Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed | Hacker News Reader

Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

scientificamerican.com

757 pointsheadalgorithm905 comments

One thing to consider for those of us who are more sensitive to online outrage is to just quit social media all together. I’m technically gen z and I’ve been off of social media (aside from HN, WhatsApp and discord) for years and you wouldn’t believe how great it’s been for my overall state of mind.

Reddit, instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, Threads, etc are all the equivalent of digital junk food and I’d argue that we’re all a lot more negatively affected by it than we think. There’s a reason ‘brain rot’ was word of the year.

I quit reddit too recently, I still look at it for info but I'm not logged in/scrolling through it

I find myself reaching for something when I have YouTube/chilling at my desk at the end of the day, can't code anymore/make something just on till I sleep. Sometimes have the desire to play a video game (I have a gaming rig too funny how that works)

I've been trying to read HN or IEEE, TechCrunch stuff like that as my "lazy fun"

I will miss posting stuff like "what is this car" or being part of the car talk for a sporty car I drive but idk kind of want to just live too

It's unfortunate people expect you to have social media like a girl asks me if I have Instagram and I'm weird to not have one, I get it they can scope you out too for safety but when I tried using that stuff I felt this pressure to post about something

Anyway my main goal in life right now is getting out of debt/staying fit and work on projects

I checked reddit recently for the first time in a while, and I was shocked by how radicalized its become. An echo chamber of hateful people and perhaps GPTs that are agitating the big subreddits. The contrast is stark with all the "no place for hate" in the rules and endless banning of microaggressions.

I saw dozens of death threats. Even an explicit death threat thread with over 40,000 upvotes before reddit stepped in and shut the whole subreddit down.

It reminded me of Ghostbusters 2 with all the aggressively angry people and the ooze pouring out of the sewers, all building upon itself.

> I will miss posting stuff like "what is this car" or being part of the car talk for a sporty car I drive but idk kind of want to just live too

I used to waste so much time posting about cars on Reddit. I'd open my computer at 11pm, reply a few times to a single post on Reddit, and before long, I'd see 1:45am on the clock.

Not posting anything has been a massive time saver.

One healthy way to consume Reddit that I recently learned about is creating a "custom feed" (see left margin of new UI).

You can just add subs that are of interest that lack the torrent of bad news and only ever visit that custom feed. It doesn't ever algorithmically add posts from subs you don't manually include, as far as I've seen.

My suggestion: music! Give the eyes a break.

> It's unfortunate people expect you to have social media like a girl asks me if I have Instagram and I'm weird to not have one, I get it they can scope you out too for safety but when I tried using that stuff I felt this pressure to post about something

I actually feel really good when people expect me to be on social media and I tell them Im not.

Kind of similar to the feeling when I say that I quit cigarettes. Im still surprised by it and talking about it makes me feel very blessed to be free of it.

>It's unfortunate people expect you to have social media like a girl asks me if I have Instagram and I'm weird to not have one

Outside of reddit/discord/hn, I haven't had any social media since roughly 2010, and I don't use reddit or discord for anything remotely "social media"-ish.

While I still get the occasional look as if I'm wearing a tinfoil hat when I say "I don't have FB. No, no insta either. No... not snapchat either", I find it's a lot less common now, thankfully. When I first left social media in ~2010, it was rough. Not only dating scene wise, but I lost out on a few job opportunities (at least a few, probably more than I know) as well.

Now you're just considered kind of weird/fringe, instead of being borderline insane. Moving (slowly) in the right direction, I think.

One unfortunate aspect of this phenomena is that as reddit "evaporatively cools" (ala https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZQG9cwKbct2LtmL3p/evaporativ... ) as the more level headed people leave reddit gets even more radical.

It's even possible the places that people then move to (such as HN) also get more radical if the leavers have higher levels of radicalism than the place they join.

Probably worth Googling something like [men who don't have social media] to think what women think about this, it's more positive than you might think :)

It's not about scoping you out. Asking for your Instagram is like what asking for your number was in the past. It's flirting, it's that they want to get in touch again, set up a date.

If you say "I don't have Instagram", the girl will assume that you don't like her, not that you don't have Instagram.

So just make an empty Instagram (with a normal profile photo) for connecting with people. And say so when sharing it with a girl. If it's somebody who wants to "scope you out", you're already dealing with a person who you don't want to deal with.

The Instagram dating thing is because, in the heteronormative sense, a guy without one odd WAY more likely to be cheating. If you’re in a relationship, even if you don’t post, your significant other will likely tag you in their posts.

I’ve never really understood doomscrolling on Twitter or Reddit. The only social media I find remotely useful out entertaining is actually TikTok. The comments are IME the least toxic and most entertaining. And I’ve gone down fascinating rabbit holes of things that have absolutely no relevance to my life like medical residency TikTok.

This is the way. I was a director of the community team at deviantart when it got going and I remember so many times thinking "if we get one of these apps for everything people are going to drown themselves in the internet" - because I used to have to actively check in on community members who we deemed addicted. Sure enough, here we are, except it seems nobody is looking out for the best interests of their communities anymore. Thank god for dang.

> I was a director of the community team at deviantart (...) I used to have to actively check in on community members who we deemed addicted

This sounds so interesting to me - was it your responsibility? How did you detect if someone was addicted? And most importantly, how did you scale it?

> Sure enough, here we are, except it seems nobody is looking out for the best interests of their communities anymore. Thank god for dang.

Here's to dang! Even when you do things I might not agree with if I knew about them, this is a place where interesting things can be shared and found without all the blah-blah.

Alternatively carefully curate your social media accounts. My reddit home page is all books and formula 1. I'm quick to hit 'show me less like this' when anything drifts in from the front page.

My Facebook feed is all friends and family who don't discuss politics and ads for nerd shirts. I've purchased a few. It is also easy and effective to hit show me less of this.

I agree about LinkedIn and don't go there unless I'm actively job hunting, something I hope never to do again. I don't feel any bitterness when I see friends and family on FB go on expensive vacations, but I do feel an unhealthy and indefensible jealousy sometimes when I see former coworkers getting new jobs or promotions.

This is how I've dealt with Instagram. My IG account is literally nothing but cats. it's actually very refreshing to look at for five or ten minutes. But it takes work. IG wants to keep feeding me their BS reels. Sometimes I don't think it's worth it, they really make you put up a fight.

Indeed. I've unsubscribed from all subreddits that have become infested with political content, and I've "unfollowed" all of my acquaintances on Facebook and LinkedIn who post anything political. So much more enjoyable.

That didn’t work for me, at least with FB and Insta.

I unfollowed/unfriended anybody who kept posting political stuff. I did the same for anybody I didn’t interact with in real-life regularly.

That basically left my parents, and about 5 friends. None of whom post anything regularly.

So, now my feed is just random shitposts and memes from “influencers”.

So, I deactivated my Meta accounts. And I’m still alive. And probably saner.

I totally understand the desire to avoid politics on all these platforms but in some way I always expect the greater powers want to destroy these platforms and make us even more hopeless.

I can't imagine identifying myself on a forum...much less reddit.

Why do you exclude HN from your list? It is literally social media, but with the dial turned down a little. Yet, you don't have to dig to deeply to see flamewars, outrage, and trolling. I mean, look at many of the garbage comments in this very thread that are on par with /.,xchan.

Yes, but it’s the old skool version of social media and the conversations here are generally higher quality and more genuine. I strongly disagree that it’s “on par with /.,xchan”

HN also doesn’t seem to be as susceptible to rage-baiting / outrage-attention-seeking behavior. Not sure exactly what by this is the case but I’d venture a guess it has a lot to do with (1) “dang”s moderation, and (2) not having a personalized algorithm feed.

I’m increasingly of the view that personalized algorithm feeds generated to select the maximum attention grabbing content for each person is a truly dangerous idea.

Frankly, HN is not that engaging (by modern standards). In fact, probably 60-70% of the articles on the front page are boring to me on any given day. I view this as a feature and not a bug. Why should I expect that everything I look at must be maximally engaging?

I wish more sites were old skool like HN.

I learned much from just scrolling HN. Technical articles help me know the latest updates in various areas, dive deep into a topic, or develop new skills. I applied quite a few things I learned in my job. Fundamentally, most links on HN are articles, many of which are quite long, which tend to be more focused and informative.

Completely non-technical ones are few, and you can always choose to ignore them.

The feed is also non-personalized. It's not going to show a few more article on politics just because you linked on one.

By comparison, reddit is much, much worse, almost the opposite of HN. Just a bit better than Twitter, maybe. Most of my reddit browsing/participation falls into tech/hobby, yet I always find that spend more time than I'd like on meaningless stuff, and reddit keeps pushing/promoting political content (even in the context of technology).

My solution? Don't browse reddit unless I really need to for some reason (or if I really don't have anything else to do at that time).

I'm here to talk about technology and it's usage. I'm not here to socialize, I don't know your name, don't care, and haven't even looked at your username. You're just a sentence to me. It's more impersonal than the old newsgroups. How is it social?

I disagree with the often stated claim that HN is social media!

To me, HN is more like an online forum.

IMHO for a service to be defined as Social Media it needs to at least have a 'social graph' of some kind.

HN has never suggested an account to follow, or tried to suggest trending posts or topics to me.

Yes, HN does have a voting system. But that to me doesn't make it social media. HN posts are not measured and promoted based on engagement.

> Why do you exclude HN from your list? It is literally social media

I didn't exlude it from my list. See here:

> I’ve been off of social media (aside from HN, WhatsApp and discord) for years

I did, however, leave it out of this list

> Reddit, instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, Threads, etc are all the equivalent of digital junk food

because I don't consider HN to be digital junk food.

If HN is social media, then old online forums from the time before "social media" are also social media.

Not GP, but feel similarly. I'll offer my 2 cents:

> but with the dial turned down a little.

Exactly for this reason. Yes, HN is a social network. And if it follows the same enshittification path as the others, I will be gone from here too. But until then, to me (YMMV) it still provides a bit of entertainment and news without rotting my brain.

Even the analogy works. Fast food is not that bad... in moderate quantities (/"with the dial turned down a little")

In principal it's a great method to get back to normal, however there are key areas (subreddits, local groups, etc.) that really do provide information, expertise, and news content that isn't available anywhere else online. It's a double edged sword. The best way I've found is to be in there with a read-only mindset or perhaps only participating inside those key areas where political discussions are strictly prohibited.

This has been my exact issue with giving up reddit. It's really hard to replace very niche topics without it, since many online forums are dead. I also append so many searches on google with "reddit" because the top results are generally SEO spam.

