8 ms·

I used to use Twitter. My country's political news and related commentary usually got me into a mental state of frustration and misanthropy. I deleted Twitter.

I used to use Twitter. My country's political news and related commentary usually got me into a mental state of frustration and misanthropy. I deleted Twitter. Political news still frustrate me but I rarely see them anymore. Ignorance is bliss. I've effectively created a safe space where political idiocy can't cognitively harass me. Is it wrong to be so uninformed? I don't know. I think a lot about it and I haven't come to a satisfactory conclusion. By being uninformed I'm somewhat unable to fight against the "wrong" opinions, but maybe if I was informed my opinions wouldn't change a thing anyway. My mental health is better off just accepting any idiotic laws my country passes instead of trying to "protest" (in the most useless sense of the word: tweeting about it) against them, for the most part.

riantogo 7y ago
I used to "protest" and then the country overwhelming voted for the authoritarian far-right party. I shifted to apathy and it is truly liberating.
- anon12345690 7y ago
  uh hilary won the popular vote and far right really? did your life change at all? whats that make china then? what about the far left policing everyone on what they can say and do? youre getting caught up in the news narrative
  - johnny22 7y ago
    have you considered that this had nothing to do with the USA?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
Skunkleton 7y ago
> Is it wrong to be so uninformed? Are you sure that you are uninformed? Do you think that trends on twitter reflect meaningful news that you wont pick up through other means? Could it be possible that by spending time on twitter you might not be becoming informed, but rather misinformed?
- ravenstine 7y ago
  Most news isn't even actionable. If you feel like you're a bad person if you're not paying attention to the news, it means you're listening to the wrong news. Focus on bigger picture issues. Give precedence to numbers and detailed analyses. If it's still keeping you down, then just turn it off because it's wasting your time and draining your life force.
denkmoon 7y ago
I did the same, about 18 months ago. It's a definite improvement in my mental health. I choose not to see it as uninformed, but informed in more focused ways. Most of the news we see doesn't actually matter, there is no action to be taken by the individual. By filtering that out you can focus on things important to you, where you can take action. Family, work, local community if you're inclined.
FussyZeus 7y ago
> Is it wrong to be so uninformed? I wouldn't say it's wrong, but I would say it is an expression of privilege. People who don't find their race, gender or identity regularly being touted as either some up and coming new social fad or the boogeyman to a given group that oppose them and the source of everything evil in the world or what have you can pretty safely disconnect from the discourse with no real ramifications to their lives. So again, no I wouldn't say it's wrong, and hell, I have to disconnect occasionally too simply to keep my sanity. But I also say that from a similar position of privilege. I don't have lawmakers attempting to restrict my rights, my gender and race aren't an oppressed group. But, exercising privileges doesn't make you a bad person in my book so long as you're not fighting to maintain those privileges at the expense of others.
- anon12345690 7y ago
  no thats not what privilege is, you can turn off social media too, youre not forced to listen to anything and youre showing the problem with the news because theres really not that much going on. who is losing their rights? what oppression are you talking about?
- wolco 7y ago
  Getting tweets that make you emotionally upset isn't furthering any groups rights minority or otherwise. If you want to make a real difference you need to get out and connect with local political forces. Twitter can make you feel like you are making a difference. If you can only share this with one more person maybe my rights won't abused. It is distracting you from making that difference. Making a difference takes hard work.
  - ilikehurdles 7y ago
    It wasn’t until I quit social media that I found time to get engaged locally. Joined the board of a nonprofit, spoke with my council people, started becoming engaged in other community orgs and attending zoning and policy hearings. If you have political drive, staying away from the timeline as an outlet of that energy can be liberating.
- 7y ago
pg_is_a_butt 7y ago
Ignorance is what caused the problem you are running away from. Thanks, jerk. Go back to France.
bitL 7y ago
IMO it's better to read real-time Reddit threads when something is happening; it's usually unfiltered and you can get raw data, not the curated ones from mainstream news once propagandists from all sides plug in and offer only selective evidence.
- woutr_be 7y ago
  I would argue against this, especially if you're in specific subreddits, it's usually heavily biased. Even if you're reading articles from /r/worldnews or /r/news, there's usually a general sentiment, and popular opinions that validate those sentiments get upvoted. I personally can't stand reading the comments, since every comment is either a meme or something irrelevant.
