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> We marinate in the news. We may be familiar with the headlines before we have exchanged a word with another human in the morning; we kill time on the bus or i
by katzgrau 7y ago
> We marinate in the news. We may be familiar with the headlines before we have exchanged a word with another human in the morning; we kill time on the bus or in queues by checking Twitter, only to find ourselves plunged into the dramas of presidential politics or humanitarian emergencies. By one estimate, 70% of us take our news-delivery devices to bed with us at night.
Some people do this. And I'm guilty of having been one of them. But I realized that the constant negative news cycle started to shape my outlook on the world around me.
Earlier this year I decided that the cycle of indulging in consumption of (usually negative) news, worrying about it, and then repeating is a waste of time and probably takes away from who I am rather than adding anything of real value. I don't check Twitter, I trying to avoid Facebook. I don't even watch my favorite late night talk show hosts (sorry Colbert). I've replaced them with audiobooks and podcasts.
I am significantly happier for it. And minor anxieties I had that were unrelated to current events seem to have gone away too.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- melicerte 7y agoDo you realize that you are posting your comment on a website having the word « news » in its name ? Just saying :)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- reificator 7y agoI'm in a similar boat. The reason I visit hn is because it's typically technical news. Other news stories do make it to the front page occasionally, but they're normally big stories or tangentially related to tech. That's a trade-off I'm willing to make.
- katzgrau 7y agoYes, although the things that fall within the scope of what HN considers to be newsworthy generally don't present the problems that I have with mainstream news.
- everdev 7y agoSame. It was a hard pill to swallow because I took a lot of pride in being "informed". But, at the end of the day you're along for the ride. I figured it makes the most sense to stay current about news that is relevant to my career and hobbies and skip the rest.
- ChuckMcM 7y agoSame. Structured news consumption to keep in the loop off what is going on.
- nugget 7y agoWeren't these patterns the same in the era of news delivered via newspaper? In old movies, the family reads the newspaper at the breakfast table, and in old photographs, everybody on the bus had a newspaper in their hands.