Reading "You should quit reddit" helped a little. The author tries to reframe your hidden beliefs about reddit like "finding useful information" or "it's filled with experts." Helped me to realize I was spending more time reading about my hobbies than actually doing them. Though I understand it's not that simple, doing requires more energy, etc.

I have found this to be completely untrue. Yes, maybe not at the same scale that Reddit is, but if you dig, there's a community for everything. You can find what you're looking for.

That said, I recognize that I am speaking completely for myself in regards to my own interests. YMMV.

You can potentially rely on friends or family members to source such information (e.g., only one member of the household really needs to be checking the local group, etc...)

I think too that one thing that's important is to decide beforehand -- what can I do? What would I be willing to do?

That is to say, some people really are willing to be activists. They will organize protests and boycotts and things like that.

Other people are in marginalized communities and are trying to get a feel for whether they should move to a different region or even a different country.

Some folks don't really have a plan but they want to stay informed. If at some point a magical line is crossed, they might suddenly say, "That's IT! I can't take it anymore! I have to DO SOMETHNG!" and that's when they'll become activists.

But some folks are realistically never going to lift a finger to help themselves or anybody else. They'll just bitch online and/or be stressed.

What I'm working on is figuring out in what ways I might, in the right situation, be moved to contribute. If things get really bad (and they will), what will I realistically be doing? I'm disabled, so I can't be out in the streets. If things get even worse, I might write about the niche public health / politics topics I've accidentally become an expert in. And if something happens where medicare and medicaid are shut off, well then all hospitals everywhere will basically be non-functional. This will be a crisis for all but most immediately for the chronically ill -- any of us at that point who are able to will be leaving the country ASAP.

In other words, I need to know enough to keep writing (which I would do anyways) and I need to know when things are hopeless enough that a person with a messed up spine should travel out of the country anyways. That is currently all I need to know because it's all that is actionable for me.

There is a massive temptation to doomscroll into infinity, but that merely serves the enemies of sanity. I know what happens next because I've read Sarah Kendzior and Hannah Arendt. It's not good. But I also know that one of the first things that happened during the anti-semitic purges in Nazi Germany was that a ton of Jews got appendicitis from stress. Sometimes the body wants to align with power so badly, it aligns even with evil power and against its own interests. We have to be very careful not to poison ourselves and make evil's job easier.

<< One thing to consider for those of us who are more sensitive to online outrage is to just quit social media all together.

Yes. I still have to be at least aware of what is happening for work reasons, but removing social media was one of the better decisions for my sanity ( I stil comment on HN, but the quality of conversations was degrading as well, which in itself is a concern suggesting further digital landscape deterioration ).

I considered some more obvious solutions ( from buying subscription to WSJ/FT to personal news aggregator -- and objective/neutral observer rewrite using LLM and they all are not exactly ideal ).

Here is the good news. All this chaos is an opportunity to stand something useful up. And I mean something useful that cannot be so easily dismantled by powers that be ( and there are already heavy indications they are aware people may try going outside the defined paths ).

> I stil comment on HN, but the quality of conversations was degrading as well

Yeah I agree that many HN comments are unfortunately pretty bad, but I think this should only motivate people like you and me to try harder to make HN a better place with constructive, useful comments :)

If you decide not to totally quit a network, do what I do:

1. Turn off all notifications, especially for replies, likes, and content suggestions.

2. Train yourself not to look for feedback on the things you do post as a matter of habit. Intentionally check on the important discussions IFF you _remember_ to do so.

3. If possible, hide or remove any karma-like indications. Your life is better if the internet points aren't visible.

Just use the webapp too, when possible. Remove all native apps on your phones. Don’t read emails.

4. If you do scroll social media and you see a bad post then "punish" the platform by leaving.

Isn’t this how they win? I mean the people in Germany in 1930 just said , this is crazy , it doesn’t feel right, but hey I have outrage fatigue so the concentration camps are just fine

Much of the German population in the 1930s and 1940s was not aware of concentration camps, and learned of them once the Allies arrived.

The services go through phases (I suspect depending on botnet activity)...Middle of the day, Threads is a fun place to hang, 9pm? It's a wall of anxiety producing ragebait, 2am? It's even worse.

Looking at it on my phone, if I can see three entries and 2 are anxiety inducing, I close the app. (I'm 99% certain they get that telemetry too)

That said, I also had days where I doomscrolled instagram and thought 'it's been 20 minutes and I haven't seen anything entertaining yet.' And that's when I decided to drop it. (It was the only app I could chat with my kids with...we've since moved to other methods)

I haven't cut it out completely, but I'm not hyper aware of how I'm consuming it.

I think Minimum Effective Dose applies. I quit most media for 4 years. The next 2 years were 2 hrs/day on Reddit for jokes. It was the best.

But 1 year into that, I read an article by Swyx on how to use social media. I tried but gave up for another 2 years. But the end of that last 2 years was the election...and I was curious...so I went to X.

Within 3 days my opinion of the outcome flipped.

And...since I already read Swyx's article, I was ready to effectively navigate other topics of interest.

But the key to effective media usage is to ALWAYS be on guard. Your mental filters have to be running all the time. The second you drop your guard, you're vulnerable because the stream never lets up.

But when you do this, you find that you quickly run out of truly interesting things to read. Luckily I've also got physical hobbies. I now spend a TOTAL of 2 hrs/day across all media, and my mental health is just fine!

But also I find it highly rewarding in many areas such as investing, history (the X format works so well!), international (language, culture, politics).

I also highly recommend taking a second to put each post in scale or context. This does 2 things: helps decide importance of post, and slows scrolling so your brain doesn't get DDOSed into a mental health crisis.

And the (increasingly cheap, powerful and ubiquitous) LLMs can be used to either save time or power you further into the conversations.

> One thing to consider for those of us who are more sensitive to online outrage is to just quit social media all together.

This is hard to overstate. Checkout Jonathan Haidts research into social medias role in skyrocketing mental health problems in kids over the past decade.

The junkfood comparison is great. It feels good now but makes you extremely unhealthy long term. Its deceptive because it doesnt look that bad, but it displaces things that you actually need to be healthy.

> Checkout Jonathan Haidts research

I love that guy! He generally makes the rounds as a guest on most of the large podcasts and I’d recommend anyone listen to at least one podcast where he’s a guest.

Just want to add that, while Reddit is a huge time sink, it is pretty easy to just see the good parts of it:

- Mute any subreddit you do not enjoy

- Generously block any asshole in the comments

- Subscribe to the subreddits you do enjoy

- Create one or more themed multireddits of the subreddits you enjoy

My Reddit experience is cheesy feel good clips, cool videos of skilled people or weird occurences, funny niche humor and nerdy niche hobbies. No drama.

I agree. My Reddit outrage addiction flares up every now and then and it makes my mental health objectively shitty. Doesn’t matter if there’s some good content and connection on there, it’s just not worth the (mental) cost.

Completely agree. Sounds like we're similarly on the older end of Gen Z, and getting off social media in my first year of college was excellent. I get messages in my group chats from friends being pissed off (often rightfully) by things that our out of their control, but they're force-fed it on social media.

It doesn't help to stare at rage/anxiety inducing things - it doesn't mean you're actually informed all the time.

Plus I'd argue that most things you'll see end up being hogwash and the important stuff will rise to the top and you're generally hear about it anyway.

Just be aware than while HN appears to carry a wide range of interesting topics and discussions both the community and mods do have biases. It presents an incomplete and skewed perspective and has to be consumed in moderation as part of a balanced diet.

A lot of submissions are flagged every day. Some of them are well offtopic, repetitive or judged to be too biased or political and clearly if the site allowed all submissions it would break.

The act of curation is a form of censorship and while it is often justified, many posts about topical developments that have a technical/financial angle, perhaps even posted by technical/financial media or bloggers and featuring people who are well known in the technical/financial field appear to be getting flagged in ways that could appear to be politically motivated.

Pointless outrage over trivialities isn't good for us but when issues of genuine concern arise we shouldn't go out of our way to avoid them because they make us feel bad. We are supposed to feel bad when things are bad as it provokes us to action. The media/tech industry exploits our behavioral quirks to keep us engaged on their platforms but the fatique caused by the fire hose could numb us to real dangers. Disconnecting is very good for personal wellbeing but not to the point of dangerous ignorance.

Good on you. I have been pushing the idea of leaving social media to people for well over a decade now, for the same of people learning to communicate with each other in more meaningful ways and improve their mental health. It worked for me and everyone that actually listened to me.

But the emotionally violent resistance I get from people who are embedded in it is wild. I've commented on here before and subsequently pissed people off, but it is an addiction and needs to be treated like one.

Not sure if you’ve intentionally omitted it but I would also include YouTube in this list. YouTube can be very addictive with all the clickbait thumbnails etc.

I reduced my news intake to a daily email from reuters + HN. Special thanks go to AI, as reddit and others no longer allow reading content without login.

Thanks for your comment. Same here, Gen X. Off social media since pandemic. As Nassim Taleb says if it's really important someone will tell you. I feel like I'm on an island. I'm never outraged at all. Of course I hope there's more justice and equity in the world, but I am at peace with things and have no hatred or rage compared to when I was glued to social media.

I have tried to quit social media many times, but I end up using something again after a few weeks. It usually happens when I'm too tired to think about anything like games, or to read an article, or when I have a lot of waiting time without a lot of entertainment (eg airports). I wonder what do you do during those times?

> ...equivalent of digital junk food

Love it! Well, I hate that this situation exists, but the metaphor is great.

digital junk food. I haven't stumbled across this term and I gotta say as someone whose right on the edge between millenial and genz this term summarizes what most "public" social media is. I'm old enough to have grown up mostly with TV, with Internet being my escape hatch and twitter/facebook/tiktok/insta feel waaaay closer to old schoold programming TV than Internet. Anyway I'm an Internet person, not a TV person, so I've quit using all of them (I do have some "just in case" unused in years accounts everywhere because I suffer from a bad case of FOMO...)

I think that the social media is okay as long as no algorithmic feed gets involved. Visiting a few select tech subreddits doesn't affect me negatively. On other platforms the feed can't be avoided as easily.

I find that just muting anyone who has anything to do with politics on facebook works well for me. I go on facebook to see your cutesy images and how your life is going not for long political diatribes.

I did the same. I have some exceptions for technical topics on Reddit. I also still use Facebook in a very drilled down state (looking into it every 3-5 months and checking in with some remote friends). I have also set up my own Mastodon server, which is fine for niche topics and I can reach out to interesting people directly, where other channels fail (email). I heavily rely on RSS, particularly from people that I trust or who gained my trust over longer periods.

I thank myself for having avoided social media so far. I've also developed a keen eye for headlines that lead to "outrage articles" which I avoid.

