7 ms·

I figured this out a few years ago and completely stopped all news watching/reading entirely. I have nothing but positive things to say about that decision, and

I figured this out a few years ago and completely stopped all news watching/reading entirely. I have nothing but positive things to say about that decision, and surprisingly I seem to be better-informed and feel like I have a worldview that more accurately reflects reality than most of the people who follow news daily. Daily news watchers now seem like such ineffective people to me, and I’m reminded of the know-nothings from my teenage years rambling about conspiracy theories. The entire time they’re talking about whatever is happening in the news, I’m just thinking: “Who decided that this was important to you, and why did you let them decide that?” I have family members that can’t pay their rent on time or remember to feed their kids breakfast, but they’ve got the geopolitical dynamics of the US and Russia all figured out. They solved it. Others talk endlessly about their opinions about all subjects deemed important by the news. They speak with passion as if the opinions and convictions are their own, yet every single stance they take conveniently mirrors whatever was favored in whatever media they consumed. None of them ever express an original thought. Every single one of them just chooses a selection of things they heard and repeats it. I’ve been doing this long enough that I think I can see how this is going to turn out for me long-term. Name anything that happened 5 years ago. If it’s significant, I remember it. If it isn’t, I never heard about it at all, and nobody else remembers it either. I’m by farrrrrrrr the happiest person I know, to the point that I literally feel guilty about it sometimes. I just have so much time for my career that I’ve zipped past everybody, so much time for family. It might be the single best decision I’ve ever made in my life. I’m really thankful that I figured it out this young.

