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Biggest quality of life benefit I've given myself in the past two months: Turn off the news. If something is actually important, you'll hear about it anyway.

Biggest quality of life benefit I've given myself in the past two months: Turn off the news. If something is actually important, you'll hear about it anyway. And if you don't hear about it, it wasn't actually as important as the reporters made it out to be. Plus in all likelihood the events being reported on are thousands of miles away from you and have zero impact on your daily life. Obviously this pairs well with cutting out all the nonsense on your social media feeds.

trevyn 6y ago
I highly recommend turning off all audible/vibrational alerts on your devices, allowing exceptions for channels that are only used for true emergencies. After that, try not using your phone at all for 24 hours, laptops/desktops still allowed.
MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
Reddit honestly killed news for me because of the trump presidency. For years I thought he'd be removed from office. Turns out redditors blew unbelievably small things out of proportion to the point that many including myself just ignored it cause it would change anything. Getting off reddit has been one of the best things in my life. Discord has helped find more positive outlets for me to waste my time. But lastly, get a hobby that isn't just working on getting better at something. It's cool if you can do like 30 different things, but that's hard. Know your limits and budget screw around time to help unwind.
- mrlala 6y ago
  Well, I think the bigger problem is the actual general insanity of the last 4 years, mixed in with growing social media. It's horrible for people to have to be bombarded by trolling and lies by the president on a daily basis. (To those who wish to deny that, please don't bother because you are wrong, it's not a debate). >For years I thought he'd be removed from office. Turns out redditors blew unbelievably small things out of proportion Eh yes and no.. any other president before trump would have resigned in disgrace about 100 times. I don't think it's blowing things out of proportion when the PRESIDENT is constantly calling people names on twitter on a daily basis and doing his best to divide. Anyway.. I agree the best solution is to try and avoid seeing shit daily, and I'm really really hoping in two months we can go back to not hearing about politics every fucking day unless we really want to seek it out.
  - njanirudh 6y ago
    Just an fyi Its comments like yours also who are responsible for creating reddit news circlejerk. Trump is not good but is he as messed up as you are saying? Maybe not because I felt the democrats were as horrible if not more. Look at their SJW stance, shitty things done to remove trump at any cost, berating anyone who dosnt fall in line with their shitty policies, supporting BLM rioters, playing victim card for everything
  - mellosouls 6y ago
    That whole "one side is evil and don't bother responding if you disagree" tone is part of the problem.
    - creata 6y ago
      Honestly, I think it's part of the solution. Too many words are spent in online arguments between two people who aren't at all open to changing their beliefs. If people are willing to admit that at the outset, everyone's time is spared. But anyway, mrlala said "wrong", not "evil", and in this particular case, the evidence is on Trump's Twitter account for everyone to see.
      - kortilla 6y ago
        Until you can assign the people you disagree with to the gas chambers, it’s not a solution. They are still there, still voting, etc. 4 years of hysterics and the guy got even more votes than before. Calling them dumb/wrong and not worth engaging is not working.
    - DavidSJ 6y ago
      I don’t think the “don’t bother responding” part is productive, but I also think we have to avoid false equivalences, pretending both sides are anywhere close in terms of how much they’ve misbehaved (not saying you’re doing that, but a lot of people are in an attempt to stay above the fray). False equivalence is how the frogs got boiled and we ended up where we are today.
- justEgan 6y ago
  Why not just unsubscribe to any news-related subreddits? And unchecking the "use new reddit as my default experience" while you're at it.
  - numpad0 6y ago
    I’d rather agree with the parent. There’s something in Reddit that it consume a person worse than Twitter does. Constantly asking for righteous micro-decisions for one thing. It’s always a fight for some justice, and where there isn’t, the corporate fuels it.
    - twic 6y ago
      No, it isn't. There are plenty of subs that just talk about their thing. justEgan is entirely correct to point out that you can avoid politics or news if you want to. An awful lot of people do have this idea that you just have to turn the whole thing off, though. And i see a lot of people on Reddit equally incorrectly saying that about Twitter! I wonder why.
      - tubularhells 6y ago
        Can you point me to one of these subs you are talking about?
        shearez 6y ago
        /r/buildapc is a good example. There is very little discussion outside of the intended topic.
        bighitbiker3 6y ago
        Most of the synthesizer and music subs
        com2kid 6y ago
        /r/askculinary /r/askengineers /r/SEUT Lots of the fiction and story subreddits, /r/maliciouscompliance is hilarious. There are multitudes of art and music subreddits, choose your favorite genres. /r/neutralpolitics is a great heavily moderated subreddit that requires HQ citations for any statements of fact posted. The diet and fitness subreddits are super supportive and positive. Tons of artists have their own subreddits, e.g. Swordscomic got its start on Reddit, and still has a really active subreddit.
- patrickk 6y ago
  You can create a RES[1] filter to remove the Trump keyword, or any other of your choice. Carefully pruning your subscribed subreddit list makes Reddit worth it. I still get value from buildapc, homeassistant, patientgamer, ipod, rugbyunion, and some others that concern other interests and hobbies. I do agree that people shoe-horning Trump into everything is extremely annoying. [1] https://redditenhancementsuite.com/ https://redditenhancementsuite.com/
  - Loughla 6y ago
    I would add that 'Reddit is Fun' is the best mobile reddit app that I've found, and allows for username, keyword, and subreddit filtering. Very, very useful.
- Rillen 6y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean though. I'm much more surprised that he did not got impeached. Talking to Russia without recordings? His quid pro quo? His political business deals in mar-a-lago? His illegal hush money? His blant missuse of power with people like Barr? Is it the fault of reddit that the american people have not stood up? Is it reddits fault that there are so many people in the republican party without any spine? (not saying this does't exist on dem sides as well) His lies? Have you ever had a person lie to so many people constantly? You should not have ignored it, you should have gone to the streets every single time.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    >His lies? Have you ever had a person lie to so many people constantly? Yes. Any other president. But they did it with more panache, and were less garish, so that was OK for the mainstream liberal media.
    - Rillen 6y ago
      Others misstake doesn't make it better. We should have always stood up and made it clear that lying is not okay. And 'any other president'. Really? Do you have examples for this? I'm not aware of any president doing it that strong, that crazy, that often.
      - coldtea 6y ago
        >Others misstake doesn't make it better. "Better" is a relative term, so others mistakes do make it better. If anything, it shows that it's hysteria to scream and panic for something that's more or less business as usual, just more gaudy and with worse PR, and without sharing all the establishments bloodthirstiness for wars, invasion, and interventions. I'd rather have self-serving deals for golf courses than the nth trillion dollar invasion...
        Rillen 6y ago
        I do think corona shows rather nicely how critical good leadership is. We should assume that other things also had impacts for people lives. Otherwise it would mean that a President isn't relevant at all. While one person takes care of a self-serving deal for golf courses, the other person would sit down and educate themselves on topics like climate change, education and current education system issues etc. I'm quite bewildered, that you actually prefer a self-serving deals over everything else he could do. And your two options are missleading arent they? Its not a black and white topic.
- coldtea 6y ago
  >Turns out redditors blew unbelievably small things out of proportion Just redditors? All established media...
  - MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