I need social media for work.

What I did was unfollow everyone and everything, and block all suggested content. The front page is literally empty. Nothing on those websites captures my attention unless I specifically look for it.

This was very effective. These websites have effectively become write-only media for me. They're still here if I need them, but I end up browsing just one page of /r/curatedtumblr and then doing something else.

I’m still on social media (HN, YouTube and Reddit), but blocked all other news sites. They’re mostly about outrage too.

Many people don't even realize how much better they'd feel until they step away for a while.

The challenge for me is that there is useful stuff in there that I want to access.

There are neighbourhood groups and other really useful forums on Facebook. There are tech discussions on BlueSky.

But it's annoyingly hard to run the gauntlet of politics and outrage bait to get to the stuff I actually want.

We have to be aware of our disregulation as they try to swarm us with seemingly unstoppable energy. That is the point onslaught.

Take a breather, compose your emotions, take off hours or a days, but then re-engage, interact, observe, document, etc.

I basically agree, which is why it's kind of funny to see all the discussion in other threads here with people arguing about why can't ban AI or how Facebook was good because it created market value or whatever. Most of those platforms would be better off just outright banned.

I do think, though, that for at least some platforms it's possible to use them in a limited way where you confine yourself to relatively small communities that are focused on some common interest that genuinely brings together people who enjoy sharing it. You mentioned Discord for instance and that's one, if you can find the right servers. I think it's possible to do that on Reddit too. You just have to never visit the "front page" and stick only to subreddits that you actually get value out of. It's harder approaching impossible with ones like Facebook that are more doggedly algorithm-driven and don't put moderation in the control of users in the same way.

Of course, the lurking issue is that putting moderation in the control of users is building the platform on free labor and those good subcommunities are at risk of imploding when cracks emerge in the dike separating them from the wider platform userbase. And that's likely to happen because even those "safely usable" platforms are ultimately beholden to VC money that's going to demand enshittification eventually.

Cohost was by far the best attempt I've seen for many years, but sadly couldn't make a go of it in the toxic ecosystem we've got.

>LinkedIn

I really hate this one in particular. Why did the biggest Job board become another Facebook (but more blatantly trying to sell you stuff)? This is a hard one to leave unless you're very comfortable in your job prospects.

My take is almost the opposite, that it's important to develop healthy social networking insofar as there is some alternative to the outrage. It takes effort though.

I'm going to offer my two accounts as examples

https://mastodon.social/@UP8

https://bsky.app/profile/up-8.bsky.social

both of these are 'cyborg' accounts in that I have my RSS reader, classifier and autoposter. I am looking to build a lot more automation.

My Mastodon feed took a large set of rules to block out #uspol and certain communities of miserable people. My feed has stayed outrage-free since last month.

My measurements showed that Bluesky's 'Discover' feed blocked about 75% of emotionally negative material before Jan 20, since then people are inflamed but looking closely at my feed it seems they are deliberately trying to help certain people who felt stuck on X to migrate, that is, giving huge amounts of visibility to journalists, journalism professors, activists, and such so that they can run up 200k+ follower counts.

I understand. (I've been brainstorming ideas about "how to get people off X" with a friend and tonight I'm going to tell him that Bluesky has it) I've used "less like this", "unfollow" [1], "mute", "block" and such and my discover feed is getting good again.

I have two classifiers in the development pipeline, one to detect "screenshots of text" and "image memes", also a text classifier that is better at sentiment than my current one (I think ModernBERT + LSTM should be possible to train reliably, unlike fine-tuned BERTs.) I'm not so much interested in classifying posts as I am in classifying people; some of them are easy, there are 40,000 people who have a certain image meme pinned that I know I never want to follow. Just recently I figured out how to make training sets for these things without having to look too closely at a lot of toxic content.

I'm also eliminating the dependencies that are keeping this from being open sourced or commercialized so I may I have something to share this summer.

[1] one strike for an outrage post

I find LinkedIn a healthy collection of professional accomplishments with minimal news. It’s also not very addictive.

However, shitty newsfeeds like Google news are my bane. I can’t stop.

For better or worse, news flows through social media, so this approach basically amounts to ignoring all the bad stuff going on. If you read HN, chances are you can probably safely get through the next four years doing this. But as the saying goes, "first they came for the communists..."

Always prioritize your own wellbeing first.

I still find value in some of these but just focused to a specific use case for each

Reddit - hobbies

Instagram - catching up with friends

LinkedIn - Job Search

You can get just as outraged by diving deep into official government PDFs and finding out by yourself from the source what they are doing.

Sticking your head in the sand is of course a "solution", but that is willfully choosing to be nothing more than a subject to the rulers.

Another solution is to limit your news intake and your political passion to the things that have the most real implications on your life and on the people you care about, while limiting your own exposure and vulnerability to governments as much as possible.

HN, WhatsApp, and Discord are also junk food depending on how you use them.

Is WhatsApp really considered social media? I mainly use it as my sms alternative.

Have more self respect and consume a better information diet of printed media.

So the only things you check are HN, WhatsApp and Discord?

Yeah it sure is nice this way isn’t it! It’s pretty boring, but you get to form your own opinions about things, and aren’t constantly mad about things that don’t affect you. I’ll admit to scrolling HN a lot, but I at least get a lot of very useful info out of it, it has leveled me up in unexpected ways over the years.

what are your sources for news?

Discord suffers from the same problems; censorship platforms in general have the same cancer everywhere.

Same, I participate is very curated, self-selected communities online and that's it. I don't know how others who don't can do it.

Good luck out there.

Eh I wouldn't have known a friend died if I didn't occasionally log into FB.

I wouldn't have known that my best friend from middle school lost her house.

I wouldn't have known that a family member was pregnant.

But yeah, I feel like news stuff is better curated elsewhere, because outrage keeps eyeballs viewing, so algorithmic feeds tend to highlight it.

In my personal experience from X, Facebook, Reddit and HN: The place with the worst takes, most rage inducing, most filled with conspiracy theories, falsehoods and misinformation is HN.

I don't have outrage fatigue. Outrages are outrages and they are what they are. Are there many exaggerations and fake outrages? Sure. But things like the USA's current constitutional crisis are real.

What I struggle with isn't fatigue at outrage, it's knowing what to do about it.

I think violence is going to become more common, but I don't particularly think it will be effective.

So less so than outrage, it's the feeling that we're trapped in a real life doom loop with no clear off ramp that I struggle with.

I would like to do something... But what?

I decided that other people are far more organized than I am and can respond more effectively, so I'm outsourcing political action in the form of donations. I've earmarked 3% of my income every month for a list of selected charities that currently includes the ACLU, the HRC, and a short list of smaller ones.

I encourage you to do the same!

I know this is kinda banal, but I think even getting to know your neighbors (if you don't already know them) could be a good first step. Also look what exists locally, and maybe even start something. And with so many vulnerable groups under attack, you can probably get in touch or help out with many of them and find adjacent ways to get involved in the core political issues.

I genuinely think as long as you trust your gut (and are a sensible person), that literally doing "something", and then iterating on that, should not be discounted. Ignore outcome for a second, whatever the "chances" may be -- whatever you can contribute, I'm 100% sure that less dread will be helpful, both for yourself and the outcome. And the more active and together with other people who are active you become, the better you'll feel, and the better ideas you'll get.

But I'm pretty sure violence will not be helpful. It's the arena tyrants bait protesters into because that's when they win. That is, if the people are in such a majority that violence could achieve anything, then negotiation or surrender can be achieved, and violence would just be cruelty and barbarism IMO. Remember how mad people got at that sermon about having empathy? I found that incredibly telling, and I think we should tend to and build on our empathy, it's a super power. Fighting for yourself takes courage, but fighting for those who can't fight for themselves gives courage.

> So less so than outrage, it's the feeling that we're trapped in a real life doom loop with no clear off ramp that I struggle with.

> I would like to do something... But what?

That sounds exactly like outrage fatigue. And the solution is in this article: Read less social media, get more sunlight, instead of despairing at the global state[0] of the world, get involved in local issues where you can actually have a measurable effect.

[0] as programmers this should be self-evident

> So less so than outrage, it's the feeling that we're trapped in a real life doom loop with no clear off ramp that I struggle with.

Glad I'm not alone, but knowing that doesn't change the situation. Still unable to wake from the nightmare... :(

I think one of the best things you can do now is to be available in your local communities. You don’t have to be a leader there, but showing up, lending a bit of your time, or just making yourself known as an ally, especially to groups that are being targeted by this administration is helpful.

If things do get bad (job loss, no money, food scarcity) you’ll be able to fall back on the community you’re a part of.

Check out your local library for a jumping off point. Local pride centers would be happy to have you around.

I was feeling similar things (do I need go buy a gun?! No, I don’t.) and I decided that investing time in local communities is better.

This felt useful to me:

> Make sure you are talking to people and doing something. The logic of “move fast and break things,” like the logic of all coups, is to gain quick dramatic successes that deter and demoralize and create the impression of inevitability. Nothing is inevitable. Do not be alone and do not be dismayed. Find someone who is doing something you admire and join them.

https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-logic-of-destruction

The current situation is designed to disregulate all people in the United States and create disengagement and defeatism.

The best advice I've heard so far is to prioritize self-regulation BEFORE engaging in reaction/action to the news. Inform yourself to your capacity and lock in when you can, but lock in you must, or the crisis will continue growing.

That's exactly where the fatigue comes from. Knowing how bad things are without knowing what to do about it.

Work on government reform. Work on bringing power back to the people, implement direct, decentralized democracy.

It might sound like a silly pipe dream. But it works extremely well in Switzerland and I promise it won't just work well where you live, your country will flourish.

Consider watching Paul Shraeder's _First Reformed_.

We're all nearly powerless but our choices do matter.

>I think violence is going to become more common, but I don't particularly think it will be effective.

depends on where the violence is directed. Riots on the street and attacking fellow citizens will not change anything. Some old president suddenly falling ill would change a lot (not necessarily "everything". But a lot).

>I would like to do something... But what?

how much do you want to scale it?

Short term

keep pressure on congress, and call your representatives. Your 2 senates (both their local and DC Office each), and your Rep's office. Everyday is ideal but unlikely. Don't flood them with every issue; pick one or 2 and talk about that. They barely take email/letters/online forms into account, and Republicans call much more often than Democrats (yes, that is an issue to look into as well).

If you want to protest and there's something local, that's your choice. But I understand wanting to protect yourself. Stay as low tech as possible if you want to mitigate identification. Smart phone and other tech at home, use a burner phone if you need it.

