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Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

(www.scientificamerican.com)
757 points headalgorithm | 7 comments | 05 Feb 25 14:55 UTC | HN request time: 1.356s | source | bottom
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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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1. Lendal ◴[05 Feb 25 15:46 UTC] No.42950176[source]▶
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?

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2. FredPret ◴[05 Feb 25 16:00 UTC] No.42950410[source]▶
Democracy works if everyone votes for the thing(s) they care about. You likely don’t need a news site for information about that.
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3. master-lincoln ◴[05 Feb 25 16:14 UTC] No.42950642[source]▶
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"
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4. FredPret ◴[05 Feb 25 16:23 UTC] No.42950787{3}[source]▶
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.

5. parliament32 ◴[05 Feb 25 17:23 UTC] No.42951933[source]▶
> 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.

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6. Lendal ◴[05 Feb 25 19:05 UTC] No.42953467[source]▶
There might not be much of a difference in your mental health condensing 2-4 years' of rage into just one week.

Perhaps another strategy could be to maintain an awareness of the motivations and tactics of publishers/content creators, and that could be enough as an inoculation.

I imagine a clown on the street trying to enrage me, and I being aware of what it's trying to do, instead just laugh at it.

Today I walked into a restaurant with a cable TV news channel blaring on about the "invasion of men" into women's college sports. They offered no proof, just a continuous barrage of commentary. As I waited for my sandwich I watched one after another, with just continuous outrage. No proof, no on-site reporters, no B tape, nothing at all to support the claims being made. It was like watching bad science fiction of an alternate universe. I chuckled nervously as I looked around and wondered if the others there actually believed it. None of them were laughing.

7. themacguffinman ◴[05 Feb 25 19:06 UTC] No.42953483[source]▶
Do you know about referendums? Recall elections? Snap elections? Midterm elections? Strikes and protests? Or how about just letting your representative know how you'll vote in their next election to deter bad behavior they're conducting in the current moment?

Must be nice for the current American administration to have 4 years of no democratic oversight to do whatever they want.