    I get that but when you have morons who can make a post at a whim and equally influenced morons, they spread the media garbage like wildfire then get mad at you when you state it's false or wrong just because it doesn't support their worldview.
- deeeeplearning 6y ago
  >Turns out redditors blew unbelievably small things out of proportion to the point that many including myself just ignored it cause it would change anything. Not sure this is right. I think Trump has actually just demolished norms at such an astonishing rate that the system can't keep up and things that 10 years would have torpedoed a campaign or a presidency now get forgotten in the 24 Hour shitshow that has been the Trump administration. Remember it wasn't that long ago that Howard Dean blew up his entire presidential campaign just by "screaming" at an event.
- jancsika 6y ago
  > Reddit honestly killed news for me because of the trump presidency. Reddit for news is like StackOverflow for programming. If come to either one already knowledgeable in the given area looking for a quick supplement, they are a boon. If you use them as a substitute for knowledge, they are harmful.
  - MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
    Half the time that's what I use reddit for anyway. I agree with this statement whole heartedly. Reddit just has too many eggs in one basket milking their own community for free labor at this point.
cyberlurker 6y ago
If everyone does this doesn’t it become a problem that no one is being informed? How can we vote or make decisions on trends if everyone is only reacting to major events? But I do agree, my stress goes down when I tune out the news.
- jasonv 6y ago
  You can be informed reading the right resources once a week. Being exposed to news content isn’t the same thing as being informed. And we don’t vote daily..
  - checkyoursudo 6y ago
    This is how I cut down my news consumption. I switched from reading a lot of news sites most days to picking the couple sites that I like the best and mostly only reading those. And then I read a few of the truly interesting-seeming articles that bubble up on places like this here website, etc. Pre-internet, I would only buy one newspaper, and occasionally pick up a second when I was out if there was something eye-catching. I would also occasionally buy a magazine or two at the bookshop once or twice per month. I have tried to emulate this method again with the web, and it seems to be working. I was never a person who would read every available newspaper and magazine before, so figured maybe I should not do the same online. I am much happier not to face the firehose anymore.
    - kqr 6y ago
      > And then I read a few of the truly interesting-seeming articles that bubble up on places like this here website, etc. This approach comes with an obvious sampling bias lurking. I'm not going to tell you not to do it, but it's something to be aware about. That's why I prefer to have my news curated by a small set of organisations that are more diverse and can make me inform myself on a broader set of issues than the ones I would naturally find interesting.
      - checkyoursudo 6y ago
maurys 6y ago
I switched off Chrome's recommended article feed after reading this. Are there any tools that help limit bumping into news? I've also been trying to reduce casual news consumption.
- tannhaeuser 6y ago
  > Are there any tools that help limit bumping into news? Yes. It's called "RSS".
- luplex 6y ago
  relentlessly unfollow/mute people who talk about news online.
- powersnail 6y ago
  Increase serious news consumption. Read multiple sources, keep yourself on top of things, then sensationalized headlines won't stir your emotions as much.
platz 6y ago
You can to learn to read the headlines without investing an emotional response in reaction to them. This makes it much easier. Look at it like more being curious about what kind of a world we must be in, rather than what you are supposed to feel about it (rather, what they want you to feel about it). Also when you can plainly identify the calls to emotional action in the headlines, then you're free to ignore it; and can just take away what actual content may or may not be there.
- shostack 6y ago
  You can also read Reddit post headlines, particularly in /r/politics, and train yourself to ignore the ones where the headline is a statement and not actual news. Unsurprisingly, this tends to consistently come from certain fairly biased publications that appear to disproportionately surface to the top there lately (I'm looking at you Common Dreams). Cutting out all the fluff and focusing on news helped me save time and stress.
  - rorykoehler 6y ago
    /r/politics is basically the liberal version of /r/conservative. I go to /r/conservative to laugh at how bat shit insane they are. Then I go to /r/politics and I see the same gaslighting tactics deployed. It's really unnecessary and depressing tbh. So tribal. My personal persuasion is much closer to liberal than conservative fwiw.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  I would be careful with that. It's a common practice to lie[0] in a headline, then correct it in the article. This makes headlines have negative informational value - you're literally more wrong about the world after scrolling quickly through a news page than you would be if you didn't. -- [0] - Usually by omission or exaggeration, not by outright stating false facts.
  - platz 6y ago
    Sure, well I didn't mean to imply to only read headlines; definitely dig in on stuff that seems worthy of interest. Also, that's exactly why I added the clause "or may not be there" :) That's part of the skill when reading headlines - training to see it as a dirty filter and seeing if there are any glints in the dirt that are interesting enough to follow up on. point taken, however
nitemice 6y ago
I take your point, but I disagree. Ignoring the news, and just expecting the "important" stuff to magically penetrate is a great way to live in wilful ignorance, and/or let people/governments/corporations get away with a lot of bad stuff that others around you have deemed insignificant. I could probably name half a dozen things off the top of my head that would affect your opinion or behaviour towards various things in your daily life, that you aren't aware of because they aren't considered "important" enough. And I guess if you're okay with indirectly supporting workplace sexual abuse, money laundering, unsustainable work and management abuse, the erosion of civil rights, and destruction of the environments, then sure, I guess it's not important.
- koonsolo 6y ago
  So how is you watching the news going to solve all these last things that you mention? I also don't watch the news. Do you really think we don't know those things are happening? News is entertainment. If you really want to get smarter, read books from people who are experts in their field. Edit: if you do want to read a book, start with "Trust me, I'm lying". It will give you a whole new perspective on news reporting.
- xmprt 6y ago
  If something isn't actionable then is it worth taking up your attention? I agree with you that some news is worth consuming but that's only because I occasionally discuss it with friends.
  - nitemice 6y ago
    I agree. If it's not actionable, then it's just adding to the doom. But not all of it is not actionable. And you definitely can't take actions based on information you don't have. Even just telling your friends about it is arguably action, because while it's not actionable to you, maybe it is to them, or maybe it's something you can take action on as a group. Obviously finding a balance is essential, so you can be well informed and reactive, but also not drown in doom. I'll admit: it's a balance I haven't found, but I firmly believe living in a metaphorical hole isn't going to make anything better.
beagle3 6y ago
“If something is actually important you’ll hear about it” basically means you have resigned to believe the corporate/government spin on everything. By the time you “hear about it everywhere” because it’s important, it has already been twisted and distorted, and given the party-line spin. Which is a valid choice, of course - but you should be aware of that, and — if you care about facts rather than narrative - ignore the stuff when you hear about it as well.
- anon9001 6y ago
  Even for people paying attention, it's hard to follow all the spin and understand which organizations are pushing which ideas and why. The US now has tens of millions of citizens that believe the election was stolen. I think they're mostly just "normal" people who have tuned out and now can't tell which way is up. The reason I pay attention is because following news daily is actually less cognitive load than trying to catch up when a significant plot twist happens that might impact me.
  - amurthy1 6y ago
    I think this is a good take, most news doesn't directly affect you but is necessary context to make sense of the news that is relevant to your life