silicon2401 6y ago
I feel the exact same way. If there's something really important, it'll make its way to me. If there's something I want to know, I'll make my way to it. Otherwise it probably wasn't worth my time. Like you, I read about and hear acquaintances talk about anxiety, etc from the news so often, and just feel like I'm talking to someone complaining about sunburn and continuing to go out without sun protection
SamBam 6y ago
> I completely stopped all news watching/reading entirely. ... I seem to be better-informed. How do these square? How is it that you become informed?
- pb7 6y ago
  One way that I could imagine is having long-form discussions about it with friends rather than getting a journalist’s opinion and settling on it as fact.
  - SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
    But then you just had a discussion about your friends understanding of the issue, which is going to be another step removed from the journalist. And you're either relying on the friend to have done all the work for you, or you're just two people who haven't taken the time to look at the issue discussing it. To me, it seems that was lies strong opinions and without context.
    - pb7 6y ago
      There’s the rub. Your friend is more likely to have a similar point of view as you on a given topic so they can relay the necessary details for you, if the topic is important enough. No matter the topic, there will always be multiple spins on it so getting your friend’s spin is no better or worse than a journalist’s — or worse, the mob’s.
      - rickbad68 6y ago
        I would argue the friends spin is probably more reliable, depending on the friend of course, as at least they would not be motivated by ratings or money and probably are not intentionally trying to cultivate any certain biased viewpoint in you.
- peterkelly 6y ago
  Books
dencodev 6y ago
Does being on HN not count? Feel like I see lots of news on HN. It's in the name after all.
- pb7 6y ago
  Definitely cheating and I’m not the GP, but I would argue HN is curated enough to filter out most guilty pleasure outrage news cycles. Still in the same realm though. For example, the Twitter hack has made its rounds here but, say, Kanye having a political meltdown hasn’t necessarily (or at least I haven’t seen it) despite it being a prominent trend on Twitter.
  - drenvuk 6y ago
    I'm going to be blunt here and say that you're wrong. There is no difference. The news may be curated and may be for a specific audience but the odds that it's just as useless to you as mainstream news is still very high. I don't say this to criticize, mind you. I'm here as well.
    - pb7 6y ago
      Perfectly fine — I’m only arguing for the sake of discussion. When I have gone on no-information binges, I included HN in them. Over time, I realized HN upsets (upsets may not be the right word — maybe mentally clouds or distracts?) me a considerable amount less. The links I look at are informative and inspire creativity; the discussions push me towards explaining my thoughts carefully rather than resorting to status games, false sense of superiority, and mob rule. HN is news, and as such, it is addicting and sometimes does upset me depending on the subject matter and how many people take on views that oppose mine, but I still think it’s an order of magnitude less so than things like Twitter.
    - tlarkworthy 6y ago
      Some of is technical content and useful for staying relevant in a fast paced industry. Some of it is garbage.
    - sjg007 6y ago
rootsudo 6y ago
This is a bit unrelated to HN, but in the terms of "memeculture." What you've discovered and described is called "NPC" by meme culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPC_(meme) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPC_(meme)
- RealityVoid 6y ago
  I find meme culture just as, if not worse than news in some ways. It convinces people that something that has enough truthiness and is funny enough is true.
- war1025 6y ago
  Can you elaborate on this? I am unsure if you are saying not watching the news makes him an NPC, or if the people who just parrot the news are the NPCs. I am leaning toward the latter, but based on your wording and the wording of the parent post, that's not what I initially expected.
  - rootsudo 6y ago
    The later, the parroting of facts and the inability to go into deep detail besides being told information tidbits and repeating them is what makes the NPC so chilling in todays world. Especially when a few people get that high level of norieity and trust.
- mumbisChungo 6y ago
  It's kind of weird that this is attributed to 'memeculture', given that I can recall people referring to others (in a denigrating fashion) as NPCs back in the 90s, before 'meme' was part of our lexicon.
  - Kye 6y ago
    The article is Start-Class. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Internet/Assessment#Quality_scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Internet... >> "A very basic description of the topic. Can be well-written, but may also have significant content issues." That means someone wrote it up on a whim and no one's come to address prior art in a way that suits the standards of Wikipedia.
13415 6y ago
The post reminds me of this: https://www.theonion.com/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-doesnt-own-a-televisi-1819565469 https://www.theonion.com/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-d... I don't agree in your main argument, which seems to be based on the idea that whatever makes you feel better is good. I, for one, prefer to read the news and watch the occasional clip online. It makes you better informed, which is essential for many things, including business and informed voting. Trying to be happy all the time is overrated.
- bergstromm466 6y ago
  > Trying to be happy all the time is overrated. Completely agree. “[B]y restoring grief to soul work, we are freed from our one-dimensional obsession with emotional progress. This “psychological moralism” places enormous pressure on us to always be improving, feeling good, and rising above our problems.2 Happiness has become the new mecca, and anything short of that often leaves us feeling that we have done something wrong or failed to live up to the acknowledged standard. This forces sorrow, pain, fear, weakness, and vulnerability into the underworld, where they fester and mutate into contorted expressions of themselves, often coated in a mantle of shame. People in my practice routinely apologize for their tears or for feeling sad. I am an advocate for a soul psychology that senses vitality in every emotion, whatever life offers to us in the moment. We will have times of being happy, which is cause for celebration. We will, however, also have times of sorrow and loneliness. Moods will come upon us and events will occur that evoke anger and outrage in us. In fact, archetypal psychologist James Hillman once noted that being outraged is a sure sign that our soul is awake. Each of these emotions and experiences has vitality in it, and that is our work: to be alive and to be a good host to whoever arrives at the door of our house. Happiness, then, becomes a reflection of our ability to hold complexity and contradiction, to stay fluid and accept whatever arises, even sorrow.” —Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow I loved that the Onion article, thanks for sharing it!
alfiedotwtf 6y ago
> “Who decided that this was important to you, and why did you let them decide that?” Thank you for that comment... I'm now going to turn on my news blackhole hosts file, which I disabled long ago. I remember being far more content back then so I'm not sure why I reverted back.
- user00012-ab 6y ago
  I use the leechblock plugin and have it redirect any site like twitter/reddit/hn to my todo list instead. I also have it setup so I can only view hackernews on Fridays so I'm not constantly loading it. I also subscribe to https://hackernewsletter.com/ https://hackernewsletter.com/ which is a list of all the interesting articles from hacker news from that week. (it comes out on Friday, thus I unblock on the site on my computer on Fridays)
  - alfiedotwtf 6y ago
    > to my todo list instead Ha! That's awesome. That's an in-your-face "hey you, focus!"
darkerside 6y ago
I'm a little confused. I agree with some of your sentiment, but are developments w/r/t COVID not important?
- ericsoderstrom 6y ago
  > Name anything that happened 5 years ago. If it’s significant, I remember it. If it isn’t, I never heard about it at all, and nobody else remembers it either. OP has heard of COVID. It would be impossible not to. I follow a similar approach (avoiding news as much as possible) and I still am exposed to much more information about COVID than is useful.
  - darkerside 6y ago
    So relying on informal networks to pass on the key information? That's actually a really sensible strategy. I retract my argument.
    - sjg007 6y ago
      You outsource it. Like I’m not on FB but my wife is.
shireboy 6y ago
Can I ask _how_ you did this? I've done some things like block sites on various devices, etc. But I do find myself still - when I'm waiting for a build to complete or whatever - sliding over to whateveroutragesite.com almost compulsively.
- TheMblabla 6y ago
  Try finding something else interesting to do instead, I found it made breaking the habit much easier
jariel 6y ago
“Who decided that this was important to you, and why did you let them decide that?” I love this, thanks. However, it is possible to have a view contrarian to whatever is being published. For the life of me, I cannot seem to find any news source that I feel comfortable with or even trust. Also - it's actually important that some people pay attention. The 'real news' is in the details, and it takes attention. Right now, there's a minor scandal in the Canadian government, but really it cuts very deep, to the point where the PM and the Minister of Finance are compromised, the later possibly in point blank illegal graft. These are the kinds of things that rot democratic institutions, and the manner in which they are conceived is usually quite subtle. The government sponsored news in Canada, is somewhat compromised by the fact that their source of funding comes from the source - and very unfortunately, some of the most detailed reporting is coming from the otherwise, low-grade daily tabloids. The only way to parse through the scandal is to read it all - and the only way for the electorate to solve the problem is to put enough political pressure, or, to vote them out. This is an unfortunate paradox, it does take quite a lot of attention on the part of the plebes to make sure things work well. It's really surprising how vague sometimes corruption can be: if the oversight board doesn't raise a huge fuss, and neither do the mainstream press - then it's simply 'not corruption'. It's weirdly a matter of interpretation and spin, sadly. 'Friends doing business with friends' is normal, the line that gets crossed is sometimes very grey. That said, it's 95% rubbish.
treebornfrog 6y ago
I wholeheartedly 100% agree with this. As soon as I entered the workforce @ 21 I cut out 2 things from my diet, sugar and news. This habit has compounded so much, not saying its been 100% perfect because I still read reddit, twitter (very selective following and blocking all outlets that end up on my TL) and HN (this place is a total bubble of smart, high IQ people, I enjoy the comments here, I don't get to interact with such smart people on a day to day). Any interesting developments will filter through my social circle, someone will bring it up. I stopped watching TV altogether, I stream the occasional show though.
mcswell 6y ago
Don't worry, we've always been at war with Eurasia, and nothing's changed. Oh--wait--MiniTruth is saying something about Eastasia... (All seriousness aside, you do have a point.)
_theory_ 6y ago
This is somehow correlated with the idea of knowing 'about' a thing vs knowing a thing. News, in a large majority of cases, is something that you learn about. Its not something you experience directly. In most cases, the most useful knowledge pertains to those things that you do or likely would soon experience directly, so news is therefore a mostly useless pastime. And if there's an upcoming election, you can always just read the candidate's stated policies and record of voting.

