Hacker News Reader

Comment by dpcan | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Well phew! Thankfully someone's still paying attention.

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.

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.

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.

I often find that saying "I am not up to date with the literature on this" helps.

There is something freeing about acknowledging you don't need to have an opinion and something enlightening about knowing you shouldn't have an opinion--especially on a topic that you aren't truly informed about.

My favorite meme on the subject: "Marcus Aurelius has already released you from the obligation to have a take":

> 52. You are not compelled to form any opinion about this matter before you, nor to disturb your peace of mind at all. Things in themselves have no power to extort a verdict from you.

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.

I'm not saying this is your intent, but it is a pretty privileged and insular take.

If new events or a new policy change unfairly affects a (neighbor|friend|minority group|stranger), is it a good thing for the unaffected to plug their ears and go about life?

I don't mean to suggest following the news 24/7 is a solution to this, but I also do not see how it's healthy for every person to ignore everything that doesn't personally affect them.

You're right, that isn't my intent. I didn't say not to develop an opinion, or to learn to care about issues that affect people other than you. My aim was to communicate that you aren't required to develop and express an opinion about every single issue.

Attempting to formulate an opinion on every issue that can possibly come up is a fool's errand; carefully following the outrage cycle for the sake of expressing an opinion that falls on the "correct" side of issues you have no stakes in is even worse, as it adds empty noise to the conversation and distorts the Overton window away from the concerns of people who do have stakes in the issue.

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