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > “If something is actually important you’ll hear about it” basically means you have resigned to believe the corporate/government spin on everything. No. It only means you're using your social networks (both Internet and meatspace ones) as an importance filter. It doesn't mean you have to form your worldview around the first piece of information that reaches you passively. It's about being deliberate about news consumption. The way I follow the principle is: if I hear about something and it crosses the threshold of importance, I hit multiple different news pages simultaneously, as well as smaller communities, to ingest multiple points of view and hopefully get a relatively low-bias picture of events. But when I don't have a specific important thing to look for, I don't read the news sites at all. BTW. I gave up on news ~14 years ago, after realizing that following news stories every evening was causing me great amounts of stress. Every day, I felt the country or the world was about to go down in flames. Well, turns out here we are, 14 years later, and nothing of such proportions ever happened. I'm also reminded of someone on HN (can't remember the handle) who says they're reading the news every day - just not the current news, only one week's old news. Even taking it as a mental experiment is a good reminder that 90%+ of stuff on the news is utterly irrelevant and unimportant.
kqr 6y ago
It's not black and white. You don't have to turn off all news to avoid the junk. There are still people who serve meaningful news; you just have to know where to look. People mean very different things when they say news, I've found. Most of what people think of as "news" is human interest story garbage churned out as quickly as possible to get the most number of eyeballs. This category includes even a lot of supposedly reputable newspapers, unfortunately. This is great if you are looking for lunchtime gossip or just something to distract or entertain yourself with. Not so good if you want to learn something or expand your world view. The way I see it, good news - gives historical context, - dives deeply, - covers the entire globe, - discusses incremental changes and not only big events, - reflects on multiple perspectives, - doesn't overemphasise human interest stories, and - provides you with actual data. Good news, ironically, ages well. There are still some people that work with real news. There was a recent Ask HN about favourite magazines and journals[1], where some of the comments mentioned The Economist[2] (a long-time favourite of mine) and Delayed Gratification[3] (which I can't personally vouch for but I admire their goal.) [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25159931 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25159931 [2]: https://www.economist.com/ https://www.economist.com/ [3]: https://www.slow-journalism.com/ https://www.slow-journalism.com/
- rorykoehler 6y ago
  The Economist comes up often as a shining beacon in these discussions but everytime I read it I'm hit by a wall of aggressive neoliberalism. It may mesh better with your personal world view but it's also a propaganda over facts publication. By that I don't mean they aren't factual but rather that they are very selective in which facts to surface in order to craft a narrative that will hopefully sway the reader into thinking a certain way.
  - s279 6y ago
    Their news reporting isn't that bad, but what is bad is the mixing of a large number of editorial pieces that do still wave a neoliberalist flag. I encourage having a look at https://www.adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart-2/ https://www.adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart-2... for a decent appraisal of various sources.
dmje 6y ago
I'm with you on this. I mean, I struggle with it - Trump, CV, Brexit, etc - it's all pretty clickbaity stuff, built for hours of mindless browsing - but ultimately, what does an endless newscycle actually do to an individual? I live in Cornwall in the UK: much of this stuff is - anger and distaste and "long distance fear" aside - completely irrelevant. I think Trump is appalling, but really, what difference does it make to me? None whatsoever. What difference can I make to whether he's in power or not? None whatsoever. What is net result of me seeing yet more news about how redundant a human being he is? I get cross, depressed, and - as per OP's article - man, I waste a bunch of time I'll never get back. The problem I've struggled with is that there is presumably a continuum at the end of this "caring less" approach which is the "why bother voting" lassitude, and I certainly don't want to go that way. I'm still passionately left wing, passionate about helping fix inequality and the environment and so on - so news at a higher level is important. But I'm not sure the sort of rapid, breathless, clickbaity HORROR cycle does anything for anyone.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  I think you have your answer here: > I'm still passionately left wing, passionate about helping fix inequality and the environment and so on What's the most effective way to gain information and insight about these topics and ways to contribute? Is it following the breaking news? Probably not. The real problems don't change hourly or daily, and information doesn't go stale. So instead of today's news, it may be better to find books on these topics, as well as recent but not that recent reports, investigative journalism, etc. - things that are not meant to be a part of a daily news cycle. Solid information from sources like that, and refined beliefs formed thanks to it, will make you a better voter too.
lostmsu 6y ago
Disagree here. Lots of news can have profound impact on your life, if missed on time. For instance, I never heard of the temporary +0.5% to mortgage refinancing, that lenders will have to pay to federal banks starting Dec 1st, until an article few weeks ago here. This was planned back in June, but now it is too late to act on.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  Profound effect of a one-time 50bpps fee on mortgage refis between $125K and around $510K (whatever the conforming loan limit is in your area)? That’s maybe $2000 on average and that for someone who’s probably living in a $600K+ home. How many hours would you spend watching and fretting about the news to avoid this (and similar) couple thousand dollar “profound effects”? You’d probably be better off learning to change your own brakes or do some other part of home maintenance. Financially, time-wise, and mentally.
  - lostmsu 6y ago
    So that's just one topic of news articles, that might have a cost of $2000. And no, I don't think ability to change own brakes is more valuable. But the point is - it is a relatively good example of something, that affects a lot of people.
justforfunhere 6y ago
Your comment reminds of something Douglas Adams once said: >> * In this century (and the previous century) we modelled one-to-one communications in the telephone, which I assume we are all familiar with. We have one-to-many communication - boy do we have an awful lot of that; broadcasting, publishing, journalism, etc. - we get information poured at us from all over the place and it's completely indiscriminate as to where it might land. It's curious, but we don't have to go very far back in our history until we find that all the information that reached us was relevant to us and therefore anything that happened, any news, whether it was about something that's actually happened to us, in the next house, or in the next village, within the boundary or within our horizon, it happened in our world and if we reacted to it the world reacted back. It was all relevant to us, so for example, if somebody had a terrible accident we could crowd round and really help. Nowadays, because of the plethora of one-to-many communication we have, if a plane crashes in India we may get terribly anxious about it but our anxiety doesn't have any impact. We're not very well able to distinguish between a terrible emergency that's happened to somebody a world away and something that's happened to someone round the corner. We can't really distinguish between them any more, which is why we get terribly upset by something that has happened to somebody in a soap opera that comes out of Hollywood and maybe less concerned when it's happened to our sister. We've all become twisted and disconnected and it's not surprising that we feel very stressed and alienated in the world because the world impacts on us but we don't impact the world. Then there's many-to-one; we have that, but not very well yet and there's not much of it about. Essentially, our democratic systems are a model of that and though they're not very good, they will improve dramatically. * Link: http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/ http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/
- KineticLensman 6y ago