Midterm (no, literally. Miderms)

- form or donate to coalitions. It may feel like an eternity, but 2026 will come in a blink and you want to make sure to try and turn as much of congress as possible. Those efforts start now, not next year. Keep who's in and helping in, and shift those who's condoning it out. Keep awareness up

- attend your local meetings with mayors/govenors/reps. Change starts from the locals, and surprise: most of the people who attend these tend to be older folk with no traditional workweek. Because they are doing meetings during the rep's workweek. Again, voice your concerns to people who have a chance to change it.

- if you're the type to post: don't let this gish gallop be ignored. Post every medium-large update in communities. You won't change many minds per post, but some will start to realize what's going on and shift. I've seen a few already. A few a day adds up to thousands over 2 years. And these are still slim margin congress.

From there there's a laundry list of long-term actions, but those really depend on Midterms. The theme is that there are people to talk to and not enough people get their voices heard. Don't underestimate the power you hold over who is elected in office.

> I think violence is going to become more common

What kind and why?

>> But things like the USA's current constitutional crisis are real.

While I have no doubt this is true, is it _actually_ having any impact on your day to day life? If you didn't have social media, didn't read the news, and somehow didn't even know there was an election (I know this one isn't possible) would your day to day life have changed at all? Look at the past week as an example. Threats of tariffs, headline news, retaliation, and then backing down before anything happened bringing us largely back to where we started.

Don't get me wrong, there are people directly affected by these things and I'm not going to get into whether the approach above is ethical or not. But for most people, I believe you could genuinely switch off and not notice any difference at all.

And even if you know and are well read on the issues (as it sounds like you may be) - what can you do about it? In fact - have you done anything about it? If the answer is no then what's the point in being informed?

Living in Poland ruled by trumpists for 8 years I have these experiences:

- Get subscription of high value newspaper or magazine. Professionals work there, so you will get real facts, worthy opinions and less emotions.

- It is better to not use social media. You never know if you are discussing with normal person, a political party troll, or Russian troll.

- It is not worth discussing with „switched-on” people. They are getting high doses of emotional content, they are made to feel like victims, facts does not matter at all. Political beliefs are intermingled with religious beliefs.

- emotional content is being treated with higher priority by brain, so it is better to stay away from it, or it will ruin your evening.

- people are getting addicted to emotions and victimization, so after public broadcaster has been freed from it, around 5% people switched to private tv station to get their daily doses.

- social media feels like a new kind of virus, we all need to get sick and develop some immunity to it.

- in the end, there are more reasonable people, but democracies needs to develop better constitutional/law systems, with very short feedback loop. It is very important to have fast reaction on breaking the law by ruling regime.

You nailed it. For ages, we've known that we can be hacked by anything that solicits an emotional response from us. People who set their sights on abusing that power have only gotten better at doing it, so much so that often the victim of the manipulation has no idea they've been manipulated.

There is still an alarming number of people out there who do not seem aware that this is even possible, let alone actively being done on almost all media fronts.

I think acknowledging this makes my outrage fatigue worse, because I am also forced to admit that it can (and does) happen to me, despite being aware of it. This renders me automatically suspicious of any news being reported from any source, regardless of liberal or conservative bias. So, on top of being outraged, there's layers of paranoia which is tiring in and of itself, especially now that it seems more justified.

I'm going to commit a netiquette faux-pas and, as a fellow European, simply wholeheartedly acknowledge all you just said, from politics to media to psychology and neurology.

I don't know if the internet is just mirroring the general state of society, or if it contributes negatively to it, but talking specifically about the net, this dystopia really isn't what I had envisioned in the '90s. Even rats in cages being subjected to psychological torture are better behaved than this.

> Get subscription of high value newspaper or magazine. Professionals work there, so you will get real facts, worthy opinions and less emotions.

I struggle with this. It's incredibly challenging to find reliable, unbiased news sources these days, especially with the perceived slant of many major outlets. It's discouraging when even subscriptions to reputable publications like the NYT and WSJ leave you feeling like you're not getting the full story. It's also concerning when editorial content undermines the perceived objectivity of the news reporting, specially with WSJ. So what are people reading?

Out of curiosity-- does "trumpists" mean PiS? Are the "trumpists" still in power? What is the current trend (toward trumpists or away?).

> Get subscription of high value newspaper or magazine. Professionals work there, so you will get real facts, worthy opinions and less emotions.

This is excellent advise. I'm worrying that post-paper news have a really strong incentive nowadays to drive outrage, and that the current level of reporting we see online is the new normal.

Good list, especially the last one.

See also social acceleration [1], from German sociologist and political scientist Hartmut Rosa. Rosa argues that this current culture leads to a crisis in democratic self-determination, as the current quick demands of modern society often conflict with the slower, more reflective processes that democracy requires. The pressure to respond quickly can make democratic governance appear dysfunctional, as governments find it increasingly difficult to react to the complex issues of today within tight time constraints.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_acceleration

> Get subscription of high value newspaper or magazine. Professionals work there, so you will get real facts, worthy opinions and less emotions.

But, definitely understand what you are getting into here: Paraphrasing Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who notes that if you'd like to be cured of reading newspapers, read last years' newspapers.

I think they're good for understanding "what people are talking about these days" as well as any statements that are literal facts, but anything in-between will be pretty fraught with the same issues as e.g. social media.

I would add consume less news in general. It has the same problems as social media, just less acute. Its better to spend that time reading more in-depth things such as books.

I’m getting outrage just by reading this comment.

edit: it makes me curious about how that works!

> - It is better to not use social media. You never know if you are discussing with normal person, a political party troll, or Russian troll.

Completely valid, but there is a middleground of very deliberately curating your social media:

- Avoid using services that are engineered for outrage and views

- be ruthless with who you follow and block (someone trying to drum up some unimportant javascript outrage? get them off your feed)

- for twitter-likes, mute phrases from your timeline like crazy (included in my muted words is plainly trump, kamala, elon, gop, democrats, doge, dei, covid, etc)

- always be skeptical that everyone else online is some PSYOP effort, even those that share views you politically align with

It is possible to use social media, but you must have agency over it and not allow it to just happen to you. That's why I'm much more enthusastic about decentralised/open and non-commercial social networks because they currently give users much more control.

This is too complicated. There's a much shorter working plan:

- fact check exceptional claims

- report factual failures to the source

- if the source doesn't apologize publicly in the same channel, permanently remove it from trusted sources

edit: ok, after the rage comment I realized that one more item is missing: discarding sources with systematic reporting bias (when it is obvious they aren't reporting things that you care about that are happening)

> in the end, there are more reasonable people, but democracies needs to develop better constitutional/law systems, with very short feedback loop. It is very important to have fast reaction on breaking the law by ruling regime.

What’s wrong with the separation of powers in the USA? There’s plenty of situations where judges issue injunctions that are in effect until the case is resolved.

"It is not worth discussing with „switched-on” people. They are getting high doses of emotional content, they are made to feel like victims, facts does not matter at all. Political beliefs are intermingled with religious beliefs."

This is fascinating to watch in the current environment. People are decent in real life for the most part but on social media its as if all manner of restraint are removed. Post anything disagreeing with the overall narrative of the site and its like a scene out of World War Z. Just attacked by crowds of people actively calling for your death. Never seen anything like it.

On X they will insult your intelligence or pull the "we tried to tell you and this is what you get you [insert explicative here]. On Reddit they will quite openly hope someone murders you.

Social media has truly insidious powers and I don't think people realize they are under its spell until its too late.

The constitution (any constitution) and laws are just words on paper. They only matter when the people in the system make it matter. And larger society is part of that system.

Having a system which incentivizes people to not allow this to happen certainly helps - but corruption is inevitable and requires constant work to correct.

This is a wonderful list and I’m going to hold onto it, thank you.

I love the concept of a “switched on” person and I’ve been struggling to define and name this myself. They’re all across the political spectrum and often outside its binaries, but they all bring an agitated personalized combativeness to the slightest of provocations. They’re deeply enmeshed in, whatever it is. I’m starting to see them as, almost, mentally ill. But I’m still developing my understanding and approach here. So thanks for the food for thought.

Sadly I don't know if a high value newspaper exists anymore.

Wapo and NYtimes have slowly evolved into elitists papers. That over focus on some issues and completely ignore others.

What do you mean by “trumpists” precisely? In Poland, two centrist parties take turns in power. One uses more conservative and pro-American rhetoric, while the other is more liberal and pro-European. However, if you focus on what these parties actually do, there is no fundamental difference between them. Both raise taxes, expand bureaucracy, and limit freedom. And neither of them represents Polish interests.

And yet, people supporting one or the other party are furious at each other. It’s like a battle between warring tribes.

Are you sure these high value professionals are fair? I saw this story the other day; don't have much idea about Poland. So verify yourself.

https://notesfrompoland.com/2025/02/03/polish-billionaire-of...

> Get subscription of high value newspaper or magazine. Professionals work there, so you will get real facts, worthy opinions and less emotions.

All printed papers in the US that I’m aware of serve corporate political interests so I lost you there. Then you have magazines that are aligned with various think tanks and lobbyists. The truth isn’t somewhere in the middle of all this, it’s with totally independent journalists on new media like Rumble.

Avoid following the news constantly. Check in every once in a while—a couple times a week at most. Get your news from long articles, not tweets. Actually read the articles, don't just learn about the world from hot takes.

> ... people have found that, actually, outrage can be useful. It actually can help you identify a problem and react to it. But it can also be harmful if you’re experiencing it all the time and become overwhelmed by it.

I'm reading that as meaning something more like identify a problem and act on it. Outrage itself is a reaction, just not a positive one. There's no shortage of people reacting to things.

>Avoid following the news constantly. Check in every once in a while—a couple times a week at most. Get your news from long articles, not tweets. Actually read the articles, don't just learn about the world from hot takes.

This 100%. If a piece of news is truly important, then it'll be important tomorrow or even a week from now. You'll even get clarifications and corrections along the way.

I like to use Pocket to build a list of long-form articles I want to read, then EpubPress (https://epub.press/) to compile that into a weekly EPUB that I can read in-full on a distraction-free e-book reader. It's a much less stressful way of consuming media than the whole neverending drug-frenzied quick-hits world of online news.

> Avoid following the news constantly. Check in every once in a while—a couple times a week at most.

Agreed. I personally believe that checking the news everyday is akin to something like a ‘news overdose’. There’s nothing wrong with spending just 15 minutes per week. At least for me, that’s a far healthier dose.

I've implemented this into my life via the "In the news" section of the Wikipedia start page. It served me well the last couple of months.

I think one of the fundamental problems is that "news" fundamentally doesn't tell you very much about what's happening.

