44 ms·

Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

• leefi1 2y ago
  [dead]
• Fin_Code 2y ago
  Just view a topic on Reddit then on X. You can't be outraged both ways and it should cancel out.
  • darthrupert 2y ago
    This more than doubles the outrage. You'll have to hate yourself for being so mistaken before.
  • cratermoon 2y ago
    as if "both" ways is all there is.
• parliament32 2y ago
  Personally, I fixed the problem by not bothering with "staying informed" at all. I ditched media outside of local news entirely, and just don't engage with things that I can't do anything about. It would boil down to "focus on things you can control." Sure, it's fun to be outraged together with your friends about "X leader in Y country does Z crazy thing" but.. can you do anything about it? Does your opinion matter? Is there value in engaging with it? Turns out the answer is almost always no (unless you're suffering from main-character-syndrome, of course), so what's the point? Focus on you. What are you doing today? What do you need to reflect on from yesterday? What do you need to plan for tomorrow? Don't waste cycles on things that are out of your scope.
  • lm28469 2y ago
    There is an equilibrium to find. democracy isn't just showing up every 4 or 5 years to drop a piece of paper in a box. Most countries have rights to protest, organise, strike, for a reason. Most of these rights were gained after long fights in which single individual was meaningless but together they moved contains. You have to know when to pull back but you also have to know when to dive in
  • baal80spam 2y ago
    > It would boil down to "focus on things you can control" If it only was so simple. How to define such things? Case in point: the biggest "outrage factor" seems to be politics. Well - _can_ you control your country's government? Yes, you can - however not directly. And this means that "I don't care about politics" stance is bad. edit: spelling
    • parliament32 2y ago
      It's an excellent point, but is there value in you (as an American, I presume) being around-the-clock outraged for the next four years? Or does it make sense for you to do some research and make a decision in the few weeks leading up to an election? What can you "control" here in the other 206 weeks of the current term? I'm not saying you shouldn't care about politics at all. But politics in a country you're not a citizen of are irrelevant. And politics in your own country only really matter when it's time to vote, right? So what's the value in "staying informed" outside of that narrow window?
      • int_19h 2y ago
        > And politics in your own country only really matter when it's time to vote, right? Not really, since by the time you get to vote, it might, for example, so happen that there are no real opposition candidates, because they are effectively blocked from running. Or the opposition is there, but is locked out from all the usual mass propaganda outlets (TV etc).
    • trimethylpurine 2y ago
      You can control it. But if you're controlling it based on the media's interpretation then you are the one being controlled. Turn off the TV and vote based on how things affect you locally. I think that's what the previous commenter means.
    • NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
      Not that it would've ever changed my vote, but the candidate was going to win my state regardless of how I voted. Even if I and every other person who is psychologically capable of choosing the other candidate... they were always going to win this state. So no, I can't control my government. I've known this a long while now, I'm not a fool. >es, you can - however not directly. And this means that "I don't care about politics" stance is bad. Though you might not be aware of it, you're repeating propaganda that actually aids some nebulous group of people. It seeks to recruit me and my efforts to further their purposes, none of which overlap my own significantly. I can't exert significant indirect influence either. And if I were to pool my insignificant influence with others (such as you suggest) to influence government, it would almost certainly be towards ends I do not agree with. I can be used by others, so to speak, but no one's on my side. I might get to watch one group I don't agree with go killdozer on another group I don't agree with, and it will be entertaining to watch supposing I can maintain enough distance from the carnage.
  • cal85 2y ago
    You can do all three: (1) focus on you etc, (2) take an interest in global events, and (3) not get outraged. It really is possible.
    • dageshi 2y ago
      Perhaps it depends on the individual, but I never found it possible. The news just made me sad, sad and angry most of the time, it's just a stream of 24/7 misery and if there's not enough misery going on locally the news will find misery from around the world to fill the run time.
      • ryandrake 2y ago
        What helped me is to realize: Sadness and anger come from within, not from the outside. Nobody can "make" you mad. They will do what they do, and it's up to us to decide if and how to emotionally respond to it. We are not amoebas that simply respond to stimulus. We have agency over our own thoughts and feelings. This is something I try to teach my kid, and I think it's also helped her deal with others who she would previously say "made her mad."
        • dageshi 2y ago
          I think "deciding whether to emotionally respond" to something... isn't emotion? Emotion is something you feel, not something you decide to allow yourself to feel. Like, if I hear about someone being raped or murdered, how am I not going to have an emotional reaction of sadness or anger to that? And ultimately what use was that emotion? I cannot prevent the event happening, it has already happened, I am just a voyeur to someone else's tragedy. Most of the news is like that. It's events that have already happened, that I can do nothing about but I'm vaguely meant to be up to date with because.... reasons? Some vague concept that everyone is meant to have an inch deep understanding of current events so they've got something to gossip about? I truly don't see the point or the benefit.
          • lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
  • DasCorCor 2y ago
    What am I doing today? Taking care of my son. Trying to have another child. What do I need to plan for tomorrow? How am I going to vaccinate my child next year? How do I get my wife medical care if she has another unviable pregnancy? How small of a life you must lead that you can just not engage.
    • parliament32 2y ago
      All fair points. I'm having trouble understanding how this relates to the outrage-centered media, however. Current top stories on the CNN frontpage are: > Trump's effort to end birthright citizenship is blocked nationwide > Trump’s Gaza plan is the most outlandish in region’s peacemaking history > China is building a giant laser to generate the energy of the stars, satellite images appear to show Is your child not a citizen? Are you child's vaccines related to Gaza, somehow? Will China's laser affect your wife's pregnancy? Why do you feel the need to engage with this?
      • DasCorCor 2y ago
        So your argument to not engaging is that my argument isn’t sufficiently updated to the onslaught of news today? RFK passed committee yesterday. Trump planning to use our military for a middle east genocide isn’t something that I should worry about?!? Where were you on 9/11?
        • Novosell 2y ago
          Will worrying stop Trump? I believe that is the overarching point here. Stressing over things you can't/won't impact is largely a waste of time and energy. Your worry wont help Gaza.
          • DasCorCor 2y ago
            Worrying is a precursor for planning and action. I have agency. We all do. Sad that you squander yours.
  • Lendal 2y ago
    If you're a citizen of a democracy and you only focus on you, then when it comes time to vote you'll be voting randomly. Or maybe you don't vote and thereby cede control to your neighbors to make decisions for you over the environment in which you live. Assuming you decide to vote then, and since you don't live in a vacuum, your vote will be based on whatever random stuff leaked through to you during the time you were "focusing on you". Actually it's not random. It's whoever spent the most time and money on the propaganda that influences/buys your vote. So it's not really that simple is it?
    • FredPret 2y ago
      Democracy works if everyone votes for the thing(s) they care about. You likely don’t need a news site for information about that.
      • master-lincoln 2y ago
        Except in most "democracies" there is no direct voting on issues. Instead you vote for parties or people who you believe align with your values. To find out about those people/parties you probably need "news"
        • FredPret 2y ago
          How on earth do you need a newspaper to tell you which political party aligns with your values? Depending on where you live, there’s 2-10 parties. You know who they are and what they want. If you want to affect the outcome you can get involved in your local politics; being glued to NYT.com all day isn’t changing one thing except wasting time.