silicon2401 6y ago

I feel the exact same way. If there's something really important, it'll make its way to me. If there's something I want to know, I'll make my way to it. Otherwise it probably wasn't worth my time. Like you, I read about and hear acquaintances talk about anxiety, etc from the news so often, and just feel like I'm talking to someone complaining about sunburn and continuing to go out without sun protection

SamBam 6y ago

> I completely stopped all news watching/reading entirely. ... I seem to be better-informed. How do these square? How is it that you become informed?

pb7 6y ago
One way that I could imagine is having long-form discussions about it with friends rather than getting a journalist’s opinion and settling on it as fact.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
  But then you just had a discussion about your friends understanding of the issue, which is going to be another step removed from the journalist. And you're either relying on the friend to have done all the work for you, or you're just two people who haven't taken the time to look at the issue discussing it. To me, it seems that was lies strong opinions and without context.
  - pb7 6y ago
    There’s the rub. Your friend is more likely to have a similar point of view as you on a given topic so they can relay the necessary details for you, if the topic is important enough. No matter the topic, there will always be multiple spins on it so getting your friend’s spin is no better or worse than a journalist’s — or worse, the mob’s.
    - rickbad68 6y ago
      I would argue the friends spin is probably more reliable, depending on the friend of course, as at least they would not be motivated by ratings or money and probably are not intentionally trying to cultivate any certain biased viewpoint in you.
peterkelly 6y ago
Books

dencodev 6y ago

Does being on HN not count? Feel like I see lots of news on HN. It's in the name after all.

