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Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

(www.scientificamerican.com)
757 points headalgorithm | 2 comments | 05 Feb 25 14:55 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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parliament32 ◴[05 Feb 25 15:08 UTC] No.42949484[source]▶
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.

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baal80spam ◴[05 Feb 25 15:19 UTC] No.42949667[source]▶
> 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

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1. parliament32 ◴[05 Feb 25 15:25 UTC] No.42949794[source]▶
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?

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2. int_19h ◴[06 Feb 25 04:15 UTC] No.42959015[source]▶
> 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).