  > we don't have to go very far back in our history until we find that all the information that reached us was relevant to us and therefore anything that happened, any news, whether it was about something that's actually happened to us, in the next house, or in the next village, within the boundary or within our horizon, it happened in our world and if we reacted to it the world reacted back Well Douglas Adams is a great writer and all that but this is a massive simplification, at least in the UK [0]. There is an extensive history of public opinion being swayed by highly politicised media, also a lot of state control on what could be said. E.g. salacious gossip about the royals. There was also a lot of graphic media - essentially political cartoons - that were very highly political and intended to inflame opinion. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_journalism_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_journalism_in_the_U...
a4444f 6y ago
After a while, you may discover, that (also) you create the news.
irthomasthomas 6y ago
"I start my day full of enthusiasm for the eternal verities which life has to offer. The momement I open a newspaper I am immediately dissillusioned and wrecked" Patrick Kavanagh ~1960s.
Rillen 6y ago
My problem with this is really simple: You do see the scaling effect in stuff like corona or on a sunny sunday: Suddenly everyone is going to the park. What if suddenly everyone stops looking at news? Acting and reacting? What if the stress i get through the news will never be necessary but what if there is another regime and we need everyone being on alert and standing up and knowing whats going on? Yin and Yang, finding the balance in our generation is not easy. I get that, i see that, i experience it myself but while i'm sometimes ready to not care i'm worried that i might not react correctly anymore when it counts.
- KozmoNau7 6y ago
  You can't cut out news completely, obviously you're going to hear stuff from other people or through other means. But I think cutting out almost all news media is a good choice to make. My reasoning is this: most of the stuff in the general news is something you can do absolutely nothing about, at most it may influence your choices at election time or best case inform you about a scandal involving some company, letting you avoid doing business with them in the future. Everything else is just noise that creates anxiety.
llarsson 6y ago
My possibly better option: choose a boring news service. Deutsche Welle, for instance. You learn of important news, but it is not written in a way to make you emotionally light up like a Christmas tree.
- thunderbong 6y ago
  In my opinion, DW is the best news source out there. Even on TV, the DW channel is such a pleasure to watch. Their news seem to be way more wholesome, and, instead of just providing same 'breaking news' ad nauseam, does so much more. I invariably feel more enriched after watching it. BBC and PBS are the only others which I watch besides DW. https://www.dw.com/en https://www.dw.com/en Edit: I just downloaded their app and I noticed it has a 'text only' and an 'offline' mode! Truly wonderful! https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.idmedia.android.newsportal&hl=en_IN&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.idmedia.an...
- mattbk1 6y ago
  Mr. Money Mustache once suggested "slow news" as a way to keep up but not be involved in every little thing. His suggestion was The Economist. Any source that doesn't publish on a daily schedule should be able to provide more valuable context.
jschulenklopper 6y ago
Did a similar thing over a decade ago - I don't even own a television anymore. What I spend most of my days, weeks and months on is largely unrelated to what's happening in the world (and the news' bias towards the negative subset of that). Not following the news thus removes a lot of the sensationalist and negative stream, and saves a lot of time (including possibly worrying on what I just saw/read). If it's really important, I'll hear it anyway. Recently, I did start a subscription on a national newspaper though, but it allows me to a) select what I read, b) skip over things I'm not interested in (even throwing away the whole paper if I don't want to read it that day). I happen to like some columnists and the variation of daily puzzles.
koheripbal 6y ago
I've changed the time-of-day that I consume news/social media. I find if I do it at night before bed, it significantly limits the amount of distraction I have during the day - and often I just forget to look. It's those little 'hacks' I use to trick myself into managing my emotional state. After 40 years, I've found that the most effective way to manage myself is to treat myself as a toddler.
0goel0 6y ago
Why don't you some the same rule to HN? It's literally news too
- war1025 6y ago
  At the highest tier of garbage, you have cable news channels. They exist to keep you irritated and anxious because otherwise there would be nothing for them to talk to you about all day every day. Video news in general is worse than talk / text because they can hijack your visual senses to get you worked up. I used to listen to a lot of NPR. I always told myself they were fair and balanced and couldn't use visuals to deceive me. Over the summer, I realized that they are little better than the liberal version of conservative talk radio. Which is a shame, because I put a lot of faith in them for about a decade. Local news papers are probably decent at a lot of things, but having known people who interact with reporters for them, local papers tend to be just as biased as anything else. They are, after all, just run by people. I get most of my "national" news these days through either here on HN or a couple twitter feeds that seem to curate what they retweet pretty well. Local news, my friends and neighbors are plugged in to the community and we experience news in real time. Honestly, I think for most things, you will get a better understanding of the landscape if you aren't hearing it from people who have a monetary interest in you wanting to come back for more "news" tomorrow. And on that note, I have cut down on my twitter quite a bit as well lately.
sleepysysadmin 6y ago
Go test for yourself. Go on whichever news site you like and check how many articles actually matter to your life. I bet virtually none. The news isn't about you or me. It's about controlling you and me. It's about propaganda.
bussiere 6y ago
If i had done this i would miss the covid19 pandemic in france. In france in the begining it was always : "It's nothing, it will never come in france, it's just a common influenza nothing important. Even when china contained a whole town ... By passing one hour per day to read news i was able to predict the containment in france and to prepare myself and my familly ...
- bussiere 6y ago
  In france our president told is to go to the theater during the pandemic : https://www.bfmtv.com/people/emmanuel-et-brigitte-macron-au-theatre-pour-inciter-les-francais-a-sortir-malgre-le-coronavirus_AN-202003070063.html https://www.bfmtv.com/people/emmanuel-et-brigitte-macron-au-...
IngoBlechschmid 6y ago
> Plus in all likelihood the events being reported on are thousands of miles away from you and have zero impact on your daily life. In some sense, the quoted statement is obviously right. But in another sense, it's wrong. To cite just one particular example which is dear to my heart because I work closely with school children and students: News about the climate crisis typically originate in some far-away location. But to fight the climate crisis, we have to get organized in every single city, including the city you live in.
- hi5eyes 6y ago
  how exactly will "organizing" "fight" the current climate crisis? can you even outline the necessary steps individuals must take to have any real impact in this "fight" as opposed to massive institutional change Goethe: "If one has not read the newspapers for some months & then reads them all together, one sees, as one never saw before, how much time is wasted with this kind of literature." is it me or do a lot of people seem to justify their thirst for mostly pointless and irrelevant information with the idea that all this information will somehow lead to direct action on their particular issue?
circlefavshape 6y ago
I did this years ago and it has made my life better and stopped me stressing about many things over which I have zero control I used to listen to a news radio show called Morning Ireland while eating breakfast. That was the first thing to go. A few years later I tuned into it one morning, and they were pretty much saying the exact same stuff as they had been 3 years previously. This encouraged me to continue ignoring it Shortly afterwards I was having dinner in a friend's house, and related the above, and it turned out one of the other dinner guests was (and still is) one of the presenters on Morning Ireland :/ (he was good-humoured about it, in fairness)
Taylor_OD 6y ago
I've never been a huge news guy. The day the election was over I quit reddit. I don't miss it at all. I use twitter and hackernews. That is it. I've saved so much time over the last few weeks.
b215826 6y ago
> Turn off the news. Related: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews

trevyn 6y ago

I highly recommend turning off all audible/vibrational alerts on your devices, allowing exceptions for channels that are only used for true emergencies. After that, try not using your phone at all for 24 hours, laptops/desktops still allowed.

MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago

Reddit honestly killed news for me because of the trump presidency. For years I thought he'd be removed from office. Turns out redditors blew unbelievably small things out of proportion to the point that many including myself just ignored it cause it would change anything. Getting off reddit has been one of the best things in my life. Discord has helped find more positive outlets for me to waste my time. But lastly, get a hobby that isn't just working on getting better at something. It's cool if you can do like 30 different things, but that's hard. Know your limits and budget screw around time to help unwind.

mrlala 6y ago
Well, I think the bigger problem is the actual general insanity of the last 4 years, mixed in with growing social media. It's horrible for people to have to be bombarded by trolling and lies by the president on a daily basis. (To those who wish to deny that, please don't bother because you are wrong, it's not a debate). >For years I thought he'd be removed from office. Turns out redditors blew unbelievably small things out of proportion Eh yes and no.. any other president before trump would have resigned in disgrace about 100 times. I don't think it's blowing things out of proportion when the PRESIDENT is constantly calling people names on twitter on a daily basis and doing his best to divide. Anyway.. I agree the best solution is to try and avoid seeing shit daily, and I'm really really hoping in two months we can go back to not hearing about politics every fucking day unless we really want to seek it out.
- njanirudh 6y ago
  Just an fyi Its comments like yours also who are responsible for creating reddit news circlejerk. Trump is not good but is he as messed up as you are saying? Maybe not because I felt the democrats were as horrible if not more. Look at their SJW stance, shitty things done to remove trump at any cost, berating anyone who dosnt fall in line with their shitty policies, supporting BLM rioters, playing victim card for everything
- mellosouls 6y ago
  That whole "one side is evil and don't bother responding if you disagree" tone is part of the problem.
  - creata 6y ago
    Honestly, I think it's part of the solution. Too many words are spent in online arguments between two people who aren't at all open to changing their beliefs. If people are willing to admit that at the outset, everyone's time is spared. But anyway, mrlala said "wrong", not "evil", and in this particular case, the evidence is on Trump's Twitter account for everyone to see.
    - kortilla 6y ago
      Until you can assign the people you disagree with to the gas chambers, it’s not a solution. They are still there, still voting, etc. 4 years of hysterics and the guy got even more votes than before. Calling them dumb/wrong and not worth engaging is not working.
  - DavidSJ 6y ago
    I don’t think the “don’t bother responding” part is productive, but I also think we have to avoid false equivalences, pretending both sides are anywhere close in terms of how much they’ve misbehaved (not saying you’re doing that, but a lot of people are in an attempt to stay above the fray). False equivalence is how the frogs got boiled and we ended up where we are today.
justEgan 6y ago
Why not just unsubscribe to any news-related subreddits? And unchecking the "use new reddit as my default experience" while you're at it.
- numpad0 6y ago
  I’d rather agree with the parent. There’s something in Reddit that it consume a person worse than Twitter does. Constantly asking for righteous micro-decisions for one thing. It’s always a fight for some justice, and where there isn’t, the corporate fuels it.
  - twic 6y ago
    No, it isn't. There are plenty of subs that just talk about their thing. justEgan is entirely correct to point out that you can avoid politics or news if you want to. An awful lot of people do have this idea that you just have to turn the whole thing off, though. And i see a lot of people on Reddit equally incorrectly saying that about Twitter! I wonder why.
    - tubularhells 6y ago
      Can you point me to one of these subs you are talking about?
      - shearez 6y ago
        /r/buildapc is a good example. There is very little discussion outside of the intended topic.
      - bighitbiker3 6y ago
        Most of the synthesizer and music subs
      - com2kid 6y ago
        /r/askculinary /r/askengineers /r/SEUT Lots of the fiction and story subreddits, /r/maliciouscompliance is hilarious. There are multitudes of art and music subreddits, choose your favorite genres. /r/neutralpolitics is a great heavily moderated subreddit that requires HQ citations for any statements of fact posted. The diet and fitness subreddits are super supportive and positive. Tons of artists have their own subreddits, e.g. Swordscomic got its start on Reddit, and still has a really active subreddit.
patrickk 6y ago
You can create a RES[1] filter to remove the Trump keyword, or any other of your choice. Carefully pruning your subscribed subreddit list makes Reddit worth it. I still get value from buildapc, homeassistant, patientgamer, ipod, rugbyunion, and some others that concern other interests and hobbies. I do agree that people shoe-horning Trump into everything is extremely annoying. [1] https://redditenhancementsuite.com/ https://redditenhancementsuite.com/
- Loughla 6y ago
  I would add that 'Reddit is Fun' is the best mobile reddit app that I've found, and allows for username, keyword, and subreddit filtering. Very, very useful.
Rillen 6y ago
I'm not sure what you mean though. I'm much more surprised that he did not got impeached. Talking to Russia without recordings? His quid pro quo? His political business deals in mar-a-lago? His illegal hush money? His blant missuse of power with people like Barr? Is it the fault of reddit that the american people have not stood up? Is it reddits fault that there are so many people in the republican party without any spine? (not saying this does't exist on dem sides as well) His lies? Have you ever had a person lie to so many people constantly? You should not have ignored it, you should have gone to the streets every single time.
- coldtea 6y ago
  >His lies? Have you ever had a person lie to so many people constantly? Yes. Any other president. But they did it with more panache, and were less garish, so that was OK for the mainstream liberal media.
  - Rillen 6y ago
    Others misstake doesn't make it better. We should have always stood up and made it clear that lying is not okay. And 'any other president'. Really? Do you have examples for this? I'm not aware of any president doing it that strong, that crazy, that often.
    - coldtea 6y ago
      >Others misstake doesn't make it better. "Better" is a relative term, so others mistakes do make it better. If anything, it shows that it's hysteria to scream and panic for something that's more or less business as usual, just more gaudy and with worse PR, and without sharing all the establishments bloodthirstiness for wars, invasion, and interventions. I'd rather have self-serving deals for golf courses than the nth trillion dollar invasion...
      - Rillen 6y ago
        I do think corona shows rather nicely how critical good leadership is. We should assume that other things also had impacts for people lives. Otherwise it would mean that a President isn't relevant at all. While one person takes care of a self-serving deal for golf courses, the other person would sit down and educate themselves on topics like climate change, education and current education system issues etc. I'm quite bewildered, that you actually prefer a self-serving deals over everything else he could do. And your two options are missleading arent they? Its not a black and white topic.
coldtea 6y ago
>Turns out redditors blew unbelievably small things out of proportion Just redditors? All established media...
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
  I get that but when you have morons who can make a post at a whim and equally influenced morons, they spread the media garbage like wildfire then get mad at you when you state it's false or wrong just because it doesn't support their worldview.
deeeeplearning 6y ago
>Turns out redditors blew unbelievably small things out of proportion to the point that many including myself just ignored it cause it would change anything. Not sure this is right. I think Trump has actually just demolished norms at such an astonishing rate that the system can't keep up and things that 10 years would have torpedoed a campaign or a presidency now get forgotten in the 24 Hour shitshow that has been the Trump administration. Remember it wasn't that long ago that Howard Dean blew up his entire presidential campaign just by "screaming" at an event.
jancsika 6y ago
> Reddit honestly killed news for me because of the trump presidency. Reddit for news is like StackOverflow for programming. If come to either one already knowledgeable in the given area looking for a quick supplement, they are a boon. If you use them as a substitute for knowledge, they are harmful.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
  Half the time that's what I use reddit for anyway. I agree with this statement whole heartedly. Reddit just has too many eggs in one basket milking their own community for free labor at this point.

