I have been a very strong adherent of this philosophy for over 30 years.
There’s an adage, “there’s nothing as worthless as yesterday’s news”. Which led me to wonder, “was it even worth knowing yesterday?”
I realized the solution was a low pass filter.
I first switched to a seven-page newspaper (CSM) delivered through the mail. I realised the editors had to figure out whether it would still be interesting by the time it arrived and important enough to take up space in the paper.
I soon switched to a weekly newspaper (The Economist) and monthlies. I haven’t looked back. The nice thing about a paper like the economist is remained relatively small (few pages) so had to make the same class of decision as the CSM, rather than expand the paper.
I also have an RSS list of trade journals and such that I skim once a week, reading the odd title that looks interesting. Most of the time it’s only a handful of articles.
As for the high frequency stuff and stuff outside my bubble: I still talk to people and so I hear about stray stories. I do find it interesting that I have yet to have anyone bring up the Ukraine situation. At all.
> I do find it interesting that I have yet to have anyone bring up the Ukraine situation.
Speaking of "weekly" discussions, the Ukraine situation has been brought up in my weekly Church prayers since it started.
Generally speaking, if it a current event that the Priests make 2 or 3 "intentions" for (in the Catholic mass, the prayers that occur after the Homily but before the preparations), its an incredible event. In many situations, the words are vague so that it applies to as broadly as possible (ex: there usually is something about wars and disasters), but Ukraine specifically is brought up in those prayers in my experience.
Which makes sense, the suffering and pains of that country are the greatest seen in many decades.
--------
Generally speaking, the intentions are specific to the parish community (pray for X who died last week) and local. Sometimes, a "sister parish" from another side of the world get their intentions emailed to our Church (ex: a hurricane that affects Haiti will be brought up, because our "sister-Parish" is in Haiti, so their "local" issues are brought up in our prayers as well. My current Parish doesn't have a sister-parish, but my last one had one in Haiti). For a global event to be brought up in specific terms (more so than just "prayer to end wars". But a specific "prayer to help the people of Ukraine") is pretty rare.
I much preferred the print CSM to their online version. With the print I knew what to read front to back. With their web version it seems less organized. Stories remain for a week or longer as new ones crop up. It’s hard to know where to focus.
The economist model is much better. A dedicate weekly edition you can read front to back with daily articles posted outside of that.
Similar to you, I keep my news limited to the local Sunday paper, HN, and word of mouth. Unlike you, I’ve found that Ukraine seems to be all anyone wants to talk about lately.
> I still talk to people and so I hear about stray stories. I do find it interesting that I have yet to have anyone bring up the Ukraine situation. At all.
Could be your own bubble. Most everyone in my circle has brought it up. Many of us brought it up because we know people who are from Ukraine or have lived there extensively. I live and work in SV. Lots of Ukrainians work and live here.
In the olden days when coal fires in open fireplaces were part of daily life, old newspapers were used to build up the base of the fire. You would scrunch up sheets of newspaper, pack them into the hearth, then add some kindling on top, then add a modest amount of coal, preferably dry coal.
With a single match you would then set light to the scrunched up newspaper, which would set light to the wood, which would get the coal started. Once the coal was glowing you could add more coal and the fire would be truly lit.
To speed up the process you could hold up a sheet or two of broadsheet newspaper over the fireplace, so air would be sucked in at the bottom to hold the flat sheets tight over the fireplace opening, making the fire roar. This was like 'turbo mode'.
This whole process was time consuming and you would generally be using newspapers that were a few days old. Frequently this 'news' had some real gems in it. Removed from the original context by a few days, the news articles often had details that were not important at the time, but, with hindsight, made them somewhat curious.
Because you might be holding this news up around the fireplace for a few minutes with it lit up by a roaring fire, you were sort of obligated to read beyond the headlines.
There were different wars at the time, as well as labour disputes. It was often that you would read something that foreshadowed the news of the day on the radio - which we called 'wireless' back then.
I found that the old news, read this way, was a lot more thought provoking. I found myself questioning more.
Nowadays you could go onto the Internet Archive and find the headlines for a given day. However, we tend not to do that. The news just morphs from one day to the next, lacking distinct daily episodes like it did in the days of printed papers. Articles can be edited and updated, to be the same but different.
I agree with the article and try to encourage relatives to stay away from the gogglebox. The TV news is utterly toxic. But I feel that it is end times for this mainstream media. Only boomers truly consume it, anyone under fifty isn't tuned in and were not around when the news informed a national conversation.
The blanket propaganda/news of today is not the same as the national conversation that was once a thing. The Overton Window has gone widescreen and narrow at the same time. If you are not with the mainstream narrative then you can only be deemed to be 'worse than Trump/Putin/Assad/Hitler/Farage'. Or a communist. What was the left has got old and conservative. Or co-opted, particularly when it comes to identity politics. It has become infantilised with the majority under fifty just opting out of giving a damn.
The idea that only local news affects me is simply wrong, because the world is connected and things are influential.
I do not live in Texas, but the Texas legislature restricting access to healthcare and allowing citizens to sue providers affects because certain political parties will treat that as a template for laws across the country, including in my area.
The Florida legislature trying to ban books and discussion of topics once again sets precedent that will become attempted law in my area.
People need to be aware of these efforts to know what to look for in their community and to prepare to counter such efforts. Information spreads and strategies are organized. Waiting until something is in my local area before trying to respond is guaranteed to lose.
Even on a large scale, knowing about international conflict made me aware that I should stockpile Baltic Birch plywood before its price skyrocketed. Reading the news saved me hundreds of dollars.
Fundamentally, ignoring the news is a luxury afforded to those who benefit from the current power structure. If you are well off and white, yes, you can probably ignore the news. If a subset of the government is constantly trying to find ways to harass you, deny you the right to vote or get healthcare, you have to be aware of things to prepare for and effectively counter them.
Agree with this so much. A lot of people take pride in being naive about the news. That's a privilege if you live in a reasonable environment, when others take care of reading the news, defending you from unreasonable legislations, policies, etc. It's not something to recommend to others, though. Imagine living under an oppressive government (this is surprisingly common) that invents laws every day just to arrest you for saying the wrong thing - knowing how to minimize your chance of getting arrested randomly is critical.
Conversely, you could follow the news, buy a home because you think you'd be permanently priced out due to investors, and end up underwater in a few years. Because you read the news, you'll choose to make financial decisions, some might be wins, but not all are guaranteed to be wins.
Why follow local news? In my case it can be summarized to violence and petty politics. The day something important and out of ordinary happens I will probably know about it from family and friends before it became news.
Far away problems are so much more interesting than those nearby. You needn't really do anything about them, and its much easier to assign your own valuation to anything you do. Your successes can be trumpeted as much as you like and your failures need never be known to anyone but you.
I'll come out of my shell a few times a week and won't understand what's going on. News sites just tell me the last 18 hours' worth of updates... So... I either disengage entirely and can't carry on a conversation or I stay engaged and worry about events I cannot affect.
I'd like a "I haven't checked the news in [7] days and some guy at work mentioned [Ukraine talking to the UN], what's that all about?" website.
I guess it'd be 7 days worth of news synopses for the topic.
[7 days ago this city fell, Joe said stern words about it, and the Sauds started selling oil in Yuan because it didn't want China to get all its oil from Russia.]
[6 days ago that city was retaken, and everyone was surprised.]
[5 days ago Joe said more stern words but had no effect.]
I've actually found that Improve the News [1] is good for something like that. It has sliders to let you select what kind of new you are looking for with one of the sliders which controls "shelf life" ranging from short to long and "recency" from evergreen to recent. Not exactly what you are looking for, but I've found it can serve a similar purpose.
I believe you'd have a far more satisfying and productive time coming out of your shell if you redirected Joe's conversation to asking about him, or his kids, or his hobbies- keeping it local like the article concludes.
Unless it's your job, neither of you really understand whatever is happening with Ukraine and your conversation will be mostly limited to repeating what you've been told to each other, which doesn't enrich either of your lives.
There are usually news programs on Sunday that will go over the past weeks worth of news. I like Bloomberg radio, which airs like 3 or 4 different weekly recap shows on that day.
I agree with some of the premises of this article, that much of the news is actually of negative value, but I have some problems with this part:
> If an event is actually important to your real life, you will find out about it. Such news will find you.
> Well, from my experience you ignore all of the things you cannot control and that have little bearing on your life (again, if there is some news that will actually effect your life you’ll hear about it)
Here is the crux. There are actually important things we need to know about (e.g. a nearby natural disaster that may threaten your area; an upcoming local election with important consequences; a worldwide pandemic). How do we find out about about them? This article assumes they will somehow reach you anyway even if you ignore all news - how?
IME, the way this happens, is that your relatives/friends/neighbors, who are following the news, tell you about it. In other words, this advice appears to me to rely on parasitism - a minority can ignore all news without harm because they can still rely on the majority who follow the news to provide really important information. As a moral position it fails the categorical imperative.
Maybe the reverse is possible? The majority can ignore the news until the few who are watching the skies notice something important enough for people to break their no-news policy.
Those relatives/friends/neighbors may very well have a healthier relationship with the news than you do. For a certain set of people (me included), news is addictive and destructive to my life, but for others, it's something they can peruse once a day.
Besides which, it's not like a majority of people will ever quit the news. You alone doing it is not doing anyone else a hardship. It's not like anyone is thinking, "Ugh, I have to keep scrolling twitter so that I can keep my news-less friend in the loop."
- Unfollowed any news accounts and use Ublock to block suggested content on Twitter
- Unsubscribed from any news subreddits
- Of course never check news sites
And honestly feel better overall and less stressed. Sure you can claim being apathetic/ignorant towards global current events makes me a bad person, but I do not care. To me, no human is designed to handle as much information input as we experience today.
100% agree. I think the 24hr news cycle is a huge contributor to negative mental health.
When we travelled to the in-laws over the most recent holidays, the news was always on, and always talked about and my wife and I both commented afterwards it felt like an oppressive blanket of stress was laid over everything while we were there.
I agree with the general concept that, at the individual level, news consumption is bad for your mental health and pretty much useless. At the societal level though... if everybody took this approach there would be no accountability for politicians or corporations.
> And honestly feel better overall and less stressed. Sure you can claim being apathetic/ignorant towards global current events makes me a bad person, but I do not care.
I would not say so. But, I would expect you to NOT be outspoken and confident when someone else starts to speak about stuff related to current issues. And I would expect you to check yourself especially when it seems like the other person is saying something you intuitively disagree with, because chance that they are simply better informed is high.
It is quite possible you do it, I don't want to imply that. But, I have met quite a few people who don't follow news (proudly) but then are full of opinions about issues they don't follow.
I spent my life trying to be a well-informed investor. It turns out that all you have to do is buy real assets when you are young and just hold them forever. And don’t ever sell anything. That’s it. As long as the world is relatively peaceful you will get rich.
> News makes you scared of highly dramatic and highly unlikely events (plane crashes, shark attacks, terrorism etc) while also being oblivious to insidious and creeping risks that are low-key and hard to make dramatic and visual (say antibiotic resistance or indeed chronic stress caused by being in a news-induced perpetual state of physiological arousal).
This is perhaps one of the most important points in this post that's buried pretty deep in the article.
The author here is not advocating for "head-in-the-sand" avoidance of reality.
Often when I see real, systemic issues brought up on HN or elsewhere: climate, the overshoot of industrial society, resource depletion etc. These concerns are often dismissed as "the media just wants you anxious!". But, by and large, the real scary pieces of information about these topics are not published by major media.
The media wants you anxious, but not so concerned that you seriously question our mainstream mode of life. You should worry about nuclear war with Russia, but not about the war for natural gas that's really going on. You should be anxious about climate change, but only enough to make you recycle, not so much that you question the economic system that is fundamentally unstable.
I agree with much of what the author states. However I find it hard to completely quit cold turkey.
I’ve settled into three subscriptions: the local paper (which also carries syndicated inter/national stories that I ignore completely–I’m looking for local politics and economy, and especially the special interest pieces in the Sunday edition and the monthly community-events inserts, not the crime report type stuff); The Economist, in which I ignore all the leader articles and merely try to find at least one or two interesting articles to read each week; and The Atlantic, with mostly the same strategy as that for The Economist.
I recently let my IEEE membership lapse but did the same with their Spectrum magazine.
I try to do the rest of my reading in books and not social media–HN excluded, of course!
I still have this teetering idea that I should cancel The Economist, it often seems like a gossip rag dressed up in sophisticated verbiage. But every now and then I do find interesting, if not useful, articles. Maybe I’ll switch out The Economist and go back to IEEE Spectrum or something similar.
I usually enjoy the long featured pieces in The Atlantic.
I'm sorry but this is just total nonsense. The author argues very that being informed is an unimportant article of faith. I can name a number of recent examples where being uninformed of the news would have had significant impacts on my life. For example,
1. New Zealand is still under various Covid restrictions and they are in constant flux. These impact real-world decisions I need to make like should I plan to attend a particular event, should I plan a trip for the winter or even go to the office next week. If I don't stay on top of the news I will be helpless. Even the event organisers and shop owners use phrases like "Red Light Phase 2" which must be gleaned from the news - Red Light today doesn't mean the same thing it did 2 weeks ago.
2. The Ukraine crisis. Even if you don't think it's important to be aware of such a monumental ongoing geopolitical event for its own sake, if I ignored the news I would have no idea why so many people on my island on the other side of the world are carrying blue and yellow flags, changing their avatars and vocalising their support for an Eastern European country they have never even mentioned before. You can argue it's not important to be informed about this kind of event but that assertion is no less an article of faith than the claim that it IS important. And quite frankly if it became obvious someone I was talking to wasn't aware of the Ukraine conflict it would sharply diminish my respect for them.
3. We had an ongoing weeks-long protest in my city recently which blocked several important streets and caused a lot of chaos. Is it in my interests to not be aware of road closures and massive police operations in my area? Even if I don't care about the protestors, their cause etc, it's still directly impactful for me to know where I can, can't and shouldn't drive my car.
Ah yes. Reading the news is useless in the sense that reading the mainstream news is useless. It's both deliberately (pushing a narrative) and by incompetence (Gell Mann Amnesia) wrong more often than not.
That doesn't mean cutting yourself off from the world is wrong. Large outlier events often cast shadows (Covid, Ukraine war) and if you're in the path of the outlier events, knowing early pays off.
The hard question is, how do you see the large shadows without having to twitch at every small event. The answer to this is, to some extent, mentioned in the article - expensive, subscription-based newsletters. It's still not the full answer. There are too many areas to pay attention to. Best answer I've found so far is having a group of friends & contacts with wide-ranging interests.
To me this is speaking to the echo chamber. I am so used to seeing this type of message, along with "Politics is the mind kill" and I nearly always see both blithely accepted, perpetuated, and unchallenged.
It also seems a ridiculously strong stance to take, 'going cold turkey on news.' A naunced point about how low quality discussion or sensational takes do more harm than good is reasonable, but this is not that. They themselves are neither long form, or considered and this website linking to their post is titled "Hacker News." It's ironic, to truly heed their advice we should ignore them.
IMO news comes in two flavors, one of which should be avoided like the plague it is, and one which you should pay somewhat close attention to (relatively). The first, national and international news. And the second being local news. We should embrace the local journalists who shine light on local politics.
I tend to agree; I don’t really follow news myself. If there’s anything big going on, I’d know anyway.
But IMO there are two blind spots in that philosophy:
- If everybody did that, even the big things would not propagate. You’d only know there is a war going on if you heard the bombs.
- Voting becomes a problem. Since everything you hear is from people around you, it is most likely an opinion, which you will then echo. Also you might miss stuff which would affect your opinion, but which your friends didn’t care for.
I generally think news(a majority of it) is shameless drivel with extreme bias to certain perspectives. That being said with the pandemic and all the changing laws/issues surrounding it, not to mention covid community case counts were invaluable to understand. I would completely abandon the news in a heartbeat but I trade stocks and need to understand world news along with business dealings for me to make intelligent trading decisions.
I agree with you, but this text is unnecessarily long for the points you are making. Please try to be more concise, otherwise you will not reach those which I assume is your main target - the ones addicted to short sensational news.
I think this is a great and useful perspective. The most salient point being that "fake news" and "bias" and "balance" is a red herring to the much bigger problem of "news" in general. The near-universal acceptance that one can and should have firm opinions about complex ongoing events, some constant stream of incomprehensible information that is most likely completely unrelated to you, is the actual problem. I think the author is basically spot on here.
Where I think it breaks down is the prescription that everyone can necessarily separate themselves from "news". I think this is increasingly infeasible. Even if you, personally, don't buy a subscription or scroll twitter, I don't think it's too outlandish to expect that people around you in your family or community might take action based on some national or international news that is admittedly basically pointless. Are you supposed to righteously shut down every news-related conversation about that you're a part of?
More broadly this also runs into the absurdity of trying to define arbitrary boundaries around "news". You're just begging your unconscious mind to label subjects you are personally uncomfortable with as "news" and therefore not worthy of considering.
So removing "news" from your life as much as possible, or at least separating if from yourself and your ego to some significant extent, can really only be part of the answer and is also by definition an endless uphill battle. I don't think there's any getting away from the need for a broader media literacy.
Also:
>And perhaps there is something to that, given that my online avatar is a pixelated rendering of Stanczyk the Court Jester. But jesters are kept around because they say what needs to be said. And they express these unpopular messages with enough wit and entertainment that the kings let them keep their heads and indeed value their council.
This faux-humility disclaimer made me cringe. I thought this was a good piece overall, but this made me almost close the tab. Don't do this. They already opened the blog post, don't desperately plead with your reader that you promise that your thoughts are worth reading.
[+] [-] gumby|4 years ago|reply
There’s an adage, “there’s nothing as worthless as yesterday’s news”. Which led me to wonder, “was it even worth knowing yesterday?”
I realized the solution was a low pass filter.
I first switched to a seven-page newspaper (CSM) delivered through the mail. I realised the editors had to figure out whether it would still be interesting by the time it arrived and important enough to take up space in the paper.
I soon switched to a weekly newspaper (The Economist) and monthlies. I haven’t looked back. The nice thing about a paper like the economist is remained relatively small (few pages) so had to make the same class of decision as the CSM, rather than expand the paper.
I also have an RSS list of trade journals and such that I skim once a week, reading the odd title that looks interesting. Most of the time it’s only a handful of articles.
As for the high frequency stuff and stuff outside my bubble: I still talk to people and so I hear about stray stories. I do find it interesting that I have yet to have anyone bring up the Ukraine situation. At all.
[+] [-] dragontamer|4 years ago|reply
Speaking of "weekly" discussions, the Ukraine situation has been brought up in my weekly Church prayers since it started.
Generally speaking, if it a current event that the Priests make 2 or 3 "intentions" for (in the Catholic mass, the prayers that occur after the Homily but before the preparations), its an incredible event. In many situations, the words are vague so that it applies to as broadly as possible (ex: there usually is something about wars and disasters), but Ukraine specifically is brought up in those prayers in my experience.
Which makes sense, the suffering and pains of that country are the greatest seen in many decades.
--------
Generally speaking, the intentions are specific to the parish community (pray for X who died last week) and local. Sometimes, a "sister parish" from another side of the world get their intentions emailed to our Church (ex: a hurricane that affects Haiti will be brought up, because our "sister-Parish" is in Haiti, so their "local" issues are brought up in our prayers as well. My current Parish doesn't have a sister-parish, but my last one had one in Haiti). For a global event to be brought up in specific terms (more so than just "prayer to end wars". But a specific "prayer to help the people of Ukraine") is pretty rare.
[+] [-] coffeefirst|4 years ago|reply
1. Extremely high quality publications. 2. In a controlled manner.
That's not "no news" at all, it's a healthy relationship to quality news.
[+] [-] damontal|4 years ago|reply
The economist model is much better. A dedicate weekly edition you can read front to back with daily articles posted outside of that.
[+] [-] sedatk|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] escapedmoose|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bradlys|4 years ago|reply
Could be your own bubble. Most everyone in my circle has brought it up. Many of us brought it up because we know people who are from Ukraine or have lived there extensively. I live and work in SV. Lots of Ukrainians work and live here.
[+] [-] baxtr|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Theodores|4 years ago|reply
With a single match you would then set light to the scrunched up newspaper, which would set light to the wood, which would get the coal started. Once the coal was glowing you could add more coal and the fire would be truly lit.
To speed up the process you could hold up a sheet or two of broadsheet newspaper over the fireplace, so air would be sucked in at the bottom to hold the flat sheets tight over the fireplace opening, making the fire roar. This was like 'turbo mode'.
This whole process was time consuming and you would generally be using newspapers that were a few days old. Frequently this 'news' had some real gems in it. Removed from the original context by a few days, the news articles often had details that were not important at the time, but, with hindsight, made them somewhat curious.
Because you might be holding this news up around the fireplace for a few minutes with it lit up by a roaring fire, you were sort of obligated to read beyond the headlines.
There were different wars at the time, as well as labour disputes. It was often that you would read something that foreshadowed the news of the day on the radio - which we called 'wireless' back then.
I found that the old news, read this way, was a lot more thought provoking. I found myself questioning more.
Nowadays you could go onto the Internet Archive and find the headlines for a given day. However, we tend not to do that. The news just morphs from one day to the next, lacking distinct daily episodes like it did in the days of printed papers. Articles can be edited and updated, to be the same but different.
I agree with the article and try to encourage relatives to stay away from the gogglebox. The TV news is utterly toxic. But I feel that it is end times for this mainstream media. Only boomers truly consume it, anyone under fifty isn't tuned in and were not around when the news informed a national conversation.
The blanket propaganda/news of today is not the same as the national conversation that was once a thing. The Overton Window has gone widescreen and narrow at the same time. If you are not with the mainstream narrative then you can only be deemed to be 'worse than Trump/Putin/Assad/Hitler/Farage'. Or a communist. What was the left has got old and conservative. Or co-opted, particularly when it comes to identity politics. It has become infantilised with the majority under fifty just opting out of giving a damn.
[+] [-] verisimi|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Arainach|4 years ago|reply
I do not live in Texas, but the Texas legislature restricting access to healthcare and allowing citizens to sue providers affects because certain political parties will treat that as a template for laws across the country, including in my area.
The Florida legislature trying to ban books and discussion of topics once again sets precedent that will become attempted law in my area.
People need to be aware of these efforts to know what to look for in their community and to prepare to counter such efforts. Information spreads and strategies are organized. Waiting until something is in my local area before trying to respond is guaranteed to lose.
Even on a large scale, knowing about international conflict made me aware that I should stockpile Baltic Birch plywood before its price skyrocketed. Reading the news saved me hundreds of dollars.
Fundamentally, ignoring the news is a luxury afforded to those who benefit from the current power structure. If you are well off and white, yes, you can probably ignore the news. If a subset of the government is constantly trying to find ways to harass you, deny you the right to vote or get healthcare, you have to be aware of things to prepare for and effectively counter them.
[+] [-] ipiz0618|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 88913527|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lobocinza|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] h2odragon|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] inanutshellus|4 years ago|reply
I'd like a "I haven't checked the news in [7] days and some guy at work mentioned [Ukraine talking to the UN], what's that all about?" website.
I guess it'd be 7 days worth of news synopses for the topic.
[7 days ago this city fell, Joe said stern words about it, and the Sauds started selling oil in Yuan because it didn't want China to get all its oil from Russia.]
[6 days ago that city was retaken, and everyone was surprised.]
[5 days ago Joe said more stern words but had no effect.]
etc.
[+] [-] dwiel|4 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.improvethenews.org/
[+] [-] sjmulder|4 years ago|reply
It's not quite for this use case but could be of help. I regularly use it to find out what that thing is people are joking about on Twitter or such.
[+] [-] droopyEyelids|4 years ago|reply
Unless it's your job, neither of you really understand whatever is happening with Ukraine and your conversation will be mostly limited to repeating what you've been told to each other, which doesn't enrich either of your lives.
[+] [-] ljlolel|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twic|4 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events
[+] [-] superbaconman|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexmingoia|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] allturtles|4 years ago|reply
> If an event is actually important to your real life, you will find out about it. Such news will find you.
> Well, from my experience you ignore all of the things you cannot control and that have little bearing on your life (again, if there is some news that will actually effect your life you’ll hear about it)
Here is the crux. There are actually important things we need to know about (e.g. a nearby natural disaster that may threaten your area; an upcoming local election with important consequences; a worldwide pandemic). How do we find out about about them? This article assumes they will somehow reach you anyway even if you ignore all news - how?
IME, the way this happens, is that your relatives/friends/neighbors, who are following the news, tell you about it. In other words, this advice appears to me to rely on parasitism - a minority can ignore all news without harm because they can still rely on the majority who follow the news to provide really important information. As a moral position it fails the categorical imperative.
[+] [-] dwaltrip|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jsharpe|4 years ago|reply
Besides which, it's not like a majority of people will ever quit the news. You alone doing it is not doing anyone else a hardship. It's not like anyone is thinking, "Ugh, I have to keep scrolling twitter so that I can keep my news-less friend in the loop."
[+] [-] bombcar|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ddoran|4 years ago|reply
In my experience it is more commonly used to describe news which the speaker does not like.
[+] [-] kilroy123|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hunterb123|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacobsenscott|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] 1270018080|4 years ago|reply
- Deleted facebook
- Unfollowed any news accounts and use Ublock to block suggested content on Twitter
- Unsubscribed from any news subreddits
- Of course never check news sites
And honestly feel better overall and less stressed. Sure you can claim being apathetic/ignorant towards global current events makes me a bad person, but I do not care. To me, no human is designed to handle as much information input as we experience today.
[+] [-] Pasorrijer|4 years ago|reply
When we travelled to the in-laws over the most recent holidays, the news was always on, and always talked about and my wife and I both commented afterwards it felt like an oppressive blanket of stress was laid over everything while we were there.
[+] [-] depaya|4 years ago|reply
How do we find a healthy middle ground?
[+] [-] watwut|4 years ago|reply
I would not say so. But, I would expect you to NOT be outspoken and confident when someone else starts to speak about stuff related to current issues. And I would expect you to check yourself especially when it seems like the other person is saying something you intuitively disagree with, because chance that they are simply better informed is high.
It is quite possible you do it, I don't want to imply that. But, I have met quite a few people who don't follow news (proudly) but then are full of opinions about issues they don't follow.
[+] [-] shantnutiwari|4 years ago|reply
100% agree. The Media complex is the one that keeps pretending news is important-- its like a drug dealer saying drugs are important.
[+] [-] beamatronic|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] time_to_smile|4 years ago|reply
This is perhaps one of the most important points in this post that's buried pretty deep in the article.
The author here is not advocating for "head-in-the-sand" avoidance of reality.
Often when I see real, systemic issues brought up on HN or elsewhere: climate, the overshoot of industrial society, resource depletion etc. These concerns are often dismissed as "the media just wants you anxious!". But, by and large, the real scary pieces of information about these topics are not published by major media.
The media wants you anxious, but not so concerned that you seriously question our mainstream mode of life. You should worry about nuclear war with Russia, but not about the war for natural gas that's really going on. You should be anxious about climate change, but only enough to make you recycle, not so much that you question the economic system that is fundamentally unstable.
[+] [-] sixstringtheory|4 years ago|reply
I’ve settled into three subscriptions: the local paper (which also carries syndicated inter/national stories that I ignore completely–I’m looking for local politics and economy, and especially the special interest pieces in the Sunday edition and the monthly community-events inserts, not the crime report type stuff); The Economist, in which I ignore all the leader articles and merely try to find at least one or two interesting articles to read each week; and The Atlantic, with mostly the same strategy as that for The Economist.
I recently let my IEEE membership lapse but did the same with their Spectrum magazine.
I try to do the rest of my reading in books and not social media–HN excluded, of course!
I still have this teetering idea that I should cancel The Economist, it often seems like a gossip rag dressed up in sophisticated verbiage. But every now and then I do find interesting, if not useful, articles. Maybe I’ll switch out The Economist and go back to IEEE Spectrum or something similar.