    • parliament32 2y ago
      > when it comes time to vote you'll be voting randomly Not at all, I think citizens have an obligation to vote, and an obligation to do their research when it's time to vote. But let's say that takes you a week. Why bother being focused on the outrage during the rest of the term? What value is there to you being mad at whatever politician on week 15 of their 208 week term? If anything, I'd say "staying informed" is a hinderance, because you'll always just be focused on the issue-of-the-day and build mental biases rather than being able to take a wider view of what the politician implemented, and how it played out over a period of time afterwards. Whether you're influenced by facts or "propaganda" unfortunately depends entirely on your own research and critical thinking skills, and has little to do with timing.
  • hkpack 2y ago
    Unfortunately, I'm not sure that it is a viable strategy long term. When you finally decide to pay attention, there is a chance that you will not be able to easily absorb everything that leads to the situation so you will lack any perspective of the past events. We live in an extremely dense and complex times, staying informed is very difficult as it is even when you try to pay attention.
• throw0101c 2y ago
  >> It's been like what, only two weeks? This shit is exhausting already. > It's meant to exhaust you. * https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1886247034664964548 https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1886247034664964548 Ezra Klein: > That is the tension at the heart of Trump’s whole strategy: Trump is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president. He is trying to substitute perception for reality. He is hoping that perception then becomes reality. That can only happen if we believe him. […] > What Trump wants you to see in all this activity is command. What is really in all this activity is chaos. They do not have some secret reservoir of focus and attention the rest of us do not. They have convinced themselves that speed and force is a strategy unto itself — that it is, in a sense, a replacement for a real strategy. Don’t believe them. * https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-trump-column-read.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...
  • trimethylpurine 2y ago
    These quotes and articles are awful. Both sides are so insanely annoying to me. The media has gotten completely out of touch with reality and with people.
  • okeuro49 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • bende511 2y ago
      you already had Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. what more immiseration could you really be hoping for
      • okeuro49 2y ago
        They're nothing like Trump? You should research what happened to Liz Truss.
        • wesselbindt 2y ago
• softwaredoug 2y ago
  One thing is read the article, not just the headline. Get the nuance, learn what’s actually happening, see what people are doing to react. You’ll not feel as frozen if you understand that a fluid situation has many directions it can take and it’s not set in stone.
  • smgit 2y ago
    "In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention" Platforms have realized this long ago, that as info explodes people pay attention to the easiest things to pay attention too not the hardest, so they move resources to designing things like reels and shorts and tweets etc etc. Every earnings call they gloat about how shorter form content is exploding and how thrilled they are about it. The long form stuff only holds attention of the majority if you keep throwing Novelty on the table every two sentences. Platforms are basically running an animal domestication program, where people have been rewarded with high rep and status for extremely low cognitive work. So that entire group that has benefited doesn't see any need for nuance and depth in anything. "Cause look how many likes, clicks, views and followers I have accumulated without it"
  • etblg 2y ago
    As one of the seemingly few people who actually do read the article and not just the headline, it makes all the discussion people have around news infuriating. Most articles I come across have a very fiery headline, then you dig in to the article and the facts are different, and/or the sources are dubious, and/or there's historical precedent for the thing that makes it not seem so strange this time, and/or the article doesn't dive deeply enough in to the details, etc. Political biases and current events aside, it all sucks! It's so annoying that I have to do the legwork of reading through the article carefully and following through in factchecking outside of the article to get the meat of it out, and after all that, it feels like no one else does the same.
    • macrocosmos 2y ago
• comrade1234 2y ago
  I basically just get my news from the onion now.
  • addandsubtract 2y ago
    Onion news are just news from the future.
    • RIMR 2y ago
      I hope you're right about that: https://theonion.com/trump-executed-1850257714/ https://theonion.com/trump-executed-1850257714/
      • Clubber 2y ago
        It's unfortunate that so many people are radicalized today.
  • smcnally 2y ago
    A recent financial report on the media industry noted The Onion is on the verge of collapse due to, quote, “not being able to able to make sh*t up that is more idiotic than current reality.”
• yowayb 2y ago
  Those of us in the west tend to forget that much of what we see is a form of propaganda, whether by governments or businesses, or even a large number of people. When you keep this in mind, everything you see becomes an opinion and your mind can comfortably (or at least not emotionally/hurriedly) form your own opinion over time.
  • rpastuszak 2y ago
    Easier said than done. Bear in mind that the way information is served is meant to trigger strong emotional responses, skip the prefrontal cortex and tickle your amygdala. You can limit how much it impacts you, say, through reducing exposure, but you can't reason your way out of it. (this is a response to the comment, not the article)
    • gergo_b 2y ago
      You cannot logic someone out of something they didn't logic themselves into. 90% of what we feel is primal in-group survival.
  • browningstreet 2y ago
    I agree that most messaging is propaganda, but that doesn't really counter the real pain that is being inflicted upon large populations of people by these government (and corporate) moves, and being cheered on by pretty large masses of people. The propaganda is like environmental pollution -- hard not to breathe it in. That said, I have no answer here..
    • breakingrules3 2y ago
      my advice to you that cant breathe it in is leave your fantasy where propaganda is pollution and join reality where it does not impact you. also if you live in reality instead of the fantasy, you will just be less outraged in general.
      • anticorporate 2y ago
• karaterobot 2y ago
  Avoid following the news constantly. Check in every once in a while—a couple times a week at most. Get your news from long articles, not tweets. Actually read the articles, don't just learn about the world from hot takes. > ... people have found that, actually, outrage can be useful. It actually can help you identify a problem and react to it. But it can also be harmful if you’re experiencing it all the time and become overwhelmed by it. I'm reading that as meaning something more like identify a problem and act on it. Outrage itself is a reaction, just not a positive one. There's no shortage of people reacting to things.
  • joshdavham 2y ago
    > Avoid following the news constantly. Check in every once in a while—a couple times a week at most. Agreed. I personally believe that checking the news everyday is akin to something like a ‘news overdose’. There’s nothing wrong with spending just 15 minutes per week. At least for me, that’s a far healthier dose.
    • pavon 2y ago
      I wish there were more news sources that enabled this. There is so much focus being first to cover a story, and dripping out information. My local newspaper had a website redesign a couple years ago, and completely eliminated the chronological story view. I literally have no idea how to browse stories older than what is currently on their main page for the day. There are some great national weekly papers but they all assume you've already heard the daily news and instead focus on supplementing it with deep dives on selected issues, and don't provide any summary that can be used as a primary news source.
    • flyinghamster 2y ago
      Indeed, 40 years ago, if we weren't getting our news from the TV, we quite often got it via weekly news magazines and Sunday newspapers.
      • jonathanlb 2y ago
        Someone I spoke with recently mentioned that it used to be that you could read a newspaper end-to-end and feel like you were informed. Now, it's an endless stream of information. I would posit that our brains weren't intended to consume that much information, but I'll leave that as uninformed speculation.
• bende511 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • trimethylpurine 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • tayo42 2y ago
      [flagged]
      • trimethylpurine 2y ago
        [flagged]
      • dang 2y ago
        Personal attacks will get you banned here. Moreover, we've had to warn you more than once before about breaking the site guidelines. I don't want to ban you but if you keep doing this, we'll end up having to. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. p.s. Also, please don't use HN primarily for political or ideological battle. That's another line at which we ban accounts (https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...).
        • tayo42 2y ago
          How are you interpreting that as a personal attack? I didn't say anything about the posters character?
