alt Hacker NewsOh sure. The war isn't happening as long as you don't look at it. In fact, it's not technically a war so we shouldn't care about it.
You are correct in that we must be better about selecting our news sources. But the answer is not about drowning yourself in pleasant fiction on Amazon Prime or ignoring current events.
The answer is to pick non-clickbait / non-doomscrolling news sources that provide more actionable news and stronger analysis. I've picked The Atlantic for this, once a week magazine is fast enough and gives enough time for the writers to provide deep and through analysis on current events.
The fast moving clickbait media of Twitter and Facebook is trash. It's often incorrect, it's full of propaganda, and the people drawn into it seem like idiots (and arguing with them pulls your intelligence down). Find better media, find better people and leave the trash behind.
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Pick your news sources. Otherwise, the news sources will pick you. That's always been true since the early days of Yellow Journalism. The media landscape is harder to figure out today, but there continues to be well written independent media today, if only you went out to support them and reach out.
Replies
[Responding to all the comments, so you may need to read through the thread again if I miss context here]
> The war isn't happening as long as you don't look at it.
I'm not ignorant of the war, and yes I follow it; however my mentality stems from the sheer number of months of bad news happening somewhere. I can only give so much of my attention to The World when there's things at the local level to worry about. So I don't engage in "all of it" on the Internet. I have those conversations in person.
> But the answer is not about drowning yourself in pleasant fiction on Amazon Prime or ignoring current events.
I disagree, but also not drowning. Rather engaging online in the manner pre-COVID. You know, like Walking Dead "How would I survive a zombie apocalypse" or Game of Thrones "who's next to die". The 24/7 Internet chatroom known as "the comments section" just wants to deviate the conversation back to politics. I also disagree with the sentiment that we're in "Idiocracy", but I still enjoy the film.
> The fast moving clickbait media of Twitter and Facebook is trash. It's often incorrect, it's full of propaganda
So is every aggregator site. Agenda-Setting Theory [1] dictates what information you're receiving on any given day, and smaller scale Discords with self-promotion know how to gamify Trending algorithms (since most rely on some degree of 'velocity' based on time since post). Couple that with how we've over engineered attention by A/B testing thumbnails [2] and how the mind reads TEXT LIKE THIS [3] (which was also A/B tested for email campaign clickthroughs), I'm left with a curiosity of "what headline text is emotionally anchoring a sentiment"?
Heck, GET OFF THE INTERNET isn't even yelling [4], it's just me abusing that all caps does thing in brain.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda-setting_theory
[2] https://netflixtechblog.com/selecting-the-best-artwork-for-v...
[3] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....
[4] Reddit Version: https://v.redd.it/hlo2z6a6rctg1, Twitter Version: https://x.com/amgaweda/status/2040744192020717592; Gotta work on encoding cause something made my audio out of sync with the video
>ignoring current events
Sure it is important to be aware, but If being perpetually aware of the current events makes one feel anxious, helpless and fearful of the future then I think it is better to drown in pleasant fiction than read news.
Just being anxious and concerned in your home has not helped any cause except of that of the media that want your perpetual attention, eye balls and clicks.