pb7 6y ago
Definitely cheating and I’m not the GP, but I would argue HN is curated enough to filter out most guilty pleasure outrage news cycles. Still in the same realm though. For example, the Twitter hack has made its rounds here but, say, Kanye having a political meltdown hasn’t necessarily (or at least I haven’t seen it) despite it being a prominent trend on Twitter.
- drenvuk 6y ago
  I'm going to be blunt here and say that you're wrong. There is no difference. The news may be curated and may be for a specific audience but the odds that it's just as useless to you as mainstream news is still very high. I don't say this to criticize, mind you. I'm here as well.
  - pb7 6y ago
    Perfectly fine — I’m only arguing for the sake of discussion. When I have gone on no-information binges, I included HN in them. Over time, I realized HN upsets (upsets may not be the right word — maybe mentally clouds or distracts?) me a considerable amount less. The links I look at are informative and inspire creativity; the discussions push me towards explaining my thoughts carefully rather than resorting to status games, false sense of superiority, and mob rule. HN is news, and as such, it is addicting and sometimes does upset me depending on the subject matter and how many people take on views that oppose mine, but I still think it’s an order of magnitude less so than things like Twitter.
  - tlarkworthy 6y ago
    Some of is technical content and useful for staying relevant in a fast paced industry. Some of it is garbage.
  - sjg007 6y ago

rootsudo 6y ago

This is a bit unrelated to HN, but in the terms of "memeculture." What you've discovered and described is called "NPC" by meme culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPC_(meme) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPC_(meme)

RealityVoid 6y ago
I find meme culture just as, if not worse than news in some ways. It convinces people that something that has enough truthiness and is funny enough is true.
war1025 6y ago
Can you elaborate on this? I am unsure if you are saying not watching the news makes him an NPC, or if the people who just parrot the news are the NPCs. I am leaning toward the latter, but based on your wording and the wording of the parent post, that's not what I initially expected.
- rootsudo 6y ago
  The later, the parroting of facts and the inability to go into deep detail besides being told information tidbits and repeating them is what makes the NPC so chilling in todays world. Especially when a few people get that high level of norieity and trust.
mumbisChungo 6y ago
It's kind of weird that this is attributed to 'memeculture', given that I can recall people referring to others (in a denigrating fashion) as NPCs back in the 90s, before 'meme' was part of our lexicon.
- Kye 6y ago
  The article is Start-Class. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Internet/Assessment#Quality_scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Internet... >> "A very basic description of the topic. Can be well-written, but may also have significant content issues." That means someone wrote it up on a whim and no one's come to address prior art in a way that suits the standards of Wikipedia.

13415 6y ago

The post reminds me of this: https://www.theonion.com/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-doesnt-own-a-televisi-1819565469 https://www.theonion.com/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-d... I don't agree in your main argument, which seems to be based on the idea that whatever makes you feel better is good. I, for one, prefer to read the news and watch the occasional clip online. It makes you better informed, which is essential for many things, including business and informed voting. Trying to be happy all the time is overrated.

bergstromm466 6y ago
> Trying to be happy all the time is overrated. Completely agree. “[B]y restoring grief to soul work, we are freed from our one-dimensional obsession with emotional progress. This “psychological moralism” places enormous pressure on us to always be improving, feeling good, and rising above our problems.2 Happiness has become the new mecca, and anything short of that often leaves us feeling that we have done something wrong or failed to live up to the acknowledged standard. This forces sorrow, pain, fear, weakness, and vulnerability into the underworld, where they fester and mutate into contorted expressions of themselves, often coated in a mantle of shame. People in my practice routinely apologize for their tears or for feeling sad. I am an advocate for a soul psychology that senses vitality in every emotion, whatever life offers to us in the moment. We will have times of being happy, which is cause for celebration. We will, however, also have times of sorrow and loneliness. Moods will come upon us and events will occur that evoke anger and outrage in us. In fact, archetypal psychologist James Hillman once noted that being outraged is a sure sign that our soul is awake. Each of these emotions and experiences has vitality in it, and that is our work: to be alive and to be a good host to whoever arrives at the door of our house. Happiness, then, becomes a reflection of our ability to hold complexity and contradiction, to stay fluid and accept whatever arises, even sorrow.” —Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow I loved that the Onion article, thanks for sharing it!