          • dang 2y ago
            "lmao at this guy [...] you can't be serious [...] I know you are though" pattern matches, to me at least, as a snarky putdown. If you didn't intend it that way, it would probably be better to have expressed your point in a way that made that clearer. Past explanations about this, in case helpful: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=burden%20disambiguate%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
• yostrovs 2y ago
  What is actually outrageous is that Scientific American publishes articles like this. It's an institution that, like so many, is destroying itself by getting into politics, especially the politics of outrage.
  • taylodl 2y ago
    Scientific American started "getting into politics" in the mid 20th century, so your comment is about 70 years late.
    • yostrovs 2y ago
      [flagged]
      • taylodl 2y ago
        [flagged]
        • yostrovs 2y ago
          [flagged]
        • _qbxi 2y ago
          [flagged]
          • taylodl 2y ago
            I call spades, spades. It's not my job to prove to you the object is actually a spade. At some point you have to tell disingenuous people spouting nonsense to go eff off. You're not obligated to provide counterexamples to their nonsense. Time is valuable. You're not obligated to let idiots waste it.
            • _qbxi 2y ago
              > It's not my job to prove to you the object is actually a spade. > Time is valuable. You're not obligated to let idiots waste it. Right on both counts! However: If insufficiently many people put in the effort to explain their proof/reasoning to others, then we shouldn't be surprised when that side loses.
• _fat_santa 2y ago
  I've been an avid news consumer since ~2016 and early on I remember getting very outraged at articles, tweets and other pieces of news I read. Over time I realized that these articles want you to be outraged, and that the outrage is a form of control. Over time though I picked up on these "outrage triggers" and that's helped me be much more objective about news I'm reading. I'll be reading an article and I can usually pick up the "tricks" writers use to generate outrage. I often find myself reading an article and go "oh look you want me to feel outraged right now". Nowdays when I try to be informed about a story I will read an NYT report, a CNN report, a Fox News or other right leaning report, and then maybe one from DailyWire of Bannon's War Room. Skimming every article I often see spots where the outlet is trying to outrage their readers. NYT will report something that will outrage the left and as you "go right" on the reports you will start to see outrage directed to the right.
  • mixmastamyk 2y ago
    Twenty+ years ago an aunt of mine regularly called our local news on channel four the Channel Fear news.
  • jquery 2y ago
    I’ve generally found that overtly biased outlets on the right aren’t a huge source of outrage for me because their spin is so blatant—once I notice the propaganda, it’s easy to tune out. The bigger frustration is knowing how many people take that coverage at face value. It’s not quite the same “outrage” the article describes, though. By contrast, the NYT often feels more subtle and therefore more effective at stoking that sense of constant agitation. They’re meticulously fact-based, but their editorial choices—what they highlight, the framing they use—can seem designed to provoke a reaction rather than just inform. It’s not only about the content of the stories; sometimes it’s also about how they present or prioritize them. If you haven’t encountered this firsthand, checking out “NYTimes pitch bot” on Bluesky can illustrate how their style can veer into outrage territory. It’s a satirical account, but it often points out the patterns in the Times’ headlines and story angles that might otherwise go unnoticed.
    • seneca 2y ago
• FredPret 2y ago
  If you truly need to know breaking news, one of the following is probably true: - you have a team that will brief you on it - you will get the news that apply to you from the source You won’t get either of these from a news website. As a civilian, you can stay completely up to date with a quick weekly / monthly headline scan.
• breakingrules3 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • Rygian 2y ago
    Your comment relies on the broken assumption that outrage is caused by the outragee having stupid opinions/being stupid. It fails to account for the majority of outrage-inducing news where the stupidity is at the source.
    • sceptic123 2y ago
      Doesn't it rather suggest that it's stupid to get outraged at the news?
• joshdavham 2y ago
  One thing to consider for those of us who are more sensitive to online outrage is to just quit social media all together. I’m technically gen z and I’ve been off of social media (aside from HN, WhatsApp and discord) for years and you wouldn’t believe how great it’s been for my overall state of mind. Reddit, instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, Threads, etc are all the equivalent of digital junk food and I’d argue that we’re all a lot more negatively affected by it than we think. There’s a reason ‘brain rot’ was word of the year.
  • dr_dshiv 2y ago
    I find LinkedIn a healthy collection of professional accomplishments with minimal news. It’s also not very addictive. However, shitty newsfeeds like Google news are my bane. I can’t stop.
    • gbin 2y ago
      I have seen an increasing amount of Trump non sense popping up more and more from the VC community the past 6 months on LI
      • vaccineai 2y ago
        that's because VC and billionaires know when a party is winning, and when the other party is unvotable for 10+ years.
    • scarface_74 2y ago
      I find LinkedIn to be the worse of the social media sites. My feed is full of wannabe “thought leaders”, people posting about a meaningless vendor certificate they got, recruiters giving advice, people who can’t get a job or were recently laid off, etc. But now, politics is getting involved because people are having government job offers rescinded and the entire federal government is in a free fall like a 3rd world banana republic.
      • JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 2y ago
• mckirk 2y ago
  I can recommend https://newsasfacts.com https://newsasfacts.com for at least having a news source that, thanks to its matter-of-fact tone and lack of imagery, is useful for staying informed without getting overwhelmed so easily. It also puts things into a bit of a global perspective, when you realize how much stuff is going on around the world all the time. Though this of course also means you'll learn things that are on the news everywhere in your country only after they've become relevant enough to register on a global level.
  • RIMR 2y ago
    A little weird to see the Bitcoin price listed top-and-center, when it is a hype-driven security. Watching the market, especially crypto markets in real-time is also quite stressful. I don't see the point of having it listed first, before the news...
    • tofof 2y ago
      At least the toggles even for free users let you immediately disable market stuff, right alongside changing theme.
  • upcoming-sesame 2y ago
    Nice but I find the summary too short without any expansion if you want to learn more
    • mckirk 2y ago
      There usually are links to the news articles and the corresponding Wikipedia articles. (Though sometimes it's redirected me to some nirvana-page that just shows '[object Object]', not sure what that's about.)
  • tofof 2y ago
    I assume you have a subscription? Does that let you turn on or off different topics? I am not interested in the large amount of space devoted to armed conflicts globally, for example.
• jeffbee 2y ago
  Propagandists are now going to tell you to ignore what you're hearing and seeing. Just put the news away and relax! The same people spent the last four years telling you to be outraged about things that never happened. A man won the women's boxing at the olympics! Outrage!
  • SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
    I don't think it's true that Scientific American spent the last four years telling you to be outraged about things that never happened.
    • jeffbee 2y ago
      I was referring to a noticeable subgroup of HN commenters.
• gsaines 2y ago
  TLDR Summary: limit your intake of social media and news.
• nomilk 2y ago
  Optimism might be bland but I can't help it! Prior to social media, we all had incredibly conflicting views, just wasn't in our faces all the time to get outraged about! So the trick is to remember, by having these discussions/disagreements, we're actually making progress. We hear the loudest voices, but there's always smart and sincere people quietly reading and learning, which is a brilliant outcome! If you find yourself getting outraged, be disciplined and switch activities (exercise, go for a walk, or turn off the source). I definitely wouldn't leave social media though! Instead, harness them! Train those algos to give you science, book clubs, fascinating music niches, travel, culture - go deep, explore, and 'follow' liberally - you can very easily remove yourself from a group/page. I've found insanely interesting chemistry and physics pages, not to mention domains I never even knew existed, like color theory and a handful of others. Once you start clicking on politics, you'll only get more of it. Click on the good stuff!
