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Comment by tavavex | Hacker News Reader

Of course, not being exposed to negativity will make you more positive. But this advice strikes me as a request to plug my ears and close my eyes. Doing these things will not stop the negative things that are happening in the world, and having the information about it at least makes me more knowledgeable about the world and hopefully prepared for when something snaps and there is a crisis that affects me in the most unavoidable and unambiguous ways - in addition to the indirect effects I've been experiencing already.

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The negativity is affecting you negatively though, that's my whole point. Doom scrolling and blackpill cirklejerking hasn't fixed even one singular problem in the history of the phenomena. Depressed chronically online people have fuck-all agency, they just want to lay in bed all day reading about how bad everything is.

If you want to make the world a better place, you have to retain a headspace that actually lets you do that, and right now, the easiest fix for that is to just unplug, and then work with what you can change, which typically involves things and people around you.

Your thoughts of this are black and white seemingly. People can doom scroll news and black pill circle jerk on social media. Or they can use them to learn things they can change and work with people to change them.

Why do you believe that you will better prepared? How do you differentiate between "preparation" and doomscrolling?

>How do you differentiate between "preparation" and doomscrolling?

Deliberation. doomscrolling without a deliberate goal in mind is not productive, because you never had a goal but to pass time. Preparation is going in, getting what you need, and coming out.

I want to learn about current events and actions going on, and I focus on achieving that, not on how stupid people are (even if it can be true), not on how nothing even matters anymore, not on how my life is hopeless. I seek knowledge, ideas, and people executing on such ideas and knowledge.

Also, for me: the less comments I read, the better. That's where my real time loss is.

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