As an experiment, completely stop consuming news and social media for a few weeks. People have lived their entire lives without these information streams, you'll survive unplugging a bit. Now I can't tell you what you will experience if you go through with this, but I can promise it's very enlightening.
I just read this from Nokia's blog of all places[1]:
> A fresh U.S. residential IP address (especially one behind carrier-grade NAT and harder to block individually) is “gold.” Customers pay up to $95 to lease a single U.S. residential IP address for 2 weeks (versus $0.30 for an Eastern European IP).
That's bananas. The place I found a link to that story was jwz's blog, a site that is actively getting hammered by one of the many Rube-Goldberg machines behind these scrapers.
I take your point wrt, say, recommendation engines. But this is a bizarre and fascinating period we're living through right now. I don't plan to stop reading blogs and news any time soon.
I feel like your last paragraph could be said about any time in the last 10 years. That was my biggest wake-up call to stop following mainstream news. Whatever shows here or in my social circle are enough to be informed as much as needed (YMMV)
I don't think a Nokia blog talking about the economics of renting out area-based IP addresses is anywhere close to mainstream. we'd be in a much much better society if it was.
Did you read the paragraph before that about paying ninety-five dollars just for two weeks of proxying through a single U.S. IP? There's nothing in the last 10 years even remotely as economically bizarre as that. You'd have to go back over 20 years to Bittorrent where-- for the first time I know of-- an increase in demand for a resource caused a decrease in the time to get that resource.
If I'm wrong give me another case that isn't a crypto scam and I'll read up on it.
People always say this like it’s a panacea but n=1, I did exactly that for about 5-6 months in 2024 after I quit Twitter and didn’t want to get sucked back in to endless election drama like in 2016.
For the first couple weeks it seemed like a mild to moderate improvement. Especially not having Elon’s tweets and the Twitter memes of the day in my head 24 hours a day.
But after a month my baseline pretty much reset with the same levels of anxiety, just with different sources/triggers to attribute those feelings to.
And after a few more months, I started to feel to absurdly detached from the real world that it started to become a problem in casual conversations and stuff just being so out of touch with everyone else’s collective experiences.
My boss referenced some big natural disaster or something that everyone knew about from the news and looked at me like I was crazy when I had no idea what he was talking about. Little awkward moments like that kept popping up, never a big deal but started to feel uncomfortable as they added up.
The tipping point was when Biden dropped out and I didn’t know about it for like three days and had to nod along when a friend mentioned it obliquely while I was internally like “uh wtf” until I had a second to Google it to get caught up.
All in all the net change in negativity/anxiety was pretty much a wash, the mind finds different ways to justify how it feels even after losing the ‘20s go-to of “doom scrolling” as the universal source of all life’s problems.
But feeling like an alien interloper posing as a resident of “America, Earth” tipped the scales into hurting more than it helped.
For better or worse we live in a highly interconnected world of immediate information delivery, there’s no quick fix to make that all go away by pretending it doesn’t exist.
I still miss a lot of the people I got to know on Twitter, and with hindsight that was probably more emotionally valuable than the negativity and addiction that came with the package (I know many/most of them have left by now too, so can’t teleport back to that point in time either). But that’s just life, it is what it is.
I think this idea (and I necessarily don’t believe in it, but let’s give it a fair chance) is more like a few-weeks detox. Avoiding any news at all half a year seems a bit disorienting (as you experienced).
Rather than giving up on news entirely, in the long-run, I’ve just dropped political podcasts and opinion pieces. I think these products exist to give us the feeling of being informed, but mostly it is just speculation.
Politics matters a lot, but for most of us are just going to vote or donate. I don’t need to hear somebody’s opinion for that, and I especially don’t need to hear speculations about political events that’ll happen in the next couple days (the speculation possibilities will collapse before I do either).
> I think this idea (and I necessarily don’t believe in it, but let’s give it a fair chance) is more like a few-weeks detox.
> Rather than giving up on news entirely, in the long-run, I’ve just dropped political podcasts and opinion pieces. I think these products exist to give us the feeling of being informed, but mostly it is just speculation.
The idea was this would teach something. And another idea was All the news is just outrage porn and non-stop predictions of impending doom. What could someone do for months or years? Cycle outrage porn and detox. Or avoid all news. But you saw news differed and you could control your news.
Doomscrolling vs. no-news-at-all is a false dichotomy. There are calm sources of news. And nothing wrong with learning events from others a few days later. What would you have done with the Biden news?
here on HN in 2013. I'd read "Amusing Ourselves to Death" so it particularly resonated with me at the time. I've watched the world get even more sucked in each passing year.
eh, it sounds like you don't really have a community you can socialize with. You just had a digital community. Digital communities are easy to come by but they lack the nutrition your soul aches for.
Cutting off corporate media is good, but you don't have to cut off all sources of media. I'm a fan of alternative media myself, so I listen/read things