  • barbazoo 2y ago
    > I definitely wouldn't leave social media though! Instead, harness them! Train those algos to give you science, book clubs, fascinating music niches, travel, culture - go deep, explore, and 'follow' liberally - you can very easily remove yourself from a group/page. I've found insanely interesting chemistry and physics pages, not to mention domains I never even knew existed, like color theory and a handful of others. Once you start clicking on politics, you'll only get more of it. Click on the good stuff! Sorry, but that last paragraph sounds like AI generated Meta PR.
    • nomilk 2y ago
      Ha, fair! 'Sounding like an LLM' might be the ~2025 equivalent of being called an NPC. But it could also imply good grammar. To put it another way, ditching a medium entirely is the incorrect strategy; akin to refusing to read books just because there's many bad ones - obviously, instead, we select the good ones and read those. Same goes for social media pages/groups/profiles
• yergi 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • yergi 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • mckn1ght 2y ago
      > Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html What’s that saying… “you aren’t stuck in traffic; you are the traffic.”
      • yergi 2y ago
        Well, this "semi-noob" has only been here since 2007. I can see it for what it is. People simply aren't free to speak their minds here any longer due to hivemind bubble. If you think trying to point out a serious issue is "sneering", well, you're just proving my point. People simply can't bare to hear dissenting opinions any longer, and won't due to downvoting anything that impinges on their own sense of cognitive dissonance. This post's topic was "outrage fatigue". I am on topic with my original assertion.
        • mckn1ght 2y ago
          https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/
• localghost3000 2y ago
  After November I totally stopped looking at any and all news and social media with the exception of HN. My reasoning being that you are not actually getting informed by any of those sources. They are geared towards engagement which makes them entertainment. Also, I have absolutely no power to change anything happening right now so knowing about it is just going to make me upset. It's a lose lose IMO. A lot of folks have gotten upset with me about this which I find a bit baffling. Like, what does knowing every minute detail do for me? The net effect of my news/social media fast has been fairly dramatic. I suddenly have an attention span again. When a persons opinion differs from mine, I generally don't immediately assume they are part of the third reich (although if they keep talking a while I might get there lol). To be clear I absolutely despise whats happening in the US right now. Enough information makes it to me through friends and family (and HN) that I feel a deep sense of despair. I am just not sure what minute by minute updates on the fuckery happening right now gets me.
  • ourmandave 2y ago
    This exactly, even before November. I finally saw the futility when there were 10,000 articles about Trump tweeting "covfefe".
  • xorvoid 2y ago
    I think I did something similar. I decided to severely control my information diet after November and switch to only RSS feeds that I have selected manually and HN. It’s gone better than I expected and I feel very little urge to go back. At the same time, I’m definitely less informed. Though I’m quite surprised how much still permeates despite me not “going looking”. Generally, I think it’s more healthy to focus on what you can control and what you have agency over. You can choose what to be outraged over national/global events (and do nothing) or you can instead focus that energy on Doing Something closer to home that’s important to you. Which is the better trade? I’m somewhat conflicted on being less informed esp with big changes happening. And even more conflicted about what kind of world we’d have if everyone chose this strategy. But, it’s not unprincipled. The principle is Focus on What You Can Control/Do and put all your energy into that.
    • 2y ago
• throw7 2y ago
  While limiting your exposure to "outrage" isn't bad advice, it's just more of the ignoring of the issues that she herself calls out in the beginning of the article. She mentions that people are using "outrage" issues (abortion, gay rights, critical race theory) "as kind of wedge issues to convince people to vote in ways that might be against their own self-interest"... GREAT! We need more tips on how to train yourself to recognize when that's happening and not get outraged. It boils down to emotional control. If politicians can't use outrage as a tool of control then they'll have to move on (to something better hopefully, but probably not ;). Here's one tip. If Trump enrages you every time you see him, watch him in a way that allows you to appreciate something about him! He is a cool cucumber. He sheds attacks like water off an umbrella. (whatever, you come up something)... Remember, the goal here is to not let him control your emotions. This isn't about the facts or morality or how he "lies".
• morpheos137 2y ago
  If you're outraged by anything that does not directly impact your life you're doing life wrong. We all have limited time and energy. I have never been able to understand people who get emotional over things they read online that have no impact on their day to day life.
  • easymodex 2y ago
    I know, but what do I do about global warming and microplastics? Our leaders don't seem to care.
    • morpheos137 2y ago
      Assuming this is not a joke, do whatever makes you feel best knowing that you as an individual have negligible impact on the outcome. Personally I don't worry one bit about these two issues because (1) they do not seem to effect my daily life except when I need to drink through a crappy cardboard straw (2) I do not expect them to impact my daily life in the foreseeable future (3) most important I as an individual can not change the way things are and I find I am happiest when I don't worry about things I can't control so I choose not to worry and some how despite my indolent individual choice the world goes on and the sky doesn't fall. (4) I personally believe the harms of these two things have been greatly exaggerated by people with an interest in doing so. (5) my time on earth is limited why waste it being manipulated by words and pictures I see on a screen to be pointlessly anxious or outraged for someone else's benefit at the cost of my own happiness?
  • DFHippie 2y ago
    > If you're outraged by anything that does not directly impact your life you're doing life wrong. This is a pointless truism. Everything relies on "does not directly impact your life", and there's no useful guidance on that point.
    • _yb2s 2y ago
      It's not pointless at all- it's the core idea behind Stoic philosophy aka "the dichotomy of control," and has proven very effective at improving people's mental health through modern therapy methods like CBT and ACT. One can still do everything in their power to prepare for, and mitigate things outside their control, while still keeping in mind what is in your control and isn't so you don't become emotionally dependent on outcomes outside your control, which is ruinous for mental health. Having empathy, and caring about doing the right thing actually work better when you stop obsessing over and wasting all of your energy on things you cannot control.
• marban 2y ago
  It will not lessen your outrage, but I recently built a news search engine that pulls from 200 selected sources for a more limited, spam-free experience. https://mozberg.com https://mozberg.com
• 65 2y ago
  Saying "just quit social media" or something doesn't work. You have to have the mindset that you cannot control what happens in the vast majority of news stories. If the federal government does something I don't like, it's not worth my time to be angry and let it linger in my head for the day, which only hurts me. Outrage seems to come from a lack of control over a situation. Shift your focus to things you can possibly control, e.g. the news that's happening in your local community where you have a say in how things are done.
• nineplay 2y ago
  Been there, done that. I've tried to stay informed but not outraged for the last 8 years and it didn't make a damn bit of difference. I got involved in local issues, I phone banked, I tried to put my money where it would do the most good. I'm out. I'm hiding away and hoping nothing affects me personally, and if it does I'm not going to think there's anything I could have done about it. We're not in control anymore. Not unless there are any tech billionaires lurking on HN, and they don't give a shit about us.
  • fransje26 2y ago
    > Not unless there are any tech billionaires lurking on HN, and they don't give a shit about us. If I understand correctly, they are mostly busy taking over the country at the moment. No time for HN..
• lowbloodsugar 2y ago
  > And this just really has been accelerating, I guess, in the last few years because of our political polarization and other world events. Feels like the causality might be the other way around.
