioms like "playing with fire."

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> you want to stereotype [...] innuendo [...] slippery slope [...] you're pre-convincing [...] thought crimes

You're the one who's been making all the personal condemnations of evil intent, stop with the psychological projection.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#667

Post by throwaway290 »

_7acn wrote: post #658
throwaway290 wrote: post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do they limit freedom and what kind? Is it like blocking websites and police searches or like "you can't drink booze outside"?

I'm referring to actions that can be observed in the vast majority of countries. There are two main cases here, which, surprisingly, are rarely discussed in the media. The first case is when the state openly violates certain rights concerning individuals or groups, often under some pretext. An example could be a situation where you run an independent political website, and suddenly, it gets taken down by your ISP bec…

OK. I mean not to excuse the arbitrary enforcement or bad laws but seems logical that your freedom stops where my freedom begins and as time passes more edge cases are found along those lines. Ditching unneeded/bad restrictions is good and not adding restrictions is good but in total idk if I expect the number of restrictions to go down unless people stop being selfish jerks

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#668

Post by ovalanche »

madeofpalk wrote: post #661
majgr wrote: post #570

Living in Poland ruled by trumpists for 8 years I have these experiences: - Get subscription of high value newspaper or magazine. Professionals work there, so you will get real facts, worthy opinions and less emotions. - It is better to not use social media. You never know if you are discussing with normal person, a political party troll, or Russian troll. - It is not worth discussing with „switched-on” people. They…

> - It is better to not use social media. You never know if you are discussing with normal person, a political party troll, or Russian troll. Completely valid, but there is a middleground of very deliberately curating your social media: - Avoid using services that are engineered for outrage and views - be ruthless with who you follow and block (someone trying to drum up some unimportant javascript outrage? get them o…

Can you give some examples of decentralized/open and non-commercial networks? I would be very interested to use such platforms but I don’t know of them (nor do the people in my life, unfortunately)!

In agreement with all your points above.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#669

Post by Dalewyn »

foldr wrote: post #641
Dalewyn wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like everyone forgot Reddit's roots as far as its politics are concerned. Namely, the place was Libertarian Central on the internet until 2015 when it got astroturfed basically overnight to swing the other way. I was there to witness it and the whiplash was something fierce. Reddit has been basically unusable for anything concerning politics since, and nowadays with politics leaking out into every damn sub p…

It’s not a Reddit thing. I also remember the days when everyone online was a libertarian. But Conservatives then turned to nationalist ideologies that don’t emphasize the free market, that are anti-immigration, and that take a dim view of personal sexual freedom. There are fewer people expressing libertarian points of view all over the shop. There’s a good article about it here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/202…

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Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#670

Post by marxisttemp »

xvector wrote: post #568
deathanatos wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Subreddits like r/pics are packed full of thinly veiled death threats towards the sitting president or Elon Musk. This is just blatant misinformation. Since r/pics is the only example you've chosen to give us, let's evaluate it: I've scrolled through the current first 50 posts in Hot, and 0 of them are death threats, thinly veiled or otherwise. "Packed full", indeed. And here, so it isn't simply my word vs. his; th…

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