There isn’t a line, you are either informed or not.
If you care more about the illusion of mental health more than your life or reality then bury your head in the sand.
At this point I’m struggling to find how staying informed even helps. The news is a constant deluge of horrible shit I can’t do anything about. I voted, I’ve already braced myself financially for what’s coming as best as I can but I suspect it won’t be enough, no one in power is doing a fucking thing to help.
I think the point of the billionaire owned news spamming a bunch of horrible shit is to make you feel like participating in reality isn’t worth it.
Meanwhile the people who will fight back have to participate in reality
Fight back where? How? What am I supposed to be doing right now?
Literally any way you can come up with.
If you actually care there are endless places to start that are a single search away.
Before you whine about me not handing you something on a silver platter:
Go lobby your state legislature, your city council. Make noise about what issues are important to you, start a larger lobby group and never let a single rep go unharrassed, everything that you want done in reaction to the current admin, make your group shout it until it’s all they can think about.
Oh, and before you shoot down my idea because of whatever excuse realize you are the one moving the bar.
Oh, and before you cry about me being mean somehow rememeber that you showed up here shitting this defeatist rhetoric out of your ass mouth.
Hope this helps!
Okay you can go fuck yourself. I wasn’t disrespecting you by asking for advice.
Getting news via RSS feeds helps. I also cut out what is obvious just bad and getting worse for instance Gaza and Westbank via EI news. I know its getting worse but I cannot take hearing about every death.
Also, I think realizing most doesn’t affect you individually is helpful.
Why is news via RSS better than news via Reddit? Or news via TikTok?
I’m asking why this technology solution is better for maintaining a healthy mental state.
And can you give more specific examples on how to achieve it?
I find it better because I can choose exactly which feeds, websites, and creators I see all in one feed. Therefore there is little chance of seeing something I have deemed undesirable. I also like it because I can follow people I like on youtube without having to sign in! :) Prior to making my own lemmy instance I would follow specific coms and reddit subs too. Now I don’t do that because I just ban rude people or coms.
Also, I rarely go to new sites. Accessing them via RSS allows me to only read content without ads or trash articles not related to the feed I want.
Finally, it brings all content together. Humans are lazy. It’s hard to go to a ton of different sites to form an opinion. It’s much easier to put it all in one place! :)
Because you don’t keep doomscrolling. You subscribe to your most important sources and ignore all of the noise of short form posts. If something is truly important enough that I really must read it today, then at least one of them will have written about it. The filtering out of what you don’t care about has already been done. That means I have a reading list where everything is a 100% must read for me and I keep it manageable
A good reader will let you filter your feeds further if needed too
The algorithm is designed to enrage you
Any recommendations for an rss reader on iOS?
I think Inoreader is a good standalone app if you don’t want to host anything
Shamelessly reposting this here, because it seems relevant:
Negative news has a greater impact on people than positive: https://assets.csom.umn.edu/assets/71516.pdf
Media sites know this, and use it to drive engagement:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/social-media-facebook-twitter-politics-b1870628.html
And so, negative headlines are getting worse: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0276367
But negative news is addictive and psychologically damaging: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/why-we-worry/202009/the-psychological-impact-negative-news
So it’s important to try and stay positive:
https://www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/benefits-of-good-news
If you want a break from the constant negativity, here are some sites that report specifically on positive news:
- https://www.goodgoodgood.co/
- https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/
- https://fixthenews.com/
- https://positivenewsfoundation.org/
- https://www.onlygoodnewsdaily.com/
And here’s 35 more: https://news.feedspot.com/good_news_websites/
Some communities on Lemmy you might be interested in:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- https://lemmy.world/c/hopeposting
- https://lemmy.world/c/worldinprogress
- https://lemmy.world/c/climatehope
Remember, realistic optimism is important and, unlike what some might have you believe, is not the same as blissful ignorance or ‘burying your head in the sand’: https://www.learning-mind.com/realistic-optimism-blind-positivity/
https://www.centreforoptimism.com/realisticoptimism
And doesn’t mean you must stay uninformed on current affairs: https://www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/how-to-stop-doom-scrolling
https://goodable.co/blog/tips-for-balancing-positive-and-negative-news/
Thank you for reposting it! I’ve been looking for resources like these.