A perfect example is a plane crash- you hear right away that a plane has crashed. It is reported on because it is an exceptional event. But, the "real" effects, the ones that actually affect you personally, or the world systemically, won't play out until months later. (for example the Boeing MCAS 777-max thing). How much good does it really do you to know about the plane crash now vs. informing yourself about the context of the plane crash 3--6 months later?

> Actually read the articles, don't just learn about the world from hot takes.

Or, even more difficult: Actually read the science paper, or the court ruling, or the executive order, or the proposed legislation, rather than the journalist's hot take. A lot of these journalists takes boil down to "tweets with more words."

To add, find the source itself; submissions to HN are sometimes guilty of this (and often get corrected), posting an article about an article instead of the article itself, the meta-article telling you how to feel and think about the source instead of the source sticking to the facts. And the headline on HN itself priming you as well (but there's the policy that titles on HN should not be editoralised).

It's why I like kinda "boring" news outlets like Reuters. I don't know for sure but our national news thing (NOS) feels fair as well, it doesn't have an overt political alignment and will often report on both sides - even if I'm very much inclined to dismiss one side, but I won't claim to be unbiased.

>I'm reading that as meaning something more like identify a problem and act on it.

we can't always act on it the way we want to. The Treasury is 3000 miles away. I know complaining at my rep isn't the solution people want, but it's all I can do.

>Get your news from long articles, not tweets. Actually read the articles

Alternatively I glance at Google News occasionally. Normally the headlines are dull enough not to read the article.

Yes. And pay for the news sources that prove valuable to you. Professional journalism is essential.

Those of us in the west tend to forget that much of what we see is a form of propaganda, whether by governments or businesses, or even a large number of people. When you keep this in mind, everything you see becomes an opinion and your mind can comfortably (or at least not emotionally/hurriedly) form your own opinion over time.

I agree that most messaging is propaganda, but that doesn't really counter the real pain that is being inflicted upon large populations of people by these government (and corporate) moves, and being cheered on by pretty large masses of people. The propaganda is like environmental pollution -- hard not to breathe it in. That said, I have no answer here..

This reminds me of two quotes:

"The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth." -Garry Kasparov.

And

"This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore." This latter quote is, rather ironically, a false quote! (falsely attributed to Hannah Arendt). But I still think it contains truth.

Easier said than done. Bear in mind that the way information is served is meant to trigger strong emotional responses, skip the prefrontal cortex and tickle your amygdala. You can limit how much it impacts you, say, through reducing exposure, but you can't reason your way out of it.

(this is a response to the comment, not the article)

I had used ublock-origin on youtube to disable the right-hand sidebar of "recommended" videos so that I could just view the stuff in my subscriptions. A couple of years ago, they started detecting and blocking ublock-origin, so I stopped using it (ublock).

It's not really the ads that bother me. It's the "recommended videos". Is there a way to customize my view of youtube to avoid the shit I don't need to see?

The thing about youtube is that it's very easy for propaganda/click-bait to creep in during moments of weakness.

Maybe it's time to go cold-turkey? Failing that, maybe it's worth it to try and take some control over the experience?

Would you consider your own comment to be a form of propaganda? I'm genuinely asking.

I was looking for a take on this that was more than just finding ways not to be inundated.

You don't have to get outraged about something when you think about how that particular article might be trying to fan those flames and how what is reported might just be highlighting the points that push our buttons (but the real set of facts might not be as bad when looked into). Even the things that really are that bad don't have to lead to outrage. I take a wait-and-see attitude about a lot of this stuff we see in the media. There are trolls everywhere, we'll see if anything comes of it. I'm also capable of not liking something strongly without feeling rage with regards to it, while still wanting to combat it if I have a say in it at all.

Of course, "just don't let it get to you" is easy to say but hard to implement. I think it's the only real path that allows the inclusion of social media in our lives, though.

It ostensibly used to be better in the US, and then the smith--mundt act was changed/repealed and now who knows.

I do like the "that's just like, your opinion, man" as an answer to news stories, though.

The danger with this way of thinking is that it's easy to start weighing all information equally, while that's very far from the reality.

> everything you see becomes an opinion and your mind can comfortably (or at least not emotionally/hurriedly) form your own opinion over time

I agree (I've done this), but it's much easier said than done. Requires a lot of mental work/training.

More importantly, it requires a sort of mental "enlightenment" to the true state of things.. That everything you read for free on the internet is being paid for by someone, with their own motivation and intents, and that these forces don't have your best interest in mind. The saying "If you're watching it, then it was intended for you" comes to mind. Once this breakthrough occurs and you begin to see the world this way, everything else usually follows.

As you begin to realize that most of your facts and opinions are those planted there by other powerful ($$$) forces, you start to recognize that what you think is largely what they want you to think. But the scariest part of the awakening is that you begin to realize how little you truly know about the world outside your direct experience. You feel much less certain about the world and your place in it.

Most of the people I know recognize this, and I can have sane conversation with them. You can tell those that are caught up in the propaganda because they largely sound like parrots, and it's impossible to talk to them reasonably. A few friends of mine are in this category, and the one common denominator between them is that they are deeply unhappy, riddled with anxiety, and glued to their devices. The true human casualties of the new technological information age we've birthed. It appears that this is by design, as those that control the flow for information know exactly the power they have and what they intend to do with it.

For those that are stuck, I wish I knew how to open their eyes up and look around them. It's not too bad when you look at the world outside of the internet. I've tried to listen empathetically to people that are stuck, but it mostly doesn't help. Their minds are hamsters spinning on wheels, unable to stop or hear any thing else from the outside. One or two have woken up only after the anxiety it produces begins to interfere with their real lives and relationships, It's a form of addiction, and unfortunately many people are stubborn and will double down on their addiction time after time until they hit rock bottom.

We're in the middle of a massive mental health crisis. I hate knowing that a not-insignificant portion of our fellow citizens are rapidly heading towards some sort of mental/emotional rock bottom caused by technology... I feel powerless to do anything about it as I've watched it slowly unfold over the last decade or so -- it's nearly impossible to reach the friends and family members that you're actually close to. I don't know what can be done other than sit back and wait for them to crash, and help them pick up the pieces when that time comes.

Anyone got any good advice?

I've been an avid news consumer since ~2016 and early on I remember getting very outraged at articles, tweets and other pieces of news I read. Over time I realized that these articles want you to be outraged, and that the outrage is a form of control.

Over time though I picked up on these "outrage triggers" and that's helped me be much more objective about news I'm reading. I'll be reading an article and I can usually pick up the "tricks" writers use to generate outrage. I often find myself reading an article and go "oh look you want me to feel outraged right now".

Nowdays when I try to be informed about a story I will read an NYT report, a CNN report, a Fox News or other right leaning report, and then maybe one from DailyWire of Bannon's War Room. Skimming every article I often see spots where the outlet is trying to outrage their readers. NYT will report something that will outrage the left and as you "go right" on the reports you will start to see outrage directed to the right.

I’ve generally found that overtly biased outlets on the right aren’t a huge source of outrage for me because their spin is so blatant—once I notice the propaganda, it’s easy to tune out. The bigger frustration is knowing how many people take that coverage at face value. It’s not quite the same “outrage” the article describes, though.

By contrast, the NYT often feels more subtle and therefore more effective at stoking that sense of constant agitation. They’re meticulously fact-based, but their editorial choices—what they highlight, the framing they use—can seem designed to provoke a reaction rather than just inform. It’s not only about the content of the stories; sometimes it’s also about how they present or prioritize them. If you haven’t encountered this firsthand, checking out “NYTimes pitch bot” on Bluesky can illustrate how their style can veer into outrage territory. It’s a satirical account, but it often points out the patterns in the Times’ headlines and story angles that might otherwise go unnoticed.

I had to give up news altogether before I could notice this, but yeah, news exists for the sole purpose of creating outrage in order to generate ad impressions. When you get outraged by one story, you’re more likely to click on the next related headline. We’re destroying our society so we can make less than a penny per page.

Twenty+ years ago an aunt of mine regularly called our local news on channel four the Channel Fear news.

I think "being informed" is very overrated in general. Often it means being informed about palace intrigue and intelligence service/corporate narratives. I would say that in general media consumption or "staying informed" should be seen as a vice not a virtue

It's not overrated, it's often confused with "to understand what's happening".

To "be informed" is like to take a look at a chess or go board: positions are clear, black and white pieces are here and there, but it takes skill to really understand the current dynamics of a game.

Add media bias ("let's show the board at this angle that looks better for our side") and now we have "informed" population that's being surprised by reality every day.

"If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed." -- Col. Jack O'Neill (with 2 Ls)

Most people think being informed is reading the NYT or the WP. That's being half informed. That's like listening to the prosecutor and ignoring the defense. You have to read both sides of the stories and guess where in between the actual facts lie (no pun intended).

So what's your alternative? Living in ignorance until it's too late?

Self proclaimed "news junkies" are some of the most insufferable people I know.

I tried to solve this problem by making AI rank the stories by significance and rewriting the news titles in a boring, factual style.

I think it worked quite well, there's only about 10 headlines a day (out of 15k+) that get a significance rating higher than of 5.5 out of 10.

It also helps avoiding the overfocus on western issues and actually learn what's happening around the world.

https://www.newsminimalist.com/

I love the idea of this tool, but there are serious issues with using LLMs to summarize articles and text. Re: Apple’s Notification Summary Debacle

For example, this headline with a score > 5 is flatly incorrect.

“China launches innovative flying robot to explore Moon's south pole for water resources”

Every article listed in the summary says the launch is planned for 2026.

Thanks for newsminimalist - other than what comes up on HN it's the only news I read these days. It's usually just enough to keep me in touch without any of the outrage.

I did the same too, but by ingesting Wikipedia's current event portal. The result is a decent balance of world events, but without the sensationalism.

https://detoxed.news/

https://github.com/tom-james-watson/detoxed.news/

Can I make the significance my choice?

To me a news site curates news that impacts me directly or things I can do something about. This could be in a scale too. 10 is water main is broken on my street, while 0 is a car crash on the other side of the planet.

Neat! Sounds similar to another app I've used: https://www.boringreport.org

That's a pretty cool website! What prompt do you use to determine what is and isn't significant?

One thing is read the article, not just the headline. Get the nuance, learn what’s actually happening, see what people are doing to react. You’ll not feel as frozen if you understand that a fluid situation has many directions it can take and it’s not set in stone.

"In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention"

Platforms have realized this long ago, that as info explodes people pay attention to the easiest things to pay attention too not the hardest, so they move resources to designing things like reels and shorts and tweets etc etc. Every earnings call they gloat about how shorter form content is exploding and how thrilled they are about it.