• yakhinvadim 2y ago
  I tried to solve this problem by making AI rank the stories by significance and rewriting the news titles in a boring, factual style. I think it worked quite well, there's only about 10 headlines a day (out of 15k+) that get a significance rating higher than of 5.5 out of 10. It also helps avoiding the overfocus on western issues and actually learn what's happening around the world. https://www.newsminimalist.com/ https://www.newsminimalist.com/
  • j_bum 2y ago
    I love the idea of this tool, but there are serious issues with using LLMs to summarize articles and text. Re: Apple’s Notification Summary Debacle For example, this headline with a score > 5 is flatly incorrect. “China launches innovative flying robot to explore Moon's south pole for water resources” Every article listed in the summary says the launch is planned for 2026.
    • yakhinvadim 2y ago
      Thanks! Good point. I think there will always be some hallucinations until they're solved on a model level, but I'll also try to nudge AI now to be more precise with the headlines.
  • josefresco 2y ago
    Neat! Sounds similar to another app I've used: https://www.boringreport.org https://www.boringreport.org
  • starik36 2y ago
    That's a pretty cool website! What prompt do you use to determine what is and isn't significant?
    • yakhinvadim 2y ago
      Can't share the full prompt, but I share methodology on the about page: https://www.newsminimalist.com/about https://www.newsminimalist.com/about
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• gdubya 2y ago
  That transcription reads very much like a NotebookLM "podcast" summarising the actual article at https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/outrage-fatigue-is-real-heres-why-we-feel-it-and-how-to-cope/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/outrage-fatigue-i...
• jsbg 2y ago
  Why is it an axiom that we need to "stay informed"? The vast majority of news is things that don't affect you, and of the things that do affect you, the vast majority of that is things you can't do anything about. And if they do affect you you're sure to find out without following the news. The news is tailored to make you feel outraged so that you will consume more of it. As far as social media goes, just don't follow accounts that are annoying. If some accounts are friends in real life but insufferable online, just mute them. Other than friends I follow accounts about food and pottery, I don't see any reason to get off social media, I love it.
  • breaker-kind 2y ago
    First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. —Martin Niemöller the goal of fascist political propaganda is to convince you that you can't do anything about the state of the world. clearly, it worked on you.
    • jsbg 2y ago
      > the goal of fascist political propaganda is to convince you that you can't do anything about the state of the world What are you doing about it?
      • esafak 2y ago
        Trying to motivate you?
• sporkydistance 2y ago
  Isn't this something that marginalized groups have had to deal with since their existence? I mean, there's a reason why in the US black men die at higher rates from heart disease and stress-related illnesses. Is this getting attention now because white people are feeling it? I grew up in the 70's, and the hatred toward gays that erupted in the 80's due to Reagan was impossible to explain to someone born in 2000 who grew up seeing gay people everwhere. Not saying it doesn't need attention, but I think we could probably turned to marginalized groups for tips! (RIP my karma.)
• metalman 2y ago
  Active Balancing Habits. Reminders to self of thd things that as an indivual you/I are doing that offset the enshitification. Like I am now extra happy that I cant stand the taste of store bought eggs, and hope that others can get past thete outrage at the prices, and thrn evauate if they actualy feel better, just by not eating the sulferous nasty things. And more selfish, me time, personal care, foooood, foooood, yummy fooood. and pushing myself to work harder and use my creativity to overcome the inane obsticles to,..... everything finnishing all the things on my list having a lot of lists crumpling up, checked off lists, and useing the paper to light my stove, which heats my tea and so when I do face the shitstorm of events, I have the energy to take it, get mad and put that energy back into the things on my list, or one of the many random, oh.....that needs doing.....now!
• miki123211 2y ago
  I wish there was a modern "news wire" service to help with this problem. I'm thinking tweet-sized news stories, a few per day at most, no threads, no images, no links, nothing but 140 characters of pure text. You could even deliver them as texts or unclickable push notifications. That format heavily discourages clickbait (because there are no clicks to be had) and forces journalists to only include the information that actually matters, with no fluff about how they were sipping hot cocoa in a nice indie restaurant in Montana when talking to the subject of the story, a 38-year-old man wearing a polo shirt. You could run an operation like this on a shoestring budget, with one or two individuals regurgitating news stories from mainstream sources in a much denser format, minus the outrage. Many, including me, would probably be willing to subscribe.
  • lannisterstark 2y ago
    Or you could just read actual wire services. AP/Reuters etc have close to no clickbait.
    • cenamus 2y ago
      Yeah, news ticker sounds like the perfect solution. If something relevant comes up you can still look up some full articles
      • carbocation 2y ago
        The front page of Reuters right now is a story about a major presidential proposal[1]. I think that is certainly headline news in the traditional sense. Still, it would be nice if there were additionally a news wire that didn't cover statements, only events. 1 = (Not describing the content because that's not the point.)
    • golemiprague 2y ago
      [dead]
  • yakhinvadim 2y ago
    I'm sorry for plugging my project twice in this thread. But what you're asking sounds extremely close to what I made: https://www.newsminimalist.com/ https://www.newsminimalist.com/ If you want fewer stories (by default it shows about 25 a day), adjust the slider to a higher significance threshold.
• neuroelectron 2y ago
  Google's attack on RSS has been quite successful. Not a single mention here in the 150+ comments. I would think the HN crowd would be savvy enough to recommend it on this subject.
  • roguecoder 2y ago
    Tiny Tiny RSS is still awesome, twelve years later. It is super-easy to self-host: https://tt-rss.org/ https://tt-rss.org/
  • denkmoon 2y ago
    The content of the "news" has little to do with its conveyance protocol? Whether you get it from foxnews.com or foxnews.com/rss (insert your favoured antagonist here)
    • neuroelectron 2y ago
      You're not really looking at the big picture. RSS allows you to escape social media filter bubbles, allows you to read the articles without an internet connection which removes a lot of the algorithmic capture of engagement and allows you to precisely control where your information comes from. You have to actively seek out new sources of information instead of having them fed to you.
• redeux 2y ago
  > …limiting yourself to checking the news a couple times a day instead of, like, every hour or, you know, getting those alerts on your phone all the time. A couple times a day? Who needs to check the news that often? I’ve not checked the news at all this year and it hasn’t negatively impacted me at all.
• snapcaster 2y ago
  I think "being informed" is very overrated in general. Often it means being informed about palace intrigue and intelligence service/corporate narratives. I would say that in general media consumption or "staying informed" should be seen as a vice not a virtue
  • declan_roberts 2y ago
    Self proclaimed "news junkies" are some of the most insufferable people I know.
  • deltarholamda 2y ago
    "If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed." -- Col. Jack O'Neill (with 2 Ls)
  • stackedinserter 2y ago
    It's not overrated, it's often confused with "to understand what's happening". To "be informed" is like to take a look at a chess or go board: positions are clear, black and white pieces are here and there, but it takes skill to really understand the current dynamics of a game. Add media bias ("let's show the board at this angle that looks better for our side") and now we have "informed" population that's being surprised by reality every day.
    • svilen_dobrev 2y ago
      in some handwavy simplification: [start] data --(meaning/interpretation)--> information --(interpretation/understanding)-> knowledge ----> ... probably more levels. At any step one can take action.. faster if more to the start but also less thoughtfull/"correct". primal instincts are at the start the whole point of news-machine is to never get to beyond information.. same as <2sec video-frame switching..
