8 ms·
I have been in "no politics, no news" mode for over a month. I try to do this about once a year. I have yet to tell my wife I do it, but when I am on this limit
by pard68 4y ago
I have been in "no politics, no news" mode for over a month. I try to do this about once a year. I have yet to tell my wife I do it, but when I am on this limited media consumption she always comments how pleasant I am to be around. I think it is a good thing for all of us to do once in a while, until 80 years ago most news was at best three or four days old, go back 120 years and you're getting only last weeks top ten stories.
All that to say, I could not avoid this. Everyone has told me about this and the whole thing is just silly.
- SN76477 4y agoI ignore the majority of it myself. Maybe I'm a pessimist but there is little I can do to make an impact on geopolitics. I want to spend my energy on the things I can control and little energy on anything else. I'm much happier being completely unaware of whatever may be happening with the world.
- lettergram 4y ago> Maybe I'm a pessimist but there is little I can do to make an impact on geopolitics. I think quite the opposite — Geopolitics is impacted all the time by your actions. What you buy, what you say on forums like HN (where potentially tens of thousands read your comment), how you educate your kids, how many kids you have, how you influence co-workers. The reality, is the world is smaller than you think. What’s the phrase, “everyone with 6 connections away from anyone else”. If you can have a major or even minor impact in your local region of the graph, it’ll expand outward. I’m a cynical person by nature; but my cynicism comes from the lack of action / belief in action around me. You and everyone you know can really change the world in some way, if you push out your ideas and product(s) (like you are here btw, I’m not trying to claim you don’t) That said, I always focus locally to build the community I want to see. It influences geopolitics, but that starts at the coffee shop, book store, school, home, etc.
- DiggyJohnson 4y agoBeyond the local level, it seems like you’re conflating the “amount of influence an individual has” with “the amount of influence individuals can have [if they act at scale]”. Sorry for the short reply, I don’t mean to be dismissive; I hope that this makes sense.
- beaker52 4y agoI posit that the primary reason for this is that humans are bad at correlating cause and effect where there is a large delay between cause and effect - or the effect is not what was expected.
- hackernewds 4y agoDepends on if that "you" is understood to be everyone, or just myself as an individual. If collectively we were to thumb our ears with the same sentiment, then agree. Disagree that an unrelated individual would have such an impact - it's a romantic thought for sure, but a drop in the ocean is still a drop.
- mmaunder 4y agoSo interesting to see this thread. I carefully curate and limit my intake and am intensely aware of the anger economy news organizations have built to drive engagement. Glad to hear others are avoiding being a product and are staying healthy.
- tootie 4y agoThere is a large segment of media devoted to outrage but if you only follow serious news it's hard not to be outraged at things that unequivocally outrageous. Just watch a live feed of C-SPAN without commentary and there's plenty of insanity. And it's not the media had to tell me Russia invading Ukraine should make me angry.
- icelancer 4y ago>> Maybe I'm a pessimist but there is little I can do to make an impact on geopolitics. Ironically: >> I want to spend my energy on the things I can control and little energy on anything else. You'll make a bigger impact on geopolitics by doing this than ten people who incessantly post on social media about Ukraine, #MeToo, and spy balloons ever will.
- hackernewds 4y agoI would like that privilege as well, but unfortunately the stock market moves based on geopolitical happenings.
- SergeAx 4y agoMy favorite Russian joke of 2012 was this: — Daddy, which camp they are taking us to? — I don't know, son, I am not interested in politics.
- 49531 4y agoI can't tell if the joke is the man is foolish or wise for not being interested in politics.
- brabarossa 4y ago“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
- weard_beard 4y agoIf evil has already triumphed it is better to be the last to know.
- a_bonobo 4y agoThen again, there's a million evil things in my news-feed every day about which I can do precisely nothing, usually because they're in a different country. What does me knowing (in depressing detail!) about The Evil Thing I Have No Power About improve the situation in any way?
- danenania 4y agoI think it's valuable to have some baseline level of political knowledge and engagement, but there are definitely diminishing returns beyond that. Past a certain point, it seems to become a negative influence in most people's lives. But being completely apathetic about politics is a bit like not getting vaccinated for measles. It might work out ok for you, but it gets really dangerous when a majority of the population has that mindset.
- Arainach 4y agoIt makes you aware and prepared. Politics is not an island; tactics do not exist in isolation. As soon as one fascist proposes censoring school libraries in one state, others across the country look at the tactic and decide to stop it. It's much easier to proactively stop such things if you are aware of what to watch for.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- patrickdavey 4y agoYip, I just stopped reading news for a year 2 years ago. Then I restarted again last year, and now I've stopped again. Definitely better for my mental health! (and you see enough headlines here and other places that I still feel pretty informed)
- hindsightbias 4y agoEvents like this are really destructive to my ability to be critically reflective of my ego. It’ll be months before I feel normal around the populace again.
