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Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#861

Post by nonethewiser »

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…

> One thing to consider for those of us who are more sensitive to online outrage is to just quit social media all together.

This is hard to overstate. Checkout Jonathan Haidts research into social medias role in skyrocketing mental health problems in kids over the past decade.

The junkfood comparison is great. It feels good now but makes you extremely unhealthy long term. Its deceptive because it doesnt look that bad, but it displaces things that you actually need to be healthy.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#862

Post by nonethewiser »

ge96 wrote: post #123
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 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 "…

> It's unfortunate people expect you to have social media like a girl asks me if I have Instagram and I'm weird to not have one, I get it they can scope you out too for safety but when I tried using that stuff I felt this pressure to post about something

I actually feel really good when people expect me to be on social media and I tell them Im not.

Kind of similar to the feeling when I say that I quit cigarettes. Im still surprised by it and talking about it makes me feel very blessed to be free of it.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#863

Post by adolph »

neom wrote: post #61
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…

This is the way. I was a director of the community team at deviantart when it got going and I remember so many times thinking "if we get one of these apps for everything people are going to drown themselves in the internet" - because I used to have to actively check in on community members who we deemed addicted. Sure enough, here we are, except it seems nobody is looking out for the best interests of their communiti…

> Sure enough, here we are, except it seems nobody is looking out for the best interests of their communities anymore. Thank god for dang.

Here's to dang! Even when you do things I might not agree with if I knew about them, this is a place where interesting things can be shared and found without all the blah-blah.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#864

Post by adolph »

Terr_ wrote: post #620
caminante wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> 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."

> morally culpable

Whose morals? What morals?

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#865

Post by marssaxman »

AznHisoka wrote: post #294
ziddoap wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's unfortunate people expect you to have social media like a girl asks me if I have Instagram and I'm weird to not have one Outside of reddit/discord/hn, I haven't had any social media since roughly 2010, and I don't use reddit or discord for anything remotely "social media"-ish. While I still get the occasional look as if I'm wearing a tinfoil hat when I say "I don't have FB. No, no insta either. No... not snapc…

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.

It's not the miracle you seem to imagine! I deleted my linkedin account at least fifteen years ago now, disgusted by their spammy, underhanded recruitment tactics, and I have never had any trouble finding interesting work.

I understand that some people find it reassuring to receive a constant stream of recruiter inquiries, but from what I hear these messages are mostly low-effort, shotgun-blast attempts to fill undesirable positions, so I don't feel like I am missing out.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#866

Post by nonethewiser »

urda wrote: post #366
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…

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.

It optimizes for echo chambers. You see what gets upvoted the most.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#867

Post by torlok »

Tade0 wrote: post #665
myrmidon wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And their next candidate acts like a stereotypical Bible-waving Joe Rogan fan.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#868

Post by basisword »

righthand wrote: post #791
basisword wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> But things like the USA's current constitutional crisis are real. While I have no doubt this is true, is it _actually_ having any impact on your day to day life? If you didn't have social media, didn't read the news, and somehow didn't even know there was an election (I know this one isn't possible) would your day to day life have changed at all? Look at the past week as an example. Threats of tariffs, headline ne…

This is wrong, Trump and his policies does affect everyone’s day to day life. It may not be immediately visible effect but that is why he lost the 2nd time he tried to run. This fallacy didn’t cause people to vote for Trump in this current election, it caused them to not vote. Not voting is a direct negative effect on your life because you’ve chosen to give up on understanding the consequences. We are basically on tr…

>> Trump and his policies does affect everyone’s day to day life

Of course, to an extent. But for the vast majority of people they aren't going to have a direct and horrible impact. Take some of the most objectionable things so far - the kind that might upset you if you read about them (treatment of immigrants, plans to 'take over' Greenland/Panama/Palastine, pardoning the Jan 6 criminals, DOGE, etc). These are all very upsetting for many people and understandably so. But they probably don't actually affect you. If they upset you there's very little you can actually do until the next round of elections. Better to switch off and save your own mental health in the meantime and vote when the time comes.

Take your father for example. Would it not be much better for him (and you) if he didn't follow the news/social media, checked out both parties policies at election time, voted and then switched off again?

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#869

Post by keybored »

brookst wrote: post #544
keybored wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your comment propaganda?

Yeah we seem to have rhetorical escalation. Opinions are propaganda, beliefs are narratives, etc, etc. It's a way to devalue messages one disagrees with; they aren't just wrong, they're nefarious.

People don’t understand what I was getting at.

In my book any furthering of any position is propaganda. It’s not just when you do it in a dishonest or underhanded way. That’s the old-school definition.

Now what started this was the bald assertion that all most messaging is propaganda. Okay. People went with it, including the person I replied to. And that’s not objectionable according to my own definition. But if it is only “nefarious” messaging which is propaganda then you set yourself up for throwing stones in a glasshouse. Because a lot of comments (including the one I replied to) contain at least assumptions that further a world view. I don’t have to make an outright statement. I just have to hint at an assumption. And yeah, that’s what they did too.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#870

Post by Seattle3503 »

neom wrote: post #84
bartekpacia wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was a director of the community team at deviantart (...) I used to have to actively check in on community members who we deemed addicted This sounds so interesting to me - was it your responsibility? How did you detect if someone was addicted? And most importantly, how did you scale it?

Well early deviantart was pretty small, and I don't think anyone building it was over 25y/o at the time, so we all had lots of free time to work on it. Deviantart was arranged in a way we all had communities we were responsible for, it changed a lot after it reached million+ users scale, but in the beginning at 100k or so users it was very manageable. Your responsibility per Scott Jarkoff who lead that team was "to l…

What advice would you have for someone running a discord community?
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