  • johnnyanmac 2y ago
    So what's your alternative? Living in ignorance until it's too late?
• UberFly 2y ago
  I have a New Yorker (I think that's where it's from) cartoon on my wall. It's a man and woman walking down the street and she's saying "My desire to be well-informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane." It's a good daily reminder for me.
  • RIMR 2y ago
    This one: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/how-to-stay-sane-as-a-cartoonist-in-trumpland https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/how-to-st...
• matteoraso 2y ago
  Why is it even important to stay informed? In virtually all cases, there's very little that I can do about anything, so I'm just wasting energy by looking at the news.
  • verisimi 2y ago
    > Why is it even important to stay informed? So that you stay in formation with everyone else, of course!
  • jpollock 2y ago
    Because the behavior of your chosen leaders reflects on you? Ostracism is a thing. From the "greed" point of view - because your chosen leaders can have dramatic and immediate impact on your net wealth. Even if hedonistic, "I have no assets", your chosen leaders will choose how comfortable your life is.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  • settsu 2y ago
    That's your right and I can understand why you might feel that way, but you should probably understand the compromises that are being made in doing so.
  • roguecoder 2y ago
    Why do you believe there is very little you can do? What collaborations have you tried so far? One of the reasons I love reading history is realizing the agency individual humans have when we get together. Individuals can't change much alone, but we don't have to do things alone. You can choose not to use your agency, but that is still a choice to support the status quo.
  • stackedinserter 2y ago
    To predict future and make your decisions, e.g. on where to live, what skills to learn and what to do in general. If you're on HN, it's most likely you can't control reality much, but you can navigate it better.
• ck2 2y ago
  > Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk alone; you don’t want to “go out of your way to make trouble.” Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty > Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, “everyone” is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, “It’s not so bad” or “You’re seeing things” or “You’re an alarmist.” > But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds of thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions, would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the “German Firm” stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all of the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D. - From "They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45"
  • awfulneutral 2y ago
    Yes, this is really tricky, because nowadays we have people shouting from the rooftops continuously, and half of them are shouting the exact opposite thing as the other half. WWII was openly racist, so from a modern perspective it would be easy to recognize and condemn some of the early behavior, but these days it's more about dog whistling and thought crimes. Probably the signs we would all recognize are not going to happen. But we have already moved a dramatic amount in terms of normalized behavior, from 20 years ago.
  • flocciput 2y ago
    Similarly: If you’re waiting for a moment where you’re like “this is it,” I’m telling you, it never comes. Nobody comes on TV and says “things are officially bad.” There’s no launch party for decay. It’s just a pileup of outrages and atrocities in between friendships and weddings and perhaps an unusual amount of alcohol. from "I Lived Through Collapse. America Is Already There." https://gen.medium.com/i-lived-through-collapse-america-is-already-there-ba1e4b54c5fc https://gen.medium.com/i-lived-through-collapse-america-is-a...
• rqtwteye 2y ago
  I mainly read Reuters now. It's refreshingly boring.
• munchler 2y ago
  Scientific American used to be a great magazine and should get back to what made it so valuable: Covering important ideas in science without watering them down. Their website now describes it as "the essential guide to the most awe-inspiring advances in science and technology". Blech.
  • fritzo 2y ago
    Have you tried Science News? I currently read neither, but at one point I switched from the fluffy Scientific American to the no-nonsense Science News.
    • munchler 2y ago
      Thank you for the suggestion. I will give it a try.
• gadders 2y ago
  Scientific American: "It's so bad that we live in such polarised times." Also Scientific American: Science journal editor resigns after calling Gen X fascists over Trump win Laura Helmuth leaves Scientific American following controversial social media posts in which she lashed out at ‘bigoted’ voters https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2024/11/15/laura-helmuthg-resigns-after-calling-gen-x-fascists/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2024/11/15/laura-helmuth...
• vlan0 2y ago
  Happiness is an inside job. Sitting with your emotions is very important. That's not to say we can tolerate an unlimited amount of information. But rather to highlight that we can become the observer of our emotions, rather than be consumed by them.
• glial 2y ago
  I tried blocking all social media and news sites and instead subscribing to the print version of The Week. Honestly, it was great. But eventually the siren song of internet-fueled dopamine eventually lured me back...
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• logifail 2y ago
  > "No matter what you believe, I’m willing to bet you’ve been feeling a lot of outrage lately. To me personally, it feels unavoidable: I can’t look down at my phone or glance up at a TV without seeing something that makes me upset." Umm no, I've not felt any outrage. Not because I'm particularly satisfied with any recent political events, but because I've stopped consuming daily news from outlets where generating outrage has become a financial incentive. I'm not on FB, my only use of social media is to help co-ordinate my kids' lives. I never watch TV, I've no idea what today's mainstream media clickbait stories are, I'm just not that interested.
  • esafak 2y ago
    That's the perk of not being in a targeted minority.
• MetaWhirledPeas 2y ago
  > Feltman: Yeah, and what is it about outrage that helps misinformation spread? > Lewis: So I think part of it is the fact that it’s more engaging. It, you know, activates your emotions, and so people are more primed to respond to that. This is why upvote-style forums, like Hacker News, need to be treated with heavy scrutiny. They are hard-wired to bubble out of control when an opinion is the right combination of popular and passionate. One way we can improve this situation, as contributors, is to try to stick to more logical, dispassionate responses. This is difficult to do because we all feel like what we are writing is the most important thing in the world and everyone else needs to read it.
• daedrdev 2y ago
  I just feel like there are a few recent things to actually be outraged about
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• unnamed76ri 2y ago
  Is your outrage changing anything? Is your outrage helping or hurting your mental health? Is your outrage helping or hurting your relationships? Choose a different path
• Glyptodon 2y ago
  I don't have outrage fatigue. Outrages are outrages and they are what they are. Are there many exaggerations and fake outrages? Sure. But things like the USA's current constitutional crisis are real. What I struggle with isn't fatigue at outrage, it's knowing what to do about it. I think violence is going to become more common, but I don't particularly think it will be effective. So less so than outrage, it's the feeling that we're trapped in a real life doom loop with no clear off ramp that I struggle with. I would like to do something... But what?
  • philomath_mn 2y ago
    > I think violence is going to become more common What kind and why?
    • Glyptodon 2y ago
      Stuff like the Thompson or Abe assassinations. That said, I think the why is more complicated. At least in the US I think there's a general sense that the world is backsliding, and that people feel like any bump on the road of life risks turning into a complete derailment. But this doesn't lead to any one particular ideology or course of action, so much as externalization of angst, whether against individuals, systems, or the "nobody pays attention to our angst let's burn it all down" attitude that's somewhat widespread.
      • genewitch 2y ago
        for the record, not everyone in the US thinks the sky is falling. it's the same extremely vocal groups as before that do, from what i can see. Some of us are cautiously optimistic.
        • lukas099 2y ago
          It’s not that the sky is falling, it’s that we’re autocratizing. Usually that’s a gradual process.
        • xpe 2y ago
• stackedinserter 2y ago
  Those who have outrage are the same people that think they are calm, reasonable, considerate and don't have outrage, at all.
• toasterlovin 2y ago
  I think it's always worth keeping in mind that every single piece of media you consume was created primarily to benefit its creator and almost always the relationship is parasitic (you're the host). Only rarely does media engage in mutualism.
  • esafak 2y ago
    I don't think people become journalists with that mindset.
