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Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

(www.scientificamerican.com)
757 points headalgorithm | 3 comments | 05 Feb 25 14:55 UTC | HN request time: 0.202s | source
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_fat_santa ◴[05 Feb 25 15:45 UTC] No.42950157[source]▶
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.

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1. dimal ◴[05 Feb 25 18:11 UTC] No.42952701[source]▶
I had to give up news altogether before I could notice this, but yeah, news exists for the sole purpose of creating outrage in order to generate ad impressions. When you get outraged by one story, you’re more likely to click on the next related headline. We’re destroying our society so we can make less than a penny per page.
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2. bjt ◴[06 Feb 25 04:18 UTC] No.42959030[source]▶
For anyone wanting to skip the outrage but still get news and analysis, I can't recommend the PBS News Hour highly enough.

Today's episode, for example: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/february-5-2025-pbs-news-h...

3. padolsey ◴[06 Feb 25 09:51 UTC] No.42960784[source]▶
> news exists for the sole purpose of creating outrage in order to generate ad impressions

I like the idea of distinguishing news from journalism. If we say they're distinct, then yeh I think I can agree that news is–via weird unintentional evolution of incentives–an outrage machine, but true journalism is a wondrous and professional exercise of human scrutiny on centres of otherwise unchecked power. We need that.