cyberlurker 6y ago

If everyone does this doesn’t it become a problem that no one is being informed? How can we vote or make decisions on trends if everyone is only reacting to major events? But I do agree, my stress goes down when I tune out the news.

jasonv 6y ago
You can be informed reading the right resources once a week. Being exposed to news content isn’t the same thing as being informed. And we don’t vote daily..
- checkyoursudo 6y ago
  This is how I cut down my news consumption. I switched from reading a lot of news sites most days to picking the couple sites that I like the best and mostly only reading those. And then I read a few of the truly interesting-seeming articles that bubble up on places like this here website, etc. Pre-internet, I would only buy one newspaper, and occasionally pick up a second when I was out if there was something eye-catching. I would also occasionally buy a magazine or two at the bookshop once or twice per month. I have tried to emulate this method again with the web, and it seems to be working. I was never a person who would read every available newspaper and magazine before, so figured maybe I should not do the same online. I am much happier not to face the firehose anymore.
  - kqr 6y ago
    > And then I read a few of the truly interesting-seeming articles that bubble up on places like this here website, etc. This approach comes with an obvious sampling bias lurking. I'm not going to tell you not to do it, but it's something to be aware about. That's why I prefer to have my news curated by a small set of organisations that are more diverse and can make me inform myself on a broader set of issues than the ones I would naturally find interesting.
    - checkyoursudo 6y ago

maurys 6y ago

I switched off Chrome's recommended article feed after reading this. Are there any tools that help limit bumping into news? I've also been trying to reduce casual news consumption.

tannhaeuser 6y ago
> Are there any tools that help limit bumping into news? Yes. It's called "RSS".
luplex 6y ago
relentlessly unfollow/mute people who talk about news online.
powersnail 6y ago
Increase serious news consumption. Read multiple sources, keep yourself on top of things, then sensationalized headlines won't stir your emotions as much.

platz 6y ago

You can to learn to read the headlines without investing an emotional response in reaction to them. This makes it much easier. Look at it like more being curious about what kind of a world we must be in, rather than what you are supposed to feel about it (rather, what they want you to feel about it). Also when you can plainly identify the calls to emotional action in the headlines, then you're free to ignore it; and can just take away what actual content may or may not be there.

shostack 6y ago
You can also read Reddit post headlines, particularly in /r/politics, and train yourself to ignore the ones where the headline is a statement and not actual news. Unsurprisingly, this tends to consistently come from certain fairly biased publications that appear to disproportionately surface to the top there lately (I'm looking at you Common Dreams). Cutting out all the fluff and focusing on news helped me save time and stress.
- rorykoehler 6y ago
  /r/politics is basically the liberal version of /r/conservative. I go to /r/conservative to laugh at how bat shit insane they are. Then I go to /r/politics and I see the same gaslighting tactics deployed. It's really unnecessary and depressing tbh. So tribal. My personal persuasion is much closer to liberal than conservative fwiw.
TeMPOraL 6y ago
I would be careful with that. It's a common practice to lie[0] in a headline, then correct it in the article. This makes headlines have negative informational value - you're literally more wrong about the world after scrolling quickly through a news page than you would be if you didn't. -- [0] - Usually by omission or exaggeration, not by outright stating false facts.
- platz 6y ago
  Sure, well I didn't mean to imply to only read headlines; definitely dig in on stuff that seems worthy of interest. Also, that's exactly why I added the clause "or may not be there" :) That's part of the skill when reading headlines - training to see it as a dirty filter and seeing if there are any glints in the dirt that are interesting enough to follow up on. point taken, however

nitemice 6y ago

I take your point, but I disagree. Ignoring the news, and just expecting the "important" stuff to magically penetrate is a great way to live in wilful ignorance, and/or let people/governments/corporations get away with a lot of bad stuff that others around you have deemed insignificant. I could probably name half a dozen things off the top of my head that would affect your opinion or behaviour towards various things in your daily life, that you aren't aware of because they aren't considered "important" enough. And I guess if you're okay with indirectly supporting workplace sexual abuse, money laundering, unsustainable work and management abuse, the erosion of civil rights, and destruction of the environments, then sure, I guess it's not important.

koonsolo 6y ago
So how is you watching the news going to solve all these last things that you mention? I also don't watch the news. Do you really think we don't know those things are happening? News is entertainment. If you really want to get smarter, read books from people who are experts in their field. Edit: if you do want to read a book, start with "Trust me, I'm lying". It will give you a whole new perspective on news reporting.
xmprt 6y ago
If something isn't actionable then is it worth taking up your attention? I agree with you that some news is worth consuming but that's only because I occasionally discuss it with friends.
- nitemice 6y ago
  I agree. If it's not actionable, then it's just adding to the doom. But not all of it is not actionable. And you definitely can't take actions based on information you don't have. Even just telling your friends about it is arguably action, because while it's not actionable to you, maybe it is to them, or maybe it's something you can take action on as a group. Obviously finding a balance is essential, so you can be well informed and reactive, but also not drown in doom. I'll admit: it's a balance I haven't found, but I firmly believe living in a metaphorical hole isn't going to make anything better.

beagle3 6y ago

“If something is actually important you’ll hear about it” basically means you have resigned to believe the corporate/government spin on everything. By the time you “hear about it everywhere” because it’s important, it has already been twisted and distorted, and given the party-line spin. Which is a valid choice, of course - but you should be aware of that, and — if you care about facts rather than narrative - ignore the stuff when you hear about it as well.