The long form stuff only holds attention of the majority if you keep throwing Novelty on the table every two sentences.

Platforms are basically running an animal domestication program, where people have been rewarded with high rep and status for extremely low cognitive work.

So that entire group that has benefited doesn't see any need for nuance and depth in anything. "Cause look how many likes, clicks, views and followers I have accumulated without it"

As one of the seemingly few people who actually do read the article and not just the headline, it makes all the discussion people have around news infuriating.

Most articles I come across have a very fiery headline, then you dig in to the article and the facts are different, and/or the sources are dubious, and/or there's historical precedent for the thing that makes it not seem so strange this time, and/or the article doesn't dive deeply enough in to the details, etc.

Political biases and current events aside, it all sucks! It's so annoying that I have to do the legwork of reading through the article carefully and following through in factchecking outside of the article to get the meat of it out, and after all that, it feels like no one else does the same.

Isn't this something that marginalized groups have had to deal with since their existence? I mean, there's a reason why in the US black men die at higher rates from heart disease and stress-related illnesses. Is this getting attention now because white people are feeling it? I grew up in the 70's, and the hatred toward gays that erupted in the 80's due to Reagan was impossible to explain to someone born in 2000 who grew up seeing gay people everwhere. Not saying it doesn't need attention, but I think we could probably turned to marginalized groups for tips! (RIP my karma.)

I can recommend https://newsasfacts.com for at least having a news source that, thanks to its matter-of-fact tone and lack of imagery, is useful for staying informed without getting overwhelmed so easily.

It also puts things into a bit of a global perspective, when you realize how much stuff is going on around the world all the time. Though this of course also means you'll learn things that are on the news everywhere in your country only after they've become relevant enough to register on a global level.

A little weird to see the Bitcoin price listed top-and-center, when it is a hype-driven security. Watching the market, especially crypto markets in real-time is also quite stressful. I don't see the point of having it listed first, before the news...

I assume you have a subscription? Does that let you turn on or off different topics? I am not interested in the large amount of space devoted to armed conflicts globally, for example.

Nice but I find the summary too short without any expansion if you want to learn more

I have a New Yorker (I think that's where it's from) cartoon on my wall. It's a man and woman walking down the street and she's saying "My desire to be well-informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane." It's a good daily reminder for me.

This one: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/how-to-st...

I've been very pleased with my own results by disconnecting from social media and anything with a short (eg 24 hours) news cycle. Weeklies (eg the economist) are still generally worth reading and filter to more important topics. On (geo)politics when I want more information I go to websites of the major think tanks of the relevant country. The bias is explicit and the authors are always deeply knowledgeable, writing for an educated and equally knowledgeable audience. For the Americans, I would recommend the council on foreign relations and RAND for a republican perspective, and center for strategic and international studies and Brookings for the Democrat side.

Hope this helps someone out there.

> Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk alone; you don’t want to “go out of your way to make trouble.” Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty

> Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, “everyone” is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, “It’s not so bad” or “You’re seeing things” or “You’re an alarmist.”

> But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds of thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions, would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the “German Firm” stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all of the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

     - From "They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45"

Similarly:

If you’re waiting for a moment where you’re like “this is it,” I’m telling you, it never comes. Nobody comes on TV and says “things are officially bad.” There’s no launch party for decay. It’s just a pileup of outrages and atrocities in between friendships and weddings and perhaps an unusual amount of alcohol.

from "I Lived Through Collapse. America Is Already There." https://gen.medium.com/i-lived-through-collapse-america-is-a...

Yes, this is really tricky, because nowadays we have people shouting from the rooftops continuously, and half of them are shouting the exact opposite thing as the other half. WWII was openly racist, so from a modern perspective it would be easy to recognize and condemn some of the early behavior, but these days it's more about dog whistling and thought crimes. Probably the signs we would all recognize are not going to happen. But we have already moved a dramatic amount in terms of normalized behavior, from 20 years ago.

Happiness is an inside job. Sitting with your emotions is very important. That's not to say we can tolerate an unlimited amount of information. But rather to highlight that we can become the observer of our emotions, rather than be consumed by them.

Why is it even important to stay informed? In virtually all cases, there's very little that I can do about anything, so I'm just wasting energy by looking at the news.

Why do you believe there is very little you can do? What collaborations have you tried so far?

One of the reasons I love reading history is realizing the agency individual humans have when we get together. Individuals can't change much alone, but we don't have to do things alone.

You can choose not to use your agency, but that is still a choice to support the status quo.

> Why is it even important to stay informed?

So that you stay in formation with everyone else, of course!

To predict future and make your decisions, e.g. on where to live, what skills to learn and what to do in general.

If you're on HN, it's most likely you can't control reality much, but you can navigate it better.

That's your right and I can understand why you might feel that way, but you should probably understand the compromises that are being made in doing so.

Because the behavior of your chosen leaders reflects on you? Ostracism is a thing.

From the "greed" point of view - because your chosen leaders can have dramatic and immediate impact on your net wealth.

Even if hedonistic, "I have no assets", your chosen leaders will choose how comfortable your life is.

Scientific American used to be a great magazine and should get back to what made it so valuable: Covering important ideas in science without watering them down. Their website now describes it as "the essential guide to the most awe-inspiring advances in science and technology". Blech.

Have you tried Science News? I currently read neither, but at one point I switched from the fluffy Scientific American to the no-nonsense Science News.

Google's attack on RSS has been quite successful. Not a single mention here in the 150+ comments. I would think the HN crowd would be savvy enough to recommend it on this subject.

The content of the "news" has little to do with its conveyance protocol? Whether you get it from foxnews.com or foxnews.com/rss (insert your favoured antagonist here)

Tiny Tiny RSS is still awesome, twelve years later. It is super-easy to self-host: https://tt-rss.org/

I'll share unpopular advice here: it would be wise to adopt a more Stoic approach to the present crisis.

The events unfolding now are an expected progression of choices made years ago.

The choices made now will likewise determine the future. Not all of the current situation is under your control, however. Take whatever wise action you can, but beyond this, judge the outcome neither good nor bad. As hard as it may be -- because we love this country and the ideals for which it should stand, but this is precisely the mechanism which the forces of chaos are using against the system.

They're trying to fatigue you. Don't let them.

It makes sense to examine several likewise unpopular but nevertheless patently correct facts:

1) Every nation ceases to be. Every nation that ever was has fallen, merged, disappeared. This one cannot be different -- and that is OK, because this is what nations do. This does not at all mean you should do nothing. Quite the contrary. It does however mean refraining from placing superlative negative value judgements upon the events happening now. Work towards indifference in your mind, and act according to your wisdom and conscience.

2) You and all other individuals alive today will perish eventually. We all return to nature when our time comes. You were once purely of nature and not of human society -- you came into the world not knowing language, not knowing what nations are, what democracy is, why any of this matters. You were taught what it means to be a modern human. And we all return to the earth, to this mysterious and unfathomably ancient layer of living matter upon this world. So your efforts while you are alive are by nature limited, by necessity bounded. You can cause great change, and you should, according to what you are uniquely suited and drawn to do. Beyond this however, the rest of humanity -- which as a group, unlike individuals, may survive indefinitely -- will have responsibility over the rest.

Hope this perespetive benefits someone. It is the precise opposite of modern media, which wants you to feel outraged with every headline.

When Socrates was informed that his son had died, his response was:

"I knew that my son was mortal."

His mind was rational enough to accept such seemingly mundane but nevertheless consequential knowledge, at every level of his mind. And the effect? When disaster came, he did still suffer, but far less than most other people.

Because it was not a disaster. Merely an outcome of that which when examined closely, was to be expected based on knowledge of mortality.

I wish there was a modern "news wire" service to help with this problem.

I'm thinking tweet-sized news stories, a few per day at most, no threads, no images, no links, nothing but 140 characters of pure text. You could even deliver them as texts or unclickable push notifications.

That format heavily discourages clickbait (because there are no clicks to be had) and forces journalists to only include the information that actually matters, with no fluff about how they were sipping hot cocoa in a nice indie restaurant in Montana when talking to the subject of the story, a 38-year-old man wearing a polo shirt.

You could run an operation like this on a shoestring budget, with one or two individuals regurgitating news stories from mainstream sources in a much denser format, minus the outrage. Many, including me, would probably be willing to subscribe.

Or you could just read actual wire services. AP/Reuters etc have close to no clickbait.

There are email newsletters, but there is no unbiased source. Even a dry, “moderate” source is biased, in that it chooses to ignore taking a stance, and thus requires ignoring some details altogether

This seems completely pointless as the entire reason of news is to be informed of what's going on, and you can't do that in "tweet-sized news stories". For starters, simple "fact"-based news like "X happened" is really not bias-free, as there is a lot of context on why "X happened", or things leading up to it, or stuff like that.

Never mind of course there is an inherent bias in choosing what to publish and what not to publish.

So it's not forcing journalists to "only include the information that actually matters", it's forcing journalists to exclude tons of information that really does matter. In fact, it's worse than pointless: it's actively harmful to mislead people with these "unbiased facts", because they're not.

I subscribed to International Intrigue, which sends a digestible summary by email every day.

https://www.internationalintrigue.io/

I'm sorry for plugging my project twice in this thread.

But what you're asking sounds extremely close to what I made: https://www.newsminimalist.com/

If you want fewer stories (by default it shows about 25 a day), adjust the slider to a higher significance threshold.

Part of the problem is that good journalism is expensive, and has been systematically undermined by monied interests around the world.

What is needed is a sustainable business model for quality journalism, set up in a way that is resistant to income inequality.

Just view a topic on Reddit then on X. You can't be outraged both ways and it should cancel out.

This more than doubles the outrage. You'll have to hate yourself for being so mistaken before.

as if "both" ways is all there is.

I have OCD and sadly one of the ways I've dealt with it is to drown it out by being on social media and, before that, just playing NPR nonstop all day. I basically chose a new, louder voice to drown out the other voices in my head.

Unfortunately, in this day and age it's like choosing between two different forms of torture. Social media is so toxic and fries the nervous system so much - it's awful. The news is awful. And being alone with OCD is awful. (And yes I've tried various treatments - so far, nothing's worked great. B12 shots did help a bit and so did prednisone accidentally, but I can't stay on that long term.)

Have you tried giving meditation a try? I have no idea if it helps for OCD, but for me it gives space around all the thoughts that’s floating around in my head. That space gives me a bit more freedom to select which thoughts to listen to.

I tried blocking all social media and news sites and instead subscribing to the print version of The Week. Honestly, it was great. But eventually the siren song of internet-fueled dopamine eventually lured me back...