  - acolumb 7y ago
    Redit live threads on major world events aren't tied to a subreddit. They report developing stories from many sources.
bjornjaja 7y ago
I think newspapers are the best—say you get a daily or even weekly summary of events. That’s been good enough for centuries. The problem today is all the rehashing of events. Professional journalists honestly do a better job than all the rest of us. Internet information is mostly garbage (where social media is concerned). Don’t get me wrong the quick access to information is nice—but ”quick” means “less thought out” for the majority of readers and writers.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  Even better, newspapers often benefit from having a couple hours at least between when the story breaks and when it goes into print for at least rudimentary sanity checks on the details. It doesn't work 100% of the time, but it's very handy in scenarios like mass shootings where seemingly every one has initial reports of "multiple gunmen" only to have that evaporate within a few hours.
- flukus 7y ago
  Does anyone do weekly news summaries? A weekly digest might be something worth paying for, even the nightly news bulletins on TV seem to assume you've watched the morning ones and won't tell you about something that happened at 3AM. Back when I was still reading newspapers even the weekend ones were pretty much only reporting the news of the day and not a weekly summary. Annoyingly news is also stuck in the document model from newspapers, every little update has to repeat all the background information under the assumption that people didn't read the previous articles. Even worse is when they update the same articles so you have no idea of what you've read and what you haven't. On a related note, I've removed the distraction of personal email notifications from my life recently and become more organised as a result. When I check every day or two it's at a convenient time where I can actually pay that bill or at least move it to the bills folder, or unsubscribe from that piece of spam instead of just swiping it away. Turns out one of the killer apps that made me get my first smartphone a decade ago has been making my life worse. Edit - I did some googling of weekly news and it seems like just about everything with weekly in the title is live updating and/or not news. Edit 2 - for Australians I found a twice daily news subscription from the ABC: https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/alerts/ https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/alerts/ . It's not exactly what I wanted but with an email filter it might be workable.
JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
You can still follow politics through Reuters or the Associated Press, which shouldn't contain inflammatory language -- they're about as neutral as you can come by.
povertyworld 7y ago
I'm going to adopt this strategy. If you follow politics people will demand you pick a side which they can then use to attack you. If you just pretend to be stupid, it's harder for them to find an opening. Plus, pretending to be stupid is a lot easier than pretending to be smart, so it'll save energy. What I really need to do is stop posting on Silicon Valley gossip boards.
base698 7y ago
This is doubly true for social media: "I do not mean to imply that television news deliberately aims to deprive Americans of a coherent, contextual understanding of their world. I mean to say that when news is packaged as entertainment, that is the inevitable result. And in saying that the television news show entertains but does not inform, I am saying something far more serious than that we are being deprived of authentic information. I am saying we are losing our sense of what it means to be well informed." Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business"
jsonne 7y ago
I would argue you're potentially better informed. Better to be ignorant than know a half truth devoid of context skewed for an agenda and that's what most of politics on social media is anyways.
sbmthakur 7y ago
> I used to use Twitter. My country's political news and related commentary usually got me into a mental state of frustration and misanthropy. For this same reason, I've separate accounts on Twitter. I'm not averse to political stuff but mixing it with things you like can make Twitter extremely toxic. From my primary account, I don't follow any Politician, Celebrity etc. I just follow developers and few other people who are doing what I'm interested in.
buboard 7y ago
you can just unfollow politics on twitter. I don't see any in my feed and i aggressively unfollow people who think it's funny to retweet their political opinions to my face. Twitter also insists on telling me to follow random politicians but no, i resist! But yeah, if you take social media so seriously that they affect your mentah health, better quit
tvanantwerp 7y ago
I find it so weird that society equates news consumption with being informed. In this era especially, news seems to be mostly opinion pieces about trivial events. I'd wager that those actively abstaining from the news have a better grip on the events impacting them and the world in general than those who are trying to stay up-to-date 24/7 on Twitter, or cable news, or any information fire-hose of your choice.

