←back to thread

Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

(www.scientificamerican.com)
757 points headalgorithm | 4 comments | 05 Feb 25 14:55 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
Show context
majgr ◴[06 Feb 25 07:03 UTC] No.42959854[source]▶
Living in Poland ruled by trumpists for 8 years I have these experiences:

- Get subscription of high value newspaper or magazine. Professionals work there, so you will get real facts, worthy opinions and less emotions.

- It is better to not use social media. You never know if you are discussing with normal person, a political party troll, or Russian troll.

- It is not worth discussing with „switched-on” people. They are getting high doses of emotional content, they are made to feel like victims, facts does not matter at all. Political beliefs are intermingled with religious beliefs.

- emotional content is being treated with higher priority by brain, so it is better to stay away from it, or it will ruin your evening.

- people are getting addicted to emotions and victimization, so after public broadcaster has been freed from it, around 5% people switched to private tv station to get their daily doses.

- social media feels like a new kind of virus, we all need to get sick and develop some immunity to it.

- in the end, there are more reasonable people, but democracies needs to develop better constitutional/law systems, with very short feedback loop. It is very important to have fast reaction on breaking the law by ruling regime.

replies(21): >>42959917 #>>42960125 #>>42960476 #>>42960691 #>>42960783 #>>42960898 #>>42960933 #>>42961214 #>>42961374 #>>42961618 #>>42961937 #>>42961953 #>>42962143 #>>42962171 #>>42962319 #>>42962493 #>>42962995 #>>42963639 #>>42963983 #>>42964597 #>>42965062 #
1. wonderwonder ◴[06 Feb 25 13:07 UTC] No.42961937[source]▶
"It is not worth discussing with „switched-on” people. They are getting high doses of emotional content, they are made to feel like victims, facts does not matter at all. Political beliefs are intermingled with religious beliefs."

This is fascinating to watch in the current environment. People are decent in real life for the most part but on social media its as if all manner of restraint are removed. Post anything disagreeing with the overall narrative of the site and its like a scene out of World War Z. Just attacked by crowds of people actively calling for your death. Never seen anything like it.

On X they will insult your intelligence or pull the "we tried to tell you and this is what you get you [insert explicative here]. On Reddit they will quite openly hope someone murders you.

Social media has truly insidious powers and I don't think people realize they are under its spell until its too late.

replies(3): >>42962137 #>>42962616 #>>42963956 #
2. pjc50 ◴[06 Feb 25 13:35 UTC] No.42962137[source]▶
> Social media has truly insidious powers and I don't think people realize they are under its spell until its too late.

Which is why there's now the disastrous government-by-meme plan directed at fighting the people a social media site's owner spends his time fighting with on social media. Plus a few crank theories of his own.

3. skeeter2020 ◴[06 Feb 25 14:28 UTC] No.42962616[source]▶
you don't even need to compare the same IRL people with social media. Tuck them behind a car windshield/windscreen and any social relationship is dead.

Sincerely,

A bike rider who commutes in traffic with the same people he works with every day.

4. nervousvarun ◴[06 Feb 25 16:27 UTC] No.42963956[source]▶
FAAFO is a real thing that influences human behavior.

We learn it as kids on the playground.

There is almost zero FAAFO with discussions on the internet.

And each passing year, there is less playground.