This is not a good article. Shocked that it got so much attention here. It's full of garden variety common sense.

Saying "just quit social media" or something doesn't work. You have to have the mindset that you cannot control what happens in the vast majority of news stories. If the federal government does something I don't like, it's not worth my time to be angry and let it linger in my head for the day, which only hurts me. Outrage seems to come from a lack of control over a situation.

Shift your focus to things you can possibly control, e.g. the news that's happening in your local community where you have a say in how things are done.

After November I totally stopped looking at any and all news and social media with the exception of HN. My reasoning being that you are not actually getting informed by any of those sources. They are geared towards engagement which makes them entertainment. Also, I have absolutely no power to change anything happening right now so knowing about it is just going to make me upset. It's a lose lose IMO. A lot of folks have gotten upset with me about this which I find a bit baffling. Like, what does knowing every minute detail do for me?

The net effect of my news/social media fast has been fairly dramatic. I suddenly have an attention span again. When a persons opinion differs from mine, I generally don't immediately assume they are part of the third reich (although if they keep talking a while I might get there lol).

To be clear I absolutely despise whats happening in the US right now. Enough information makes it to me through friends and family (and HN) that I feel a deep sense of despair. I am just not sure what minute by minute updates on the fuckery happening right now gets me.

I think I did something similar. I decided to severely control my information diet after November and switch to only RSS feeds that I have selected manually and HN. It’s gone better than I expected and I feel very little urge to go back.

At the same time, I’m definitely less informed. Though I’m quite surprised how much still permeates despite me not “going looking”.

Generally, I think it’s more healthy to focus on what you can control and what you have agency over. You can choose what to be outraged over national/global events (and do nothing) or you can instead focus that energy on Doing Something closer to home that’s important to you. Which is the better trade?

I’m somewhat conflicted on being less informed esp with big changes happening. And even more conflicted about what kind of world we’d have if everyone chose this strategy. But, it’s not unprincipled. The principle is Focus on What You Can Control/Do and put all your energy into that.

This exactly, even before November.

I finally saw the futility when there were 10,000 articles about Trump tweeting "covfefe".

I basically just get my news from the onion now.

Onion news are just news from the future.

A recent financial report on the media industry noted The Onion is on the verge of collapse due to, quote, “not being able to able to make sh*t up that is more idiotic than current reality.”

Optimism might be bland but I can't help it!

Prior to social media, we all had incredibly conflicting views, just wasn't in our faces all the time to get outraged about! So the trick is to remember, by having these discussions/disagreements, we're actually making progress. We hear the loudest voices, but there's always smart and sincere people quietly reading and learning, which is a brilliant outcome!

If you find yourself getting outraged, be disciplined and switch activities (exercise, go for a walk, or turn off the source).

I definitely wouldn't leave social media though! Instead, harness them! Train those algos to give you science, book clubs, fascinating music niches, travel, culture - go deep, explore, and 'follow' liberally - you can very easily remove yourself from a group/page. I've found insanely interesting chemistry and physics pages, not to mention domains I never even knew existed, like color theory and a handful of others. Once you start clicking on politics, you'll only get more of it. Click on the good stuff!

> I definitely wouldn't leave social media though! Instead, harness them! Train those algos to give you science, book clubs, fascinating music niches, travel, culture - go deep, explore, and 'follow' liberally - you can very easily remove yourself from a group/page. I've found insanely interesting chemistry and physics pages, not to mention domains I never even knew existed, like color theory and a handful of others. Once you start clicking on politics, you'll only get more of it. Click on the good stuff!

Sorry, but that last paragraph sounds like AI generated Meta PR.

There is no use in staying "informed" in the current societal environment, there is no propaganda-free information floating around anymore, if there ever was. As long as one is aware of that basic fact then things will fall into line more easily.

And, yes, I have been in the boat of "trying to stay informed" for almost 20 years now, as in I was actually paying money for The Economist and the Financial Times, but around a couple of years ago (in fact three, since the war in Ukraine started for good) I realized that they were as propaganda-infested as the rest of the media and that was the end of my journey of trying to remain "informed". No information gathering and receiving is neutral, none at all.

I gave up social media for this reason. EVERYTHING is so politicised and agenda-centric on all platforms and news sites.

It was effecting me really badly, to the point that I made the decision to leave the room when the news is playing, switch to a dumb phone, switch to an mp3 player, and get rid of all social media including reddit. So I don’t use a smartphone, and don’t carry it with me day-day.

On my laptop I even went as far as blacklisting all the typical sites.

I’m only 30. It’s very hard when it feels like you’re alone in acting this way. It’s a very isolating life trying to have principals.

I also recently learnt I have adhd, so that may be why I’m so sensitive to it.

But like i say, it’s an isolating feeling.

I did the same thing but brought back Facebook and Instagram. The controls are great if you spend time filtering — I actually enjoy both now.

If you want to stay informed. Apple News. Same deal, filter away. Ditch The NY Times and pick a few newspapers domestic and international. You’ll get news without the bullshit:

You're not alone, there's dozens of us.

The way I see it, for a piece of news to hold value, it must have 2 properties:

1. Actionable: can this news inform how you go about your life in some way? 2. Primary Source: it must come straight from the source, to avoid manipulation of the original info

The vast majority of news doesn't have either quality, let alone both.

Just like how "staying fed" often amounts to people eating junk food rather than quality stuff that gives them the actual nourishment their body needs, "staying informed" amounts to people scratching their curiosity itch with global gossip, rather than with actionable information.

I just feel like there are a few recent things to actually be outraged about

I've always found sports to be moronic. People sit glued to their TV staring at big men in tights pass a pigskin around. All people who like sports talk about is how those men passed that ball around, or who they think is gonna pass the ball around next. Let's trade stats and figures about the big men in tights. Ooh, did you see what the big man in tights did?

Politics is now just sports where people in business suits pass moronic comments around. Same pointless drama, same fans commenting about the pointless action, glued to their TVs.

I quit all news the first time Trump was in office. I didn't miss anything. Important information filters through culture, you can't avoid it. But you'll notice soon you have absolutely no idea who it is people are talking about constantly. And it turns out, nothing in your life changes now that you're "uninformed", except you have more free time and you're less stressed out.

"No matter what you believe, I’m willing to bet you’ve been feeling a lot of outrage lately."

Is it true that most people are feeling lots of outrage? Why?

The vibe I get from the left is outrage. The vibe I get from the right is relief and happiness. And the vibe of the likely-majority (i.e., the non-political) is probably just a desire to get on with life.

I can see there being lots of anxiety (e.g., over AI, automation, China-US relations, etc...). But anxiety is different from outrage.

Social media, rage bait, politics are more polarized than ever before. Now it's basically like rooting for your favorite sports team.

Scientific American: "It's so bad that we live in such polarised times."

Also Scientific American:

Science journal editor resigns after calling Gen X fascists over Trump win

Laura Helmuth leaves Scientific American following controversial social media posts in which she lashed out at ‘bigoted’ voters

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2024/11/15/laura-helmuth...

The irony of clicking a link to an article about “outrage fatigue” only to find it’s not even an article but a playboy style interview that goes on for several pages. Outrageous.

> And this just really has been accelerating, I guess, in the last few years because of our political polarization and other world events.

Feels like the causality might be the other way around.

This has been very difficult over the last couple weeks.

I mainly read Reuters now. It's refreshingly boring.

The best way is to make sure you are actually trading or making predictions where you lose if you are deeply wrong.

Outrage about "news" is usually from the kind of people who get upset about desriptions of reality and things like that. They usually read the NYT or the Atlantic and never trade or predict and they don't realize it is useless, wrong or just way to late.

Here's a ready-made idea for a high value AI app. Present to me the view of my favorite websites with all outrage clickbait hidden or re-worded in neutral, non-clickbait language. Better yet if you can also focus on the topics that I actually want to read about. Currently all the news apps without exception are the polar opposite of this, so I don't use them.

Funny this is a thing that people in some country need to work through. Personally, I have to fight the feeling of sadness and guilt every time I read about things going on around me that I should but do not do something to help. For the things that I am powerless against, honestly I have zero emotion, much less outrage.

So if Trump announced some action that would impinge on you, you would have zero emotion? Your stoicism may be a reflection of the fact that you estimate you will not be affected.

Consuming quality content over overconsumption is the key. Plus if you have already crossed multiple levels of outrage fatigue, then at that point you should be aware of it, hence becoming more calm in future. If you see what is in front of you and know you cannot change anything, why outrage? why fatigue? just move on.

> Feltman: Yeah, and what is it about outrage that helps misinformation spread?

> Lewis: So I think part of it is the fact that it’s more engaging. It, you know, activates your emotions, and so people are more primed to respond to that.

This is why upvote-style forums, like Hacker News, need to be treated with heavy scrutiny. They are hard-wired to bubble out of control when an opinion is the right combination of popular and passionate.

One way we can improve this situation, as contributors, is to try to stick to more logical, dispassionate responses. This is difficult to do because we all feel like what we are writing is the most important thing in the world and everyone else needs to read it.

Not exactly a social network but I am kind of addicted to the Google Home curated list of news - that thing on Android (maybe just Pixel?) when you swipe all the way to the left.

I read it every morning in bed.

It contains all the topics I'm interested in as it knows me probably better than I know myself.

If you're outraged by anything that does not directly impact your life you're doing life wrong. We all have limited time and energy. I have never been able to understand people who get emotional over things they read online that have no impact on their day to day life.

> I have never been able to understand people who get emotional over things they read online that have no impact on their day to day life.

Maybe they have more empathy for the plight of others?

Also, it is often the case that the events of today which don't directly affect you, if not stopped, will affect you before you know it, at which point it is too late to do anything about.

> If you're outraged by anything that does not directly impact your life you're doing life wrong.

This is a pointless truism. Everything relies on "does not directly impact your life", and there's no useful guidance on that point.

I know, but what do I do about global warming and microplastics? Our leaders don't seem to care.

I think it's always worth keeping in mind that every single piece of media you consume was created primarily to benefit its creator and almost always the relationship is parasitic (you're the host). Only rarely does media engage in mutualism.

I don't think people become journalists with that mindset.

It will not lessen your outrage, but I recently built a news search engine that pulls from 200 selected sources for a more limited, spam-free experience. https://mozberg.com

This article just says to turn off the phone and go outside. Saved you 5 minutes

Been there, done that. I've tried to stay informed but not outraged for the last 8 years and it didn't make a damn bit of difference. I got involved in local issues, I phone banked, I tried to put my money where it would do the most good.

I'm out. I'm hiding away and hoping nothing affects me personally, and if it does I'm not going to think there's anything I could have done about it.

