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Comment by moolcool | Hacker News Reader

Why is it that all news, including tech news, just fills me with endless dread nowadays? I surely can't be the only one who feels like this. Like what do we have to look forward to in the event that we don't have to face a depression, get drafted, see another pandemic, realize more of the effects of climate change, or get nuked? Wearing stupid goggles for 8 hours a day and paying Zuckerberg $50 for a virtual "I Hate Mondays" t-shirt? Oof.

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Then remove yourself from that live and start reconnecting to higher values.

Seems like you are stuck in the consumerism / professional world.

Reconnect to the people around you, nature, the things you love etc and just start to dial down those things that are filling you with dread. It's not going to get any better, but the things that matter are still there underneath all that nonsense that you are being sold.

As I like to say, "software eating the world" is just the first step of digestion

> Why is it that all news, including tech news, just fills me with endless dread nowadays?

Because you have a lot of knowledge about world events but you don't have very much wisdom about them.

Commodifying software was a mistake that resulted in all sorts of perverse incentives. We first saw Microsoft succumb to it, then Amazon, and are now watching Facebook, Apple and Google all create a mustard-gas-miasma of dark patterns and rent-collection. Really, it's our fault for not recognizing these threats during the dotcom boom.

You're typing this on a piece of technology that presumably you appreciate having access to, have you considered that there were likely many people in the generation before you who assumed something like HN was impossible and that all web tech or personal computing would be purely negative / dystopian? Turns out it's a mixed bag of good and bad. As is the world. There are beautiful things happening right now all over the world and there are horrible things. The happiest people seem to be either really excellent at accepting the horrible things or looking the other way, but in both cases they make sure their eyes are focused on the good as well and not just the bad.

You would probably enjoy listening to Hal Sparks on Twitch or YouTube. He's a comedian-cum-political commentator who is extremely well read and has made it his job to explain why the world ain't ending. He's in a beef with The Young Turks whose business plan is the exact opposite, even though they're supposedly on the same side politically.

He faces the worst of what's going on, watches some of the most toxic... er, "media clips", and tells you why they're wrong and dumb and why you should actually be optimistic, based on confirmable facts and, as another comment mentioned, wisdom.

> just fills me with endless dread nowadays

News inherently captures attention through fear. "Everything is fine today" doesn't sell papers.

But if that's the story you're choosing to tell yourself I would dread that future too.

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