anon9001 6y ago
Even for people paying attention, it's hard to follow all the spin and understand which organizations are pushing which ideas and why. The US now has tens of millions of citizens that believe the election was stolen. I think they're mostly just "normal" people who have tuned out and now can't tell which way is up. The reason I pay attention is because following news daily is actually less cognitive load than trying to catch up when a significant plot twist happens that might impact me.
- amurthy1 6y ago
  I think this is a good take, most news doesn't directly affect you but is necessary context to make sense of the news that is relevant to your life
TeMPOraL 6y ago
> “If something is actually important you’ll hear about it” basically means you have resigned to believe the corporate/government spin on everything. No. It only means you're using your social networks (both Internet and meatspace ones) as an importance filter. It doesn't mean you have to form your worldview around the first piece of information that reaches you passively. It's about being deliberate about news consumption. The way I follow the principle is: if I hear about something and it crosses the threshold of importance, I hit multiple different news pages simultaneously, as well as smaller communities, to ingest multiple points of view and hopefully get a relatively low-bias picture of events. But when I don't have a specific important thing to look for, I don't read the news sites at all. BTW. I gave up on news ~14 years ago, after realizing that following news stories every evening was causing me great amounts of stress. Every day, I felt the country or the world was about to go down in flames. Well, turns out here we are, 14 years later, and nothing of such proportions ever happened. I'm also reminded of someone on HN (can't remember the handle) who says they're reading the news every day - just not the current news, only one week's old news. Even taking it as a mental experiment is a good reminder that 90%+ of stuff on the news is utterly irrelevant and unimportant.

kqr 6y ago

It's not black and white. You don't have to turn off all news to avoid the junk. There are still people who serve meaningful news; you just have to know where to look. People mean very different things when they say news, I've found. Most of what people think of as "news" is human interest story garbage churned out as quickly as possible to get the most number of eyeballs. This category includes even a lot of supposedly reputable newspapers, unfortunately. This is great if you are looking for lunchtime gossip or just something to distract or entertain yourself with. Not so good if you want to learn something or expand your world view. The way I see it, good news - gives historical context, - dives deeply, - covers the entire globe, - discusses incremental changes and not only big events, - reflects on multiple perspectives, - doesn't overemphasise human interest stories, and - provides you with actual data. Good news, ironically, ages well. There are still some people that work with real news. There was a recent Ask HN about favourite magazines and journals[1], where some of the comments mentioned The Economist[2] (a long-time favourite of mine) and Delayed Gratification[3] (which I can't personally vouch for but I admire their goal.) [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25159931 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25159931 [2]: https://www.economist.com/ https://www.economist.com/ [3]: https://www.slow-journalism.com/ https://www.slow-journalism.com/

rorykoehler 6y ago
The Economist comes up often as a shining beacon in these discussions but everytime I read it I'm hit by a wall of aggressive neoliberalism. It may mesh better with your personal world view but it's also a propaganda over facts publication. By that I don't mean they aren't factual but rather that they are very selective in which facts to surface in order to craft a narrative that will hopefully sway the reader into thinking a certain way.
- s279 6y ago
  Their news reporting isn't that bad, but what is bad is the mixing of a large number of editorial pieces that do still wave a neoliberalist flag. I encourage having a look at https://www.adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart-2/ https://www.adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart-2... for a decent appraisal of various sources.

dmje 6y ago

I'm with you on this. I mean, I struggle with it - Trump, CV, Brexit, etc - it's all pretty clickbaity stuff, built for hours of mindless browsing - but ultimately, what does an endless newscycle actually do to an individual? I live in Cornwall in the UK: much of this stuff is - anger and distaste and "long distance fear" aside - completely irrelevant. I think Trump is appalling, but really, what difference does it make to me? None whatsoever. What difference can I make to whether he's in power or not? None whatsoever. What is net result of me seeing yet more news about how redundant a human being he is? I get cross, depressed, and - as per OP's article - man, I waste a bunch of time I'll never get back. The problem I've struggled with is that there is presumably a continuum at the end of this "caring less" approach which is the "why bother voting" lassitude, and I certainly don't want to go that way. I'm still passionately left wing, passionate about helping fix inequality and the environment and so on - so news at a higher level is important. But I'm not sure the sort of rapid, breathless, clickbaity HORROR cycle does anything for anyone.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
I think you have your answer here: > I'm still passionately left wing, passionate about helping fix inequality and the environment and so on What's the most effective way to gain information and insight about these topics and ways to contribute? Is it following the breaking news? Probably not. The real problems don't change hourly or daily, and information doesn't go stale. So instead of today's news, it may be better to find books on these topics, as well as recent but not that recent reports, investigative journalism, etc. - things that are not meant to be a part of a daily news cycle. Solid information from sources like that, and refined beliefs formed thanks to it, will make you a better voter too.

lostmsu 6y ago

Disagree here. Lots of news can have profound impact on your life, if missed on time. For instance, I never heard of the temporary +0.5% to mortgage refinancing, that lenders will have to pay to federal banks starting Dec 1st, until an article few weeks ago here. This was planned back in June, but now it is too late to act on.

sokoloff 6y ago
Profound effect of a one-time 50bpps fee on mortgage refis between $125K and around $510K (whatever the conforming loan limit is in your area)? That’s maybe $2000 on average and that for someone who’s probably living in a $600K+ home. How many hours would you spend watching and fretting about the news to avoid this (and similar) couple thousand dollar “profound effects”? You’d probably be better off learning to change your own brakes or do some other part of home maintenance. Financially, time-wise, and mentally.
- lostmsu 6y ago
  So that's just one topic of news articles, that might have a cost of $2000. And no, I don't think ability to change own brakes is more valuable. But the point is - it is a relatively good example of something, that affects a lot of people.

justforfunhere 6y ago

Your comment reminds of something Douglas Adams once said: >> * In this century (and the previous century) we modelled one-to-one communications in the telephone, which I assume we are all familiar with. We have one-to-many communication - boy do we have an awful lot of that; broadcasting, publishing, journalism, etc. - we get information poured at us from all over the place and it's completely indiscriminate as to where it might land. It's curious, but we don't have to go very far back in our history until we find that all the information that reached us was relevant to us and therefore anything that happened, any news, whether it was about something that's actually happened to us, in the next house, or in the next village, within the boundary or within our horizon, it happened in our world and if we reacted to it the world reacted back. It was all relevant to us, so for example, if somebody had a terrible accident we could crowd round and really help. Nowadays, because of the plethora of one-to-many communication we have, if a plane crashes in India we may get terribly anxious about it but our anxiety doesn't have any impact. We're not very well able to distinguish between a terrible emergency that's happened to somebody a world away and something that's happened to someone round the corner. We can't really distinguish between them any more, which is why we get terribly upset by something that has happened to somebody in a soap opera that comes out of Hollywood and maybe less concerned when it's happened to our sister. We've all become twisted and disconnected and it's not surprising that we feel very stressed and alienated in the world because the world impacts on us but we don't impact the world. Then there's many-to-one; we have that, but not very well yet and there's not much of it about. Essentially, our democratic systems are a model of that and though they're not very good, they will improve dramatically. * Link: http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/ http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/

KineticLensman 6y ago
> we don't have to go very far back in our history until we find that all the information that reached us was relevant to us and therefore anything that happened, any news, whether it was about something that's actually happened to us, in the next house, or in the next village, within the boundary or within our horizon, it happened in our world and if we reacted to it the world reacted back Well Douglas Adams is a great writer and all that but this is a massive simplification, at least in the UK [0]. There is an extensive history of public opinion being swayed by highly politicised media, also a lot of state control on what could be said. E.g. salacious gossip about the royals. There was also a lot of graphic media - essentially political cartoons - that were very highly political and intended to inflame opinion. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_journalism_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_journalism_in_the_U...

a4444f 6y ago

After a while, you may discover, that (also) you create the news.

irthomasthomas 6y ago

"I start my day full of enthusiasm for the eternal verities which life has to offer. The momement I open a newspaper I am immediately dissillusioned and wrecked" Patrick Kavanagh ~1960s.