You’re welcome, happy to help. Stay positive, friend!
Wish I could upvote this comment much more than once
Solid post
I vaccilate between “Eh, world and my life were always a mess, we could do with a do-over” and “holy shit holy shit holy shit is that a nuke in the distance?”. Multiple times daily. Shit’s exhausting.
For me I disassociate. I know the people around me by and large love and/or care for me and if shit hit the fan I’m fine.
The news is just entertainment. I love watching the news. I love politics. Sometimes it’s surreal and scary but in no ways do I feel worried. I worry for those around me because they may not be able to protect themselves due to age or capacity but then that’s why I’m there if required.
I have subscribed to about a dozen daily news e-mails. I skim through them for half an hour every morning with my first coffee. Once time is up, delete the rest & move on w my day. Only exception is I do make a point to make sure I’ve read at least 1 liberal & 1 conservative viewpoint.
I’ve finally made the choice and filtered trump posts, it took a while to figure out how Eternity does it.
I still watch Late Show and Jimmy Kimmel.
I avoid getting political news from social media, including Lemmy. I don’t subscribe to any political communities. Once in a while I’ll scroll through all active posts to find new communities. But when I do that I know I’m going to run into political stuff and skip over it.
While most of the political posts on both Reddit and Lemmy lean the same way politically as I do, they can often be sensationalized so I have a general distrust of those stories. If something does happen to grab my attention I try to look it up from a reputable news source.
I use Apple News to track current events. I even pay out money for their “News+”. It aggregates many news sources. I can block sources I don’t want to see, and more importantly I can add a list of favorites news sources for quick viewing and to encourage those sources to take priority in my feed. As for my sources I try to pick the most boring and bland news organizations available. Think PBS, NPR, Reuters, etc.
Nothings perfect but this has been working for me for over a year now. I feel reasonably well informed without a lot of the drama.
Apple News isn’t perfect. I still get pushed a lot of celebrity gossip news no matter how many times I click “suggest less”.
I stop reading when my brain starts hurting.
I have a stance where I prefer to be minimally informed than misinformed. I will intake what little information I want before I am overstimulated from the poor state of journalism. I’m sorry but I have to be one of those headline readers and if it’s very, very intriguing enough to want to read it, I will. But I really can’t be bothered to read a lot of what’s out there. I read the comments and reactions which arguably, has proven to be far more knowledgeable than the article in question.
I mostly read headlines but not articles. This is so that I can send emails to a family member who voted for this shit again. I throw in a one-liner that sarcastically alludes to the terrible story and a link with the headline in the subject. I’m super pissed that my mother voted for this asshole (again), so if the story is about dismantling the education dept, my comment would be: “Your grandkids go to a private school, so they’re fine. Sucks to be a poor kid!”
Honestly, if I wasn’t screaming at her (via email, not literally), I’d probably have to avoid altogether. But I believe it’s necessary that she read about every possible terrible thing she invoked with her vote. Or, maybe more realistically, I’m just that mad at her even if she’ll never change. Our relationship is likely over.
Lemmy is my line. Have one account just for politics, and another with everything but - that way I can control my exposure.
Few things that are in the news are actually newsworthy, it just appears to me to be a lot of noise and only a small part of it will actually happen. Especially in politics given the lard in the oval Office, most of the things he does is just trying to grab attention, stil dangerous but a filter is needed.
Basically my desire to be informed is in opposition to the need to remain sane.
I log out when I start feeling helpless and high anxiety and then I go find things that I can control to feel less helpless/anxious.
Really close to the stress. Checking out is giving up and it’s a super weak move. Oh no you feel bad? People are losing their livelihoods. Their citizenships, their jobs. Buck up yo. We got shit to do.