riantogo 7y ago

I used to "protest" and then the country overwhelming voted for the authoritarian far-right party. I shifted to apathy and it is truly liberating.

anon12345690 7y ago
uh hilary won the popular vote and far right really? did your life change at all? whats that make china then? what about the far left policing everyone on what they can say and do? youre getting caught up in the news narrative
- johnny22 7y ago
  have you considered that this had nothing to do with the USA?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

Skunkleton 7y ago

> Is it wrong to be so uninformed? Are you sure that you are uninformed? Do you think that trends on twitter reflect meaningful news that you wont pick up through other means? Could it be possible that by spending time on twitter you might not be becoming informed, but rather misinformed?

ravenstine 7y ago
Most news isn't even actionable. If you feel like you're a bad person if you're not paying attention to the news, it means you're listening to the wrong news. Focus on bigger picture issues. Give precedence to numbers and detailed analyses. If it's still keeping you down, then just turn it off because it's wasting your time and draining your life force.

denkmoon 7y ago

I did the same, about 18 months ago. It's a definite improvement in my mental health. I choose not to see it as uninformed, but informed in more focused ways. Most of the news we see doesn't actually matter, there is no action to be taken by the individual. By filtering that out you can focus on things important to you, where you can take action. Family, work, local community if you're inclined.

FussyZeus 7y ago

> Is it wrong to be so uninformed? I wouldn't say it's wrong, but I would say it is an expression of privilege. People who don't find their race, gender or identity regularly being touted as either some up and coming new social fad or the boogeyman to a given group that oppose them and the source of everything evil in the world or what have you can pretty safely disconnect from the discourse with no real ramifications to their lives. So again, no I wouldn't say it's wrong, and hell, I have to disconnect occasionally too simply to keep my sanity. But I also say that from a similar position of privilege. I don't have lawmakers attempting to restrict my rights, my gender and race aren't an oppressed group. But, exercising privileges doesn't make you a bad person in my book so long as you're not fighting to maintain those privileges at the expense of others.

anon12345690 7y ago
no thats not what privilege is, you can turn off social media too, youre not forced to listen to anything and youre showing the problem with the news because theres really not that much going on. who is losing their rights? what oppression are you talking about?
wolco 7y ago
Getting tweets that make you emotionally upset isn't furthering any groups rights minority or otherwise. If you want to make a real difference you need to get out and connect with local political forces. Twitter can make you feel like you are making a difference. If you can only share this with one more person maybe my rights won't abused. It is distracting you from making that difference. Making a difference takes hard work.
- ilikehurdles 7y ago
  It wasn’t until I quit social media that I found time to get engaged locally. Joined the board of a nonprofit, spoke with my council people, started becoming engaged in other community orgs and attending zoning and policy hearings. If you have political drive, staying away from the timeline as an outlet of that energy can be liberating.
7y ago

pg_is_a_butt 7y ago

Ignorance is what caused the problem you are running away from. Thanks, jerk. Go back to France.

bitL 7y ago

IMO it's better to read real-time Reddit threads when something is happening; it's usually unfiltered and you can get raw data, not the curated ones from mainstream news once propagandists from all sides plug in and offer only selective evidence.

woutr_be 7y ago
I would argue against this, especially if you're in specific subreddits, it's usually heavily biased. Even if you're reading articles from /r/worldnews or /r/news, there's usually a general sentiment, and popular opinions that validate those sentiments get upvoted. I personally can't stand reading the comments, since every comment is either a meme or something irrelevant.
- acolumb 7y ago
  Redit live threads on major world events aren't tied to a subreddit. They report developing stories from many sources.