Rillen 6y ago

My problem with this is really simple: You do see the scaling effect in stuff like corona or on a sunny sunday: Suddenly everyone is going to the park. What if suddenly everyone stops looking at news? Acting and reacting? What if the stress i get through the news will never be necessary but what if there is another regime and we need everyone being on alert and standing up and knowing whats going on? Yin and Yang, finding the balance in our generation is not easy. I get that, i see that, i experience it myself but while i'm sometimes ready to not care i'm worried that i might not react correctly anymore when it counts.

KozmoNau7 6y ago
You can't cut out news completely, obviously you're going to hear stuff from other people or through other means. But I think cutting out almost all news media is a good choice to make. My reasoning is this: most of the stuff in the general news is something you can do absolutely nothing about, at most it may influence your choices at election time or best case inform you about a scandal involving some company, letting you avoid doing business with them in the future. Everything else is just noise that creates anxiety.

llarsson 6y ago

My possibly better option: choose a boring news service. Deutsche Welle, for instance. You learn of important news, but it is not written in a way to make you emotionally light up like a Christmas tree.

thunderbong 6y ago
In my opinion, DW is the best news source out there. Even on TV, the DW channel is such a pleasure to watch. Their news seem to be way more wholesome, and, instead of just providing same 'breaking news' ad nauseam, does so much more. I invariably feel more enriched after watching it. BBC and PBS are the only others which I watch besides DW. https://www.dw.com/en https://www.dw.com/en Edit: I just downloaded their app and I noticed it has a 'text only' and an 'offline' mode! Truly wonderful! https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.idmedia.android.newsportal&hl=en_IN&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.idmedia.an...
mattbk1 6y ago
Mr. Money Mustache once suggested "slow news" as a way to keep up but not be involved in every little thing. His suggestion was The Economist. Any source that doesn't publish on a daily schedule should be able to provide more valuable context.

jschulenklopper 6y ago

Did a similar thing over a decade ago - I don't even own a television anymore. What I spend most of my days, weeks and months on is largely unrelated to what's happening in the world (and the news' bias towards the negative subset of that). Not following the news thus removes a lot of the sensationalist and negative stream, and saves a lot of time (including possibly worrying on what I just saw/read). If it's really important, I'll hear it anyway. Recently, I did start a subscription on a national newspaper though, but it allows me to a) select what I read, b) skip over things I'm not interested in (even throwing away the whole paper if I don't want to read it that day). I happen to like some columnists and the variation of daily puzzles.

koheripbal 6y ago

I've changed the time-of-day that I consume news/social media. I find if I do it at night before bed, it significantly limits the amount of distraction I have during the day - and often I just forget to look. It's those little 'hacks' I use to trick myself into managing my emotional state. After 40 years, I've found that the most effective way to manage myself is to treat myself as a toddler.

0goel0 6y ago

Why don't you some the same rule to HN? It's literally news too

war1025 6y ago
At the highest tier of garbage, you have cable news channels. They exist to keep you irritated and anxious because otherwise there would be nothing for them to talk to you about all day every day. Video news in general is worse than talk / text because they can hijack your visual senses to get you worked up. I used to listen to a lot of NPR. I always told myself they were fair and balanced and couldn't use visuals to deceive me. Over the summer, I realized that they are little better than the liberal version of conservative talk radio. Which is a shame, because I put a lot of faith in them for about a decade. Local news papers are probably decent at a lot of things, but having known people who interact with reporters for them, local papers tend to be just as biased as anything else. They are, after all, just run by people. I get most of my "national" news these days through either here on HN or a couple twitter feeds that seem to curate what they retweet pretty well. Local news, my friends and neighbors are plugged in to the community and we experience news in real time. Honestly, I think for most things, you will get a better understanding of the landscape if you aren't hearing it from people who have a monetary interest in you wanting to come back for more "news" tomorrow. And on that note, I have cut down on my twitter quite a bit as well lately.

sleepysysadmin 6y ago

Go test for yourself. Go on whichever news site you like and check how many articles actually matter to your life. I bet virtually none. The news isn't about you or me. It's about controlling you and me. It's about propaganda.

bussiere 6y ago

If i had done this i would miss the covid19 pandemic in france. In france in the begining it was always : "It's nothing, it will never come in france, it's just a common influenza nothing important. Even when china contained a whole town ... By passing one hour per day to read news i was able to predict the containment in france and to prepare myself and my familly ...

bussiere 6y ago
In france our president told is to go to the theater during the pandemic : https://www.bfmtv.com/people/emmanuel-et-brigitte-macron-au-theatre-pour-inciter-les-francais-a-sortir-malgre-le-coronavirus_AN-202003070063.html https://www.bfmtv.com/people/emmanuel-et-brigitte-macron-au-...

IngoBlechschmid 6y ago

> Plus in all likelihood the events being reported on are thousands of miles away from you and have zero impact on your daily life. In some sense, the quoted statement is obviously right. But in another sense, it's wrong. To cite just one particular example which is dear to my heart because I work closely with school children and students: News about the climate crisis typically originate in some far-away location. But to fight the climate crisis, we have to get organized in every single city, including the city you live in.

hi5eyes 6y ago
how exactly will "organizing" "fight" the current climate crisis? can you even outline the necessary steps individuals must take to have any real impact in this "fight" as opposed to massive institutional change Goethe: "If one has not read the newspapers for some months & then reads them all together, one sees, as one never saw before, how much time is wasted with this kind of literature." is it me or do a lot of people seem to justify their thirst for mostly pointless and irrelevant information with the idea that all this information will somehow lead to direct action on their particular issue?

circlefavshape 6y ago

I did this years ago and it has made my life better and stopped me stressing about many things over which I have zero control I used to listen to a news radio show called Morning Ireland while eating breakfast. That was the first thing to go. A few years later I tuned into it one morning, and they were pretty much saying the exact same stuff as they had been 3 years previously. This encouraged me to continue ignoring it Shortly afterwards I was having dinner in a friend's house, and related the above, and it turned out one of the other dinner guests was (and still is) one of the presenters on Morning Ireland :/ (he was good-humoured about it, in fairness)

Taylor_OD 6y ago

I've never been a huge news guy. The day the election was over I quit reddit. I don't miss it at all. I use twitter and hackernews. That is it. I've saved so much time over the last few weeks.

b215826 6y ago

> Turn off the news. Related: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews