[dpcan]

For me, it has now been 2.5 years since having watched any local, national or cable news.

The stuff is poison.

I also deleted Facebook around the same time to stay away from it through 3rd parties.

It is true that it has made me happier. I am free of the nonsense.

It turns out, every “big deal” only lasts a couple weeks - in terms of those of us who have no control over anything. I still hear people talk about stuff that’s happening in the news, and chuckle when they are on to some new terrifying thing that’s happening after about a week since the last terrifying thing they were freaking out about.

[beardedwizard]

Ah so you don't count hackernews as news - an interesting choice.

You mention tv news, but I suspect online news is what most people consume, streaming killed tv news many years ago.

[whstl]

I think it's easy enough to "miss" this kind of news in HN. The threads often get flagged quite quickly, lead to to more comments than upvotes, which brings it to the second page, etc.

[dandellion]

Despite the name I think only about half the posts on the site are actual news. And of those many are not current news, there are many links that are months or even years old.

[kodah]

I think "news" here correlates to organizations deep in the "news cycle" whereby some organization decides some goings-on of local people is a worthy national topic. HN is one or two layers removed from this; quite literally there's a crowd deciding what you see at a given moment is relative or not for consumption. This is the same effect of hearing about important events from other people and choosing to look into them further or looking into them after the topic is more settled.

The real problem these users are describing is separation from the news cycle where most elements in the cycle are overstated or irrelevant to most users but are put in front of them anyway with very "this is important" language.

[zorlack]

> I still hear people talk about stuff that’s happening in the news

Well phew! Thankfully someone's still paying attention.

[Dudester230602]

How will you know what your opinion is expected to be by society to avoid getting into trouble at work or in public?

You cannot simply say "Go current good thing! End the current bad thing!" as people will think you are being sarcastic.

[InitialLastName]

Maybe part of your problem is feeling like you are required to express an opinion on things that have limited bearing on your life? You can support the people in your life without having to fabricate support for positions you don't care about.

[andyjohnson0]

For a while now I've tried to cultivate the habit of not trying to have opinions about everything. It's quite liberating to say: sorry, <thing> may be important, but I just don't have an opinion about it at the moment.

[presidentender]

Usually if you don't track the news you don't have opinions on the news. If somehow you develop an opinion it's pretty easy not to express it.