- DiggyJohnson 4y agoNot sure I understand: how does this news story impact your opinion of “the populace”? Also what is your personal definition of “the populace”? Is it everyone you don’t know personally? This seems like a tough mindset to find yourself in, but I want to make sure I understand what you mean.
- jimt1234 4y agoThe Brain Washing of My Dad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FS52QdHNTh8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FS52QdHNTh8
- wilg 4y agoI highly recommend this. Just stop bothering with Twitter and the news if you suspect it affects you negatively at all. You don’t really need to be that plugged in. The people commenting on every issue aren’t really helping anything.
- dmix 4y agoI could tell this was a dumb story from the beginning. The US gov deciding to make it super-important by not sending a top official to China was a natural fire-starter for regular people, not just news junkies. Ultimately, the only interesting conversation I got from it was why it might be hard to shoot down: A standard 50cal as used circa WW2 to shoot down balloons would be sufficient but too short ranged A fighter jet with an 20mm autocannon would easily deal with it but they also shoot 2000+ rounds a minute which would result in tons of dangerous rounds going right through then possibly hitting the ground near civillians. Modern autocannon bullets that will safely auto-destruct in the air but there wasn't an US airforce craft that had them available. etc, etc, etc. https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1621960968375877632 https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1621960968375877632 So even totally wasteful stories can generate interesting thought experiments. Even when the total sum of human attention is a million times out of whack of the IRL value of caring in the first place.
- ashwagary 4y ago>You don’t really need to be that plugged in. The people commenting on every issue aren’t really helping anything. I agree, replace the time wasted on feeding various outrage machines with building.
- photochemsyn 4y agoSputnik 2.0 It's a serious warning that the U.S. is dangerously behind China when it comes to balloon technology. Note also, balloons are one way of colonizing Venus (floating high in the atmosphere without having to approach the dangerously hot surface). Clearly we need a Venus Balloon Program to show who's the technological leader on this planet, just like with the Apollo Mission. Mars is for wimps, real explorers go to Venus! Now's let's put $50 billion into it. The prototype is already here (2022): https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/jpls-venus-aerial-robotic-balloon-prototype-aces-test-flights https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/jpls-venus-aerial-robotic-ball... [edit: to be clear I am absolutely not joking. Spending huge sums of money on space exploration is a much better use of government funds than getting involved in ground wars in Asia]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- notyourwork 4y agoSorry but I find “ that the U.S. is dangerously behind” laughable. A ballon around so your conclusion is to draw conclusions on the advances of nation states.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- idlewords 4y agoThe Venusian zeppelin mission is awesome; the upper atmosphere there is probably the most earthlike environment in the Solar System. Only the acid clouds prevent the crew from just being able to open the windows and sit around drinking beer in a medical oxygen mask and swimsuit.
- rascul 4y ago> Only the acid clouds prevent the crew from just being able to open the windows and sit around drinking beer in a medical oxygen mask and swimsuit. You just ruined Venus for me. Thanks.
- greentext 4y ago> when I am on this limited media consumption she always comments how pleasant I am to be around IMO the news is little more than a sales pitch for antidepressants, life insurance and "retail therapy".
- throwawaylinux 4y agoDoes reading news really make you unpleasant to be around? That sounds like a fairly major red flag.
- conductr 4y agoI have the complete inverse experience. I rarely care much about news and politics. I maybe spend 10 minutes a week to browse headlines and keep generally aware of current events. However, about once a year I get sucked into some topic or election or whatever and my consumption goes through the roof. My wife doesn’t care for that stuff at all so we don’t even talk about politics or anything, so she’s unaware that I’ve been dialed in to media but it always happens that after a couple weeks she starts saying “everything ok? You’ve been kind of a jerk/short/angry towards everyone lately”
- SpeedilyDamage 4y agoFor what it's worth, I'm not sure this is healthy; you should be able to consume news without having it effect your mood so negatively. Might be time to talk to a therapist about it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- odessacubbage 4y agomost news and politics are tacit exercises in emotional manipulation. i'll leave it to you to decide which emotional states are most valued.
- notjoemama 4y agoI disagree and while I think I understand what you're saying I'm surprised by it. News is often intentionally devicive, misleading, and salacious for a reason. Being affected by propaganda does not come anywhere near a need for therapy. In fact I'd say it is a sign someone has critical thinking and a likely a fair base of information. In the face of the facade of trust clearly lying or engaging in rhetoric, hyperbole, or passive language, the only rational response os to be bothered by it. The contrary runs the risk of being manipulated by whomever for whatever reason. I've switched to a nonpartisian news source and its had a simialar benefit for me.
- brookst 4y agoI think you’re saying you don’t trust yourself to be an adult. Which is a healthy observation if you struggle with that, or an unhealthy one if you can process biased info.
- SpeedilyDamage 4y agoI think it's a key skill for an adult to have, to be aware of one's own emotional state and be able to self regulate based on that awareness. If someone struggles to apply that to the consumption of news media, I worry about their ability to apply this skill to events in life that are much more impactful, like a speeding ticket or the loss of a job.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]