We're not in control anymore. Not unless there are any tech billionaires lurking on HN, and they don't give a shit about us.

> Not unless there are any tech billionaires lurking on HN, and they don't give a shit about us.

If I understand correctly, they are mostly busy taking over the country at the moment. No time for HN..

Well while for the most folks which feel a fatigue now, we felt the fatigue the last years.

Now daily the old fatigue gets slayed away by the great president of the United States and we have joy.

Is your outrage changing anything? Is your outrage helping or hurting your mental health? Is your outrage helping or hurting your relationships?

Choose a different path

Personally, I fixed the problem by not bothering with "staying informed" at all. I ditched media outside of local news entirely, and just don't engage with things that I can't do anything about. It would boil down to "focus on things you can control." Sure, it's fun to be outraged together with your friends about "X leader in Y country does Z crazy thing" but.. can you do anything about it? Does your opinion matter? Is there value in engaging with it? Turns out the answer is almost always no (unless you're suffering from main-character-syndrome, of course), so what's the point?

Focus on you. What are you doing today? What do you need to reflect on from yesterday? What do you need to plan for tomorrow? Don't waste cycles on things that are out of your scope.

> It would boil down to "focus on things you can control"

If it only was so simple. How to define such things? Case in point: the biggest "outrage factor" seems to be politics. Well - _can_ you control your country's government? Yes, you can - however not directly. And this means that "I don't care about politics" stance is bad.

edit: spelling

If you're a citizen of a democracy and you only focus on you, then when it comes time to vote you'll be voting randomly. Or maybe you don't vote and thereby cede control to your neighbors to make decisions for you over the environment in which you live. Assuming you decide to vote then, and since you don't live in a vacuum, your vote will be based on whatever random stuff leaked through to you during the time you were "focusing on you". Actually it's not random. It's whoever spent the most time and money on the propaganda that influences/buys your vote.

So it's not really that simple is it?

There is an equilibrium to find. democracy isn't just showing up every 4 or 5 years to drop a piece of paper in a box.

Most countries have rights to protest, organise, strike, for a reason. Most of these rights were gained after long fights in which single individual was meaningless but together they moved contains. You have to know when to pull back but you also have to know when to dive in

What am I doing today? Taking care of my son. Trying to have another child. What do I need to plan for tomorrow? How am I going to vaccinate my child next year? How do I get my wife medical care if she has another unviable pregnancy? How small of a life you must lead that you can just not engage.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure that it is a viable strategy long term.

When you finally decide to pay attention, there is a chance that you will not be able to easily absorb everything that leads to the situation so you will lack any perspective of the past events.

We live in an extremely dense and complex times, staying informed is very difficult as it is even when you try to pay attention.

You can do all three: (1) focus on you etc, (2) take an interest in global events, and (3) not get outraged. It really is possible.

https://neuters.de

Simple, no ads, and with just the headlines it's enough.

Those who have outrage are the same people that think they are calm, reasonable, considerate and don't have outrage, at all.

> …limiting yourself to checking the news a couple times a day instead of, like, every hour or, you know, getting those alerts on your phone all the time.

A couple times a day? Who needs to check the news that often? I’ve not checked the news at all this year and it hasn’t negatively impacted me at all.

I highly recommend to install a browser extension that hides the social feed off of social media sites. Incredibly effective.

I just quit Twitter and changed to Bluesky and all the bots and spam and outrage just disappeared.

One thing I first started noticing in the 2000s on sites like kuro5hin were young conservatives.

Like I mean 20 year old's using conservative talking points, mostly in an absolutist aggressive sort of way. Many I guess were coming at it from Rand's 'philosophical' writings. (Basically an overly intellectual cover for being an asshole).

I remember asking them on that site with a post: "Why are you young guys conservative?" I mean they weren't religious, or at least none of them cited this as a motivation, they weren't rich so they had nothing to 'conserve'. I remember being like WTF?

Looking back on it now I think most of them were in it for the trolling. Conservative thought often skews insensitive and absolutist, so I guess these dudes were using it as a basis to troll more sensitive posters.

Now 25years later and we are living the consequences of a 4chan presidency.

From TFA: There’s actually a recent study by William Brady, an assistant professor of management and organizations at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. He and his colleagues found that outrage actually helps misinformation spread more widely, especially online on social media.

No specific study was linked from the transcript. Brady's works indexed by Google Scholar there is "Misinformation exploits outrage to spread online" by KL McLoughlin, WJ Brady, A Goolsbee, B Kaiser, K Klonick, MJ Crockett, published in Science 386 (6725), 991-996. [1] Two of moral outrage's properties are interestingly counter to one another. Expressions of outrage are often orthogonal to truth/falsity and expressing outrage imbues trustworthiness.

[O]utrage expressions can serve communicative goals that do not depend on information accuracy, such as signaling loyalty to a political group or broadcasting a moral stance. Consequently, outrage-evoking misinformation may be difficult to mitigate with interventions such as fact-checking or accuracy prompts that assume users want to share accurate information.

[I]ndividuals who express outrage are seen as more trustworthy. This suggests that news sources might gain a credibility advantage by posting outrageous content.

0. https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=ysiWkJMAAAAJ...

1. https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.adl2829

"Mute words" goes a long way. Every platform should have it.

If you truly need to know breaking news, one of the following is probably true:

- you have a team that will brief you on it

- you will get the news that apply to you from the source

You won’t get either of these from a news website.

As a civilian, you can stay completely up to date with a quick weekly / monthly headline scan.

"Pay less attention, otherwise you might become apathetic." Granted, mass media is generally slop (this article being no exception), but that's all the more reason one should observe and think carefully.

What is actually outrageous is that Scientific American publishes articles like this. It's an institution that, like so many, is destroying itself by getting into politics, especially the politics of outrage.

Scientific American started "getting into politics" in the mid 20th century, so your comment is about 70 years late.

Yep, Scientific American took a huge swing towards activism after the 2016 elections. The other comments claiming it has always been political are gaslighting. It got captured the same way much of mainstream media was. This article is just the latest proof of it.

Active Balancing Habits. Reminders to self of thd things that as an indivual you/I are doing that offset the enshitification. Like I am now extra happy that I cant stand the taste of store bought eggs, and hope that others can get past thete outrage at the prices, and thrn evauate if they actualy feel better, just by not eating the sulferous nasty things. And more selfish, me time, personal care, foooood, foooood, yummy fooood. and pushing myself to work harder and use my creativity to overcome the inane obsticles to,..... everything finnishing all the things on my list having a lot of lists crumpling up, checked off lists, and useing the paper to light my stove, which heats my tea and so when I do face the shitstorm of events, I have the energy to take it, get mad and put that energy back into the things on my list, or one of the many random, oh.....that needs doing.....now!

The real challenge is rewiring our own habits

> "No matter what you believe, I’m willing to bet you’ve been feeling a lot of outrage lately. To me personally, it feels unavoidable: I can’t look down at my phone or glance up at a TV without seeing something that makes me upset."

Umm no, I've not felt any outrage.

Not because I'm particularly satisfied with any recent political events, but because I've stopped consuming daily news from outlets where generating outrage has become a financial incentive.

I'm not on FB, my only use of social media is to help co-ordinate my kids' lives. I never watch TV, I've no idea what today's mainstream media clickbait stories are, I'm just not that interested.

That's the perk of not being in a targeted minority.

I used to read SA to stay informed.

South Africa?

A good way to do this is to avoid reading Scientific American lest one become outraged how a once respected science magazine for lay audiences became overrun by Woke Warriors.

That transcription reads very much like a NotebookLM "podcast" summarising the actual article at https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/outrage-fatigue-i...

While limiting your exposure to "outrage" isn't bad advice, it's just more of the ignoring of the issues that she herself calls out in the beginning of the article.

She mentions that people are using "outrage" issues (abortion, gay rights, critical race theory) "as kind of wedge issues to convince people to vote in ways that might be against their own self-interest"...

GREAT! We need more tips on how to train yourself to recognize when that's happening and not get outraged. It boils down to emotional control. If politicians can't use outrage as a tool of control then they'll have to move on (to something better hopefully, but probably not ;).

Here's one tip. If Trump enrages you every time you see him, watch him in a way that allows you to appreciate something about him! He is a cool cucumber. He sheds attacks like water off an umbrella. (whatever, you come up something)... Remember, the goal here is to not let him control your emotions. This isn't about the facts or morality or how he "lies".

>> It's been like what, only two weeks? This shit is exhausting already.

> It's meant to exhaust you.

* https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1886247034664964548

Ezra Klein:

> That is the tension at the heart of Trump’s whole strategy: Trump is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president. He is trying to substitute perception for reality. He is hoping that perception then becomes reality. That can only happen if we believe him. […]

> What Trump wants you to see in all this activity is command. What is really in all this activity is chaos. They do not have some secret reservoir of focus and attention the rest of us do not. They have convinced themselves that speed and force is a strategy unto itself — that it is, in a sense, a replacement for a real strategy. Don’t believe them.

* https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...

These quotes and articles are awful. Both sides are so insanely annoying to me. The media has gotten completely out of touch with reality and with people.

No matter what you believe, I’m willing to bet you’ve been feeling a lot of outrage lately.

No. I am in control of how I feel like. Nothing else.

That’s an incredible superpower: you could just choose to be happy and bypass most of the hierarchy of needs!

TLDR Summary: limit your intake of social media and news.

"Lately"?

The genocide in Gaza has been going intensely for more than a year, dead and mutilated children streamed out pretty much every day. Now it has moved to the West Bank.

Similarly a genocidal process has been ongoing in Sudan, perpetrated by a proxy of the UAE, close partner to the US.

Do usians not see these images and only just now with the new administration's inauguration entered a mood of distress?

Why is it an axiom that we need to "stay informed"? The vast majority of news is things that don't affect you, and of the things that do affect you, the vast majority of that is things you can't do anything about. And if they do affect you you're sure to find out without following the news. The news is tailored to make you feel outraged so that you will consume more of it.

As far as social media goes, just don't follow accounts that are annoying. If some accounts are friends in real life but insufferable online, just mute them. Other than friends I follow accounts about food and pottery, I don't see any reason to get off social media, I love it.

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

—Martin Niemöller

the goal of fascist political propaganda is to convince you that you can't do anything about the state of the world. clearly, it worked on you.

Propagandists are now going to tell you to ignore what you're hearing and seeing. Just put the news away and relax! The same people spent the last four years telling you to be outraged about things that never happened. A man won the women's boxing at the olympics! Outrage!

I don't think it's true that Scientific American spent the last four years telling you to be outraged about things that never happened.

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