←back to thread

Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

(www.scientificamerican.com)
757 points headalgorithm | 1 comments | 05 Feb 25 14:55 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
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.

replies(6): >>42949647 #>>42949667 #>>42949756 #>>42950121 #>>42950176 #>>42950225 #
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

replies(4): >>42949794 #>>42949811 #>>42950310 #>>42954467 #
1. NoMoreNicksLeft ◴[05 Feb 25 15:54 UTC] No.42950310[source]▶
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.