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Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

(www.scientificamerican.com)
757 points headalgorithm | 1 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. keybored ◴[05 Feb 25 20:13 UTC] No.42954467[source]▶
Of course you can affect your country’s government. You can take five minutes every few years to decide who to vote for (spending more on that seems like a waste of time considering the payoff).

More than that though. You can protest and organize however much you like. There’s no cap on that.

And that is how insidious “news” is. The news broadcasts the hegemonic mindset. The same mindset that says that citizens’ only role is to vote every few years. Other than that they are supposed to stay home. Certainly not make a ruckus or anything.

And that’s what many conclude. That they are only supposed to be political in a direct, consequential sense by voting. Then it is clearly absurd, from a cost-benefit analysis standpoint, to stay ever-constantly informed on politics all the time.