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The problem is, we as a society crave sensationalist news entertainment. How to fix that? :/

by axod 16y ago

rbanffy 16y ago
Education would be my fist guess. When people become aware of stupidity, they are at least free to try not being stupid.
- axod 16y ago
  But here we are, sitting on HN voting up the most ridiculous non-useful articles. HN is often full of sensationalist entertainment news - endless appstore policies, iPad raves/rants etc. Why this is dead, why X is a Y killer. Endless rants about privacy. We're just as bad as the general population as a whole. Our "Terrorism" is "possible affront on privacy" or "Apple might be evil!"
  - derefr 16y ago
    The problem is "news." Without sensational news—without ephemera, in other words—the concept of "news" crumbles. We don't need to know the ongoing developments in stories that don't affect us personally, but we still crave to. If humans were stripped of this urge, this and every social news site would be reduced to magazines, publishing only after-the-fact analyses of completed narratives.
    - inerte 16y ago
      Maybe a way to start doing this would be telling people that they are dumb. The past couple weeks I've been thinking that people are ok with small/short/quick news because it makes them think they have figured out the whole thing. Maybe they are satisfied that they've learned something, or maybe they think it is enough. I think folks are overestimating their ability to put loosely connected ideas into something bigger. You get a little here, a sprinkle there and you're cool with that. It's like a fast food for the brain. You're constantly satisfied, almost by the second, because you're supposedly "learning" something. But I don't know. My train of thought stops there. I don't know how to strip people of this urge.
      - rbanffy 16y ago
        Maybe we could work with the urge and create something good with it.
hexis 16y ago
Almost certainly, the best thing any person can do is work to lessen their own cravings for sensationalist news entertainment. Then, let your circle (at this point only containing yourself) grow to include others, beginning with the people closest to you (in one sense or another, as in you might start with friends, family, or maybe even start by telling us about how you lessened your cravings here on HN). You probably meant something larger scale in your original questions, or maybe something more tactically concrete. Hopefully, starting by getting the scale of the problem under control might help us get the tactics right, and then expand the scale.
kokofoo 16y ago
This is a much harder problem to solve than terrorism itself.

The problem is, we as a society crave sensationalist news entertainment. How to fix that? :/

by axod 16y ago

The problem is, we as a society crave sensationalist news entertainment. How to fix that? :/

Education would be my fist guess. When people become aware of stupidity, they are at least free to try not being stupid.

axod 16y ago
But here we are, sitting on HN voting up the most ridiculous non-useful articles. HN is often full of sensationalist entertainment news - endless appstore policies, iPad raves/rants etc. Why this is dead, why X is a Y killer. Endless rants about privacy. We're just as bad as the general population as a whole. Our "Terrorism" is "possible affront on privacy" or "Apple might be evil!"
- derefr 16y ago
  The problem is "news." Without sensational news—without ephemera, in other words—the concept of "news" crumbles. We don't need to know the ongoing developments in stories that don't affect us personally, but we still crave to. If humans were stripped of this urge, this and every social news site would be reduced to magazines, publishing only after-the-fact analyses of completed narratives.
  - inerte 16y ago
    Maybe a way to start doing this would be telling people that they are dumb. The past couple weeks I've been thinking that people are ok with small/short/quick news because it makes them think they have figured out the whole thing. Maybe they are satisfied that they've learned something, or maybe they think it is enough. I think folks are overestimating their ability to put loosely connected ideas into something bigger. You get a little here, a sprinkle there and you're cool with that. It's like a fast food for the brain. You're constantly satisfied, almost by the second, because you're supposedly "learning" something. But I don't know. My train of thought stops there. I don't know how to strip people of this urge.
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      Maybe we could work with the urge and create something good with it.

hexis 16y ago

Almost certainly, the best thing any person can do is work to lessen their own cravings for sensationalist news entertainment. Then, let your circle (at this point only containing yourself) grow to include others, beginning with the people closest to you (in one sense or another, as in you might start with friends, family, or maybe even start by telling us about how you lessened your cravings here on HN). You probably meant something larger scale in your original questions, or maybe something more tactically concrete. Hopefully, starting by getting the scale of the problem under control might help us get the tactics right, and then expand the scale.

kokofoo 16y ago

This is a much harder problem to solve than terrorism itself.