bjornjaja 7y ago

I think newspapers are the best—say you get a daily or even weekly summary of events. That’s been good enough for centuries. The problem today is all the rehashing of events. Professional journalists honestly do a better job than all the rest of us. Internet information is mostly garbage (where social media is concerned). Don’t get me wrong the quick access to information is nice—but ”quick” means “less thought out” for the majority of readers and writers.

ceejayoz 7y ago
Even better, newspapers often benefit from having a couple hours at least between when the story breaks and when it goes into print for at least rudimentary sanity checks on the details. It doesn't work 100% of the time, but it's very handy in scenarios like mass shootings where seemingly every one has initial reports of "multiple gunmen" only to have that evaporate within a few hours.
flukus 7y ago
Does anyone do weekly news summaries? A weekly digest might be something worth paying for, even the nightly news bulletins on TV seem to assume you've watched the morning ones and won't tell you about something that happened at 3AM. Back when I was still reading newspapers even the weekend ones were pretty much only reporting the news of the day and not a weekly summary. Annoyingly news is also stuck in the document model from newspapers, every little update has to repeat all the background information under the assumption that people didn't read the previous articles. Even worse is when they update the same articles so you have no idea of what you've read and what you haven't. On a related note, I've removed the distraction of personal email notifications from my life recently and become more organised as a result. When I check every day or two it's at a convenient time where I can actually pay that bill or at least move it to the bills folder, or unsubscribe from that piece of spam instead of just swiping it away. Turns out one of the killer apps that made me get my first smartphone a decade ago has been making my life worse. Edit - I did some googling of weekly news and it seems like just about everything with weekly in the title is live updating and/or not news. Edit 2 - for Australians I found a twice daily news subscription from the ABC: https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/alerts/ https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/alerts/ . It's not exactly what I wanted but with an email filter it might be workable.

JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago

You can still follow politics through Reuters or the Associated Press, which shouldn't contain inflammatory language -- they're about as neutral as you can come by.

povertyworld 7y ago

I'm going to adopt this strategy. If you follow politics people will demand you pick a side which they can then use to attack you. If you just pretend to be stupid, it's harder for them to find an opening. Plus, pretending to be stupid is a lot easier than pretending to be smart, so it'll save energy. What I really need to do is stop posting on Silicon Valley gossip boards.

base698 7y ago

This is doubly true for social media: "I do not mean to imply that television news deliberately aims to deprive Americans of a coherent, contextual understanding of their world. I mean to say that when news is packaged as entertainment, that is the inevitable result. And in saying that the television news show entertains but does not inform, I am saying something far more serious than that we are being deprived of authentic information. I am saying we are losing our sense of what it means to be well informed." Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business"

jsonne 7y ago

I would argue you're potentially better informed. Better to be ignorant than know a half truth devoid of context skewed for an agenda and that's what most of politics on social media is anyways.

sbmthakur 7y ago

> I used to use Twitter. My country's political news and related commentary usually got me into a mental state of frustration and misanthropy. For this same reason, I've separate accounts on Twitter. I'm not averse to political stuff but mixing it with things you like can make Twitter extremely toxic. From my primary account, I don't follow any Politician, Celebrity etc. I just follow developers and few other people who are doing what I'm interested in.

buboard 7y ago

you can just unfollow politics on twitter. I don't see any in my feed and i aggressively unfollow people who think it's funny to retweet their political opinions to my face. Twitter also insists on telling me to follow random politicians but no, i resist! But yeah, if you take social media so seriously that they affect your mentah health, better quit

tvanantwerp 7y ago

I find it so weird that society equates news consumption with being informed. In this era especially, news seems to be mostly opinion pieces about trivial events. I'd wager that those actively abstaining from the news have a better grip on the events impacting them and the world in general than those who are trying to stay up-to-date 24/7 on Twitter, or cable news, or any information fire-hose of your choice.