    • toasterlovin 2y ago
      And yet the things they write primarily benefit themselves (nobody pays the rent by reading the news). So, then: how does that shape what journalists write?
• anthk 2y ago
  https://neuters.de https://neuters.de Simple, no ads, and with just the headlines it's enough.
• cess11 2y ago
  "Lately"? The genocide in Gaza has been going intensely for more than a year, dead and mutilated children streamed out pretty much every day. Now it has moved to the West Bank. Similarly a genocidal process has been ongoing in Sudan, perpetrated by a proxy of the UAE, close partner to the US. Do usians not see these images and only just now with the new administration's inauguration entered a mood of distress?
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• upcoming-sesame 2y ago
  Not exactly a social network but I am kind of addicted to the Google Home curated list of news - that thing on Android (maybe just Pixel?) when you swipe all the way to the left. I read it every morning in bed. It contains all the topics I'm interested in as it knows me probably better than I know myself.
• Venkatesh10 2y ago
  Consuming quality content over overconsumption is the key. Plus if you have already crossed multiple levels of outrage fatigue, then at that point you should be aware of it, hence becoming more calm in future. If you see what is in front of you and know you cannot change anything, why outrage? why fatigue? just move on.
• nanreh 2y ago
  This is not a good article. Shocked that it got so much attention here. It's full of garden variety common sense.
• modeless 2y ago
  "Mute words" goes a long way. Every platform should have it.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• josefritzishere 2y ago
  This has been very difficult over the last couple weeks.
• puttycat 2y ago
  I highly recommend to install a browser extension that hides the social feed off of social media sites. Incredibly effective.
• BenFranklin100 2y ago
  A good way to do this is to avoid reading Scientific American lest one become outraged how a once respected science magazine for lay audiences became overrun by Woke Warriors.
• alkonaut 2y ago
  I just quit Twitter and changed to Bluesky and all the bots and spam and outrage just disappeared.
• throwaway_2494 2y ago
  One thing I first started noticing in the 2000s on sites like kuro5hin were young conservatives. Like I mean 20 year old's using conservative talking points, mostly in an absolutist aggressive sort of way. Many I guess were coming at it from Rand's 'philosophical' writings. (Basically an overly intellectual cover for being an asshole). I remember asking them on that site with a post: "Why are you young guys conservative?" I mean they weren't religious, or at least none of them cited this as a motivation, they weren't rich so they had nothing to 'conserve'. I remember being like WTF? Looking back on it now I think most of them were in it for the trolling. Conservative thought often skews insensitive and absolutist, so I guess these dudes were using it as a basis to troll more sensitive posters. Now 25years later and we are living the consequences of a 4chan presidency.
• 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
  I've always found sports to be moronic. People sit glued to their TV staring at big men in tights pass a pigskin around. All people who like sports talk about is how those men passed that ball around, or who they think is gonna pass the ball around next. Let's trade stats and figures about the big men in tights. Ooh, did you see what the big man in tights did? Politics is now just sports where people in business suits pass moronic comments around. Same pointless drama, same fans commenting about the pointless action, glued to their TVs. I quit all news the first time Trump was in office. I didn't miss anything. Important information filters through culture, you can't avoid it. But you'll notice soon you have absolutely no idea who it is people are talking about constantly. And it turns out, nothing in your life changes now that you're "uninformed", except you have more free time and you're less stressed out.
• GGByron 2y ago
  "Pay less attention, otherwise you might become apathetic." Granted, mass media is generally slop (this article being no exception), but that's all the more reason one should observe and think carefully.
• nsonha 2y ago
  Funny this is a thing that people in some country need to work through. Personally, I have to fight the feeling of sadness and guilt every time I read about things going on around me that I should but do not do something to help. For the things that I am powerless against, honestly I have zero emotion, much less outrage.
  • esafak 2y ago
    So if Trump announced some action that would impinge on you, you would have zero emotion? Your stoicism may be a reflection of the fact that you estimate you will not be affected.
• leefi1 2y ago
  [dead]
• purple-leafy 2y ago
  I gave up social media for this reason. EVERYTHING is so politicised and agenda-centric on all platforms and news sites. It was effecting me really badly, to the point that I made the decision to leave the room when the news is playing, switch to a dumb phone, switch to an mp3 player, and get rid of all social media including reddit. So I don’t use a smartphone, and don’t carry it with me day-day. On my laptop I even went as far as blacklisting all the typical sites. I’m only 30. It’s very hard when it feels like you’re alone in acting this way. It’s a very isolating life trying to have principals. I also recently learnt I have adhd, so that may be why I’m so sensitive to it. But like i say, it’s an isolating feeling.
  • Spooky23 2y ago
    I did the same thing but brought back Facebook and Instagram. The controls are great if you spend time filtering — I actually enjoy both now. If you want to stay informed. Apple News. Same deal, filter away. Ditch The NY Times and pick a few newspapers domestic and international. You’ll get news without the bullshit:
    • purple-leafy 2y ago
      I don’t want to stay informed though. What’s the point? You can’t really do anything about events in life anyway outside your own family and yourself. You can only react. So I just don’t stay informed anymore. Ignorance is bliss
      • Spooky23 2y ago
        Fair. In my line of work, certain things are relevant to my work life and it’s good to know. In fairness my focus is local and features. I don’t really care about what Clarence Thomas was bribed about today.
  • MrLeap 2y ago
    You're not alone, there's dozens of us.
• Arete314159 2y ago
  I have OCD and sadly one of the ways I've dealt with it is to drown it out by being on social media and, before that, just playing NPR nonstop all day. I basically chose a new, louder voice to drown out the other voices in my head. Unfortunately, in this day and age it's like choosing between two different forms of torture. Social media is so toxic and fries the nervous system so much - it's awful. The news is awful. And being alone with OCD is awful. (And yes I've tried various treatments - so far, nothing's worked great. B12 shots did help a bit and so did prednisone accidentally, but I can't stay on that long term.)
  • andhuman 2y ago
    Have you tried giving meditation a try? I have no idea if it helps for OCD, but for me it gives space around all the thoughts that’s floating around in my head. That space gives me a bit more freedom to select which thoughts to listen to.
• musicale 2y ago
  I used to read SA to stay informed.
  • dboreham 2y ago
    South Africa?
    • musicale 2y ago
      Obviously.
• hdivider 2y ago
  I'll share unpopular advice here: it would be wise to adopt a more Stoic approach to the present crisis. The events unfolding now are an expected progression of choices made years ago. The choices made now will likewise determine the future. Not all of the current situation is under your control, however. Take whatever wise action you can, but beyond this, judge the outcome neither good nor bad. As hard as it may be -- because we love this country and the ideals for which it should stand, but this is precisely the mechanism which the forces of chaos are using against the system. They're trying to fatigue you. Don't let them. It makes sense to examine several likewise unpopular but nevertheless patently correct facts: 1) Every nation ceases to be. Every nation that ever was has fallen, merged, disappeared. This one cannot be different -- and that is OK, because this is what nations do. This does not at all mean you should do nothing. Quite the contrary. It does however mean refraining from placing superlative negative value judgements upon the events happening now. Work towards indifference in your mind, and act according to your wisdom and conscience. 2) You and all other individuals alive today will perish eventually. We all return to nature when our time comes. You were once purely of nature and not of human society -- you came into the world not knowing language, not knowing what nations are, what democracy is, why any of this matters. You were taught what it means to be a modern human. And we all return to the earth, to this mysterious and unfathomably ancient layer of living matter upon this world. So your efforts while you are alive are by nature limited, by necessity bounded. You can cause great change, and you should, according to what you are uniquely suited and drawn to do. Beyond this however, the rest of humanity -- which as a group, unlike individuals, may survive indefinitely -- will have responsibility over the rest. Hope this perespetive benefits someone. It is the precise opposite of modern media, which wants you to feel outraged with every headline. When Socrates was informed that his son had died, his response was: "I knew that my son was mortal." His mind was rational enough to accept such seemingly mundane but nevertheless consequential knowledge, at every level of his mind. And the effect? When disaster came, he did still suffer, but far less than most other people. Because it was not a disaster. Merely an outcome of that which when examined closely, was to be expected based on knowledge of mortality.