I usually enjoy the long featured pieces in The Atlantic.
[+] [-] mdoms|4 years ago|reply
1. New Zealand is still under various Covid restrictions and they are in constant flux. These impact real-world decisions I need to make like should I plan to attend a particular event, should I plan a trip for the winter or even go to the office next week. If I don't stay on top of the news I will be helpless. Even the event organisers and shop owners use phrases like "Red Light Phase 2" which must be gleaned from the news - Red Light today doesn't mean the same thing it did 2 weeks ago.
2. The Ukraine crisis. Even if you don't think it's important to be aware of such a monumental ongoing geopolitical event for its own sake, if I ignored the news I would have no idea why so many people on my island on the other side of the world are carrying blue and yellow flags, changing their avatars and vocalising their support for an Eastern European country they have never even mentioned before. You can argue it's not important to be informed about this kind of event but that assertion is no less an article of faith than the claim that it IS important. And quite frankly if it became obvious someone I was talking to wasn't aware of the Ukraine conflict it would sharply diminish my respect for them.
3. We had an ongoing weeks-long protest in my city recently which blocked several important streets and caused a lot of chaos. Is it in my interests to not be aware of road closures and massive police operations in my area? Even if I don't care about the protestors, their cause etc, it's still directly impactful for me to know where I can, can't and shouldn't drive my car.
[+] [-] groby_b|4 years ago|reply
That doesn't mean cutting yourself off from the world is wrong. Large outlier events often cast shadows (Covid, Ukraine war) and if you're in the path of the outlier events, knowing early pays off.
The hard question is, how do you see the large shadows without having to twitch at every small event. The answer to this is, to some extent, mentioned in the article - expensive, subscription-based newsletters. It's still not the full answer. There are too many areas to pay attention to. Best answer I've found so far is having a group of friends & contacts with wide-ranging interests.
[+] [-] LeroyRaz|4 years ago|reply
It also seems a ridiculously strong stance to take, 'going cold turkey on news.' A naunced point about how low quality discussion or sensational takes do more harm than good is reasonable, but this is not that. They themselves are neither long form, or considered and this website linking to their post is titled "Hacker News." It's ironic, to truly heed their advice we should ignore them.
[+] [-] rootusrootus|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arubania2|4 years ago|reply
But IMO there are two blind spots in that philosophy:
- If everybody did that, even the big things would not propagate. You’d only know there is a war going on if you heard the bombs.
- Voting becomes a problem. Since everything you hear is from people around you, it is most likely an opinion, which you will then echo. Also you might miss stuff which would affect your opinion, but which your friends didn’t care for.
[+] [-] subsubzero|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anonymousiam|4 years ago|reply
https://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/92q4/badnews.html
[+] [-] cambaceres|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kn0where|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] allemagne|4 years ago|reply
Where I think it breaks down is the prescription that everyone can necessarily separate themselves from "news". I think this is increasingly infeasible. Even if you, personally, don't buy a subscription or scroll twitter, I don't think it's too outlandish to expect that people around you in your family or community might take action based on some national or international news that is admittedly basically pointless. Are you supposed to righteously shut down every news-related conversation about that you're a part of?
More broadly this also runs into the absurdity of trying to define arbitrary boundaries around "news". You're just begging your unconscious mind to label subjects you are personally uncomfortable with as "news" and therefore not worthy of considering.
So removing "news" from your life as much as possible, or at least separating if from yourself and your ego to some significant extent, can really only be part of the answer and is also by definition an endless uphill battle. I don't think there's any getting away from the need for a broader media literacy.
Also:
>And perhaps there is something to that, given that my online avatar is a pixelated rendering of Stanczyk the Court Jester. But jesters are kept around because they say what needs to be said. And they express these unpopular messages with enough wit and entertainment that the kings let them keep their heads and indeed value their council.
This faux-humility disclaimer made me cringe. I thought this was a good piece overall, but this made me almost close the tab. Don't do this. They already opened the blog post, don't desperately plead with your reader that you promise that your thoughts are worth reading.