alfiedotwtf 6y ago

> “Who decided that this was important to you, and why did you let them decide that?” Thank you for that comment... I'm now going to turn on my news blackhole hosts file, which I disabled long ago. I remember being far more content back then so I'm not sure why I reverted back.

user00012-ab 6y ago
I use the leechblock plugin and have it redirect any site like twitter/reddit/hn to my todo list instead. I also have it setup so I can only view hackernews on Fridays so I'm not constantly loading it. I also subscribe to https://hackernewsletter.com/ https://hackernewsletter.com/ which is a list of all the interesting articles from hacker news from that week. (it comes out on Friday, thus I unblock on the site on my computer on Fridays)
- alfiedotwtf 6y ago
  > to my todo list instead Ha! That's awesome. That's an in-your-face "hey you, focus!"

darkerside 6y ago

I'm a little confused. I agree with some of your sentiment, but are developments w/r/t COVID not important?

ericsoderstrom 6y ago
> Name anything that happened 5 years ago. If it’s significant, I remember it. If it isn’t, I never heard about it at all, and nobody else remembers it either. OP has heard of COVID. It would be impossible not to. I follow a similar approach (avoiding news as much as possible) and I still am exposed to much more information about COVID than is useful.
- darkerside 6y ago
  So relying on informal networks to pass on the key information? That's actually a really sensible strategy. I retract my argument.
  - sjg007 6y ago
    You outsource it. Like I’m not on FB but my wife is.

shireboy 6y ago

Can I ask _how_ you did this? I've done some things like block sites on various devices, etc. But I do find myself still - when I'm waiting for a build to complete or whatever - sliding over to whateveroutragesite.com almost compulsively.

TheMblabla 6y ago
Try finding something else interesting to do instead, I found it made breaking the habit much easier

jariel 6y ago

“Who decided that this was important to you, and why did you let them decide that?” I love this, thanks. However, it is possible to have a view contrarian to whatever is being published. For the life of me, I cannot seem to find any news source that I feel comfortable with or even trust. Also - it's actually important that some people pay attention. The 'real news' is in the details, and it takes attention. Right now, there's a minor scandal in the Canadian government, but really it cuts very deep, to the point where the PM and the Minister of Finance are compromised, the later possibly in point blank illegal graft. These are the kinds of things that rot democratic institutions, and the manner in which they are conceived is usually quite subtle. The government sponsored news in Canada, is somewhat compromised by the fact that their source of funding comes from the source - and very unfortunately, some of the most detailed reporting is coming from the otherwise, low-grade daily tabloids. The only way to parse through the scandal is to read it all - and the only way for the electorate to solve the problem is to put enough political pressure, or, to vote them out. This is an unfortunate paradox, it does take quite a lot of attention on the part of the plebes to make sure things work well. It's really surprising how vague sometimes corruption can be: if the oversight board doesn't raise a huge fuss, and neither do the mainstream press - then it's simply 'not corruption'. It's weirdly a matter of interpretation and spin, sadly. 'Friends doing business with friends' is normal, the line that gets crossed is sometimes very grey. That said, it's 95% rubbish.

treebornfrog 6y ago

I wholeheartedly 100% agree with this. As soon as I entered the workforce @ 21 I cut out 2 things from my diet, sugar and news. This habit has compounded so much, not saying its been 100% perfect because I still read reddit, twitter (very selective following and blocking all outlets that end up on my TL) and HN (this place is a total bubble of smart, high IQ people, I enjoy the comments here, I don't get to interact with such smart people on a day to day). Any interesting developments will filter through my social circle, someone will bring it up. I stopped watching TV altogether, I stream the occasional show though.

mcswell 6y ago

Don't worry, we've always been at war with Eurasia, and nothing's changed. Oh--wait--MiniTruth is saying something about Eastasia... (All seriousness aside, you do have a point.)

_theory_ 6y ago

This is somehow correlated with the idea of knowing 'about' a thing vs knowing a thing. News, in a large majority of cases, is something that you learn about. Its not something you experience directly. In most cases, the most useful knowledge pertains to those things that you do or likely would soon experience directly, so news is therefore a mostly useless pastime. And if there's an upcoming election, you can always just read the candidate's stated policies and record of voting.