• majestik 2y ago
  The irony of clicking a link to an article about “outrage fatigue” only to find it’s not even an article but a playboy style interview that goes on for several pages. Outrageous.
• majgr 2y ago
  Living in Poland ruled by trumpists for 8 years I have these experiences: - Get subscription of high value newspaper or magazine. Professionals work there, so you will get real facts, worthy opinions and less emotions. - It is better to not use social media. You never know if you are discussing with normal person, a political party troll, or Russian troll. - It is not worth discussing with „switched-on” people. They are getting high doses of emotional content, they are made to feel like victims, facts does not matter at all. Political beliefs are intermingled with religious beliefs. - emotional content is being treated with higher priority by brain, so it is better to stay away from it, or it will ruin your evening. - people are getting addicted to emotions and victimization, so after public broadcaster has been freed from it, around 5% people switched to private tv station to get their daily doses. - social media feels like a new kind of virus, we all need to get sick and develop some immunity to it. - in the end, there are more reasonable people, but democracies needs to develop better constitutional/law systems, with very short feedback loop. It is very important to have fast reaction on breaking the law by ruling regime.
  • CrimsonRain 2y ago
    Are you sure these high value professionals are fair? I saw this story the other day; don't have much idea about Poland. So verify yourself. https://notesfrompoland.com/2025/02/03/polish-billionaire-offers-to-help-left-wing-magazine-after-trump-cuts-funding/ https://notesfrompoland.com/2025/02/03/polish-billionaire-of...
    • purplezooey 2y ago
      Digging up a tiny, poorly funded left-wing publication as a whipping post doesn't support the point you are making.
      • CrimsonRain 2y ago
        Hmm. You're in bargaining stage or what? fwiw, read/listen/watch actual events instead of some "professional's opinion". Then make up your own mind.
    • 2y ago
• ohthehugemanate 2y ago
  I've been very pleased with my own results by disconnecting from social media and anything with a short (eg 24 hours) news cycle. Weeklies (eg the economist) are still generally worth reading and filter to more important topics. On (geo)politics when I want more information I go to websites of the major think tanks of the relevant country. The bias is explicit and the authors are always deeply knowledgeable, writing for an educated and equally knowledgeable audience. For the Americans, I would recommend the council on foreign relations and RAND for a republican perspective, and center for strategic and international studies and Brookings for the Democrat side. Hope this helps someone out there.
• nobodywillobsrv 2y ago
  The best way is to make sure you are actually trading or making predictions where you lose if you are deeply wrong. Outrage about "news" is usually from the kind of people who get upset about desriptions of reality and things like that. They usually read the NYT or the Atlantic and never trade or predict and they don't realize it is useless, wrong or just way to late.
• eleveriven 2y ago
  The real challenge is rewiring our own habits
• mib32 2y ago
  This article just says to turn off the phone and go outside. Saved you 5 minutes
• ein0p 2y ago
  Here's a ready-made idea for a high value AI app. Present to me the view of my favorite websites with all outrage clickbait hidden or re-worded in neutral, non-clickbait language. Better yet if you can also focus on the topics that I actually want to read about. Currently all the news apps without exception are the polar opposite of this, so I don't use them.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• paganel 2y ago
  There is no use in staying "informed" in the current societal environment, there is no propaganda-free information floating around anymore, if there ever was. As long as one is aware of that basic fact then things will fall into line more easily. And, yes, I have been in the boat of "trying to stay informed" for almost 20 years now, as in I was actually paying money for The Economist and the Financial Times, but around a couple of years ago (in fact three, since the war in Ukraine started for good) I realized that they were as propaganda-infested as the rest of the media and that was the end of my journey of trying to remain "informed". No information gathering and receiving is neutral, none at all.
• KoftaBob 2y ago
  The way I see it, for a piece of news to hold value, it must have 2 properties: 1. Actionable: can this news inform how you go about your life in some way? 2. Primary Source: it must come straight from the source, to avoid manipulation of the original info The vast majority of news doesn't have either quality, let alone both. Just like how "staying fed" often amounts to people eating junk food rather than quality stuff that gives them the actual nourishment their body needs, "staying informed" amounts to people scratching their curiosity itch with global gossip, rather than with actionable information.
• sharpshadow 2y ago
  Well while for the most folks which feel a fatigue now, we felt the fatigue the last years. Now daily the old fatigue gets slayed away by the great president of the United States and we have joy.
• know-how 2y ago
  [dead]
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• kuringganteng 2y ago
  [dead]
• adolph 2y ago
  From TFA: There’s actually a recent study by William Brady, an assistant professor of management and organizations at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. He and his colleagues found that outrage actually helps misinformation spread more widely, especially online on social media. No specific study was linked from the transcript. Brady's works indexed by Google Scholar there is "Misinformation exploits outrage to spread online" by KL McLoughlin, WJ Brady, A Goolsbee, B Kaiser, K Klonick, MJ Crockett, published in Science 386 (6725), 991-996. [1] Two of moral outrage's properties are interestingly counter to one another. Expressions of outrage are often orthogonal to truth/falsity and expressing outrage imbues trustworthiness. [O]utrage expressions can serve communicative goals that do not depend on information accuracy, such as signaling loyalty to a political group or broadcasting a moral stance. Consequently, outrage-evoking misinformation may be difficult to mitigate with interventions such as fact-checking or accuracy prompts that assume users want to share accurate information. [I]ndividuals who express outrage are seen as more trustworthy. This suggests that news sources might gain a credibility advantage by posting outrageous content. 0. https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=ysiWkJMAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=ysiWkJMAAAAJ... 1. https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.adl2829 https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.adl2829
• biohcacker84 2y ago
  No matter what you believe, I’m willing to bet you’ve been feeling a lot of outrage lately. No. I am in control of how I feel like. Nothing else.
  • silentsanctuary 2y ago
    That’s an incredible superpower: you could just choose to be happy and bypass most of the hierarchy of needs!
• LeroyRaz 2y ago
  "No matter what you believe, I’m willing to bet you’ve been feeling a lot of outrage lately." Is it true that most people are feeling lots of outrage? Why? The vibe I get from the left is outrage. The vibe I get from the right is relief and happiness. And the vibe of the likely-majority (i.e., the non-political) is probably just a desire to get on with life. I can see there being lots of anxiety (e.g., over AI, automation, China-US relations, etc...). But anxiety is different from outrage.
  • Lord_Zero 2y ago
    Social media, rage bait, politics are more polarized than ever before. Now it's basically like rooting for your favorite sports team.
• Slava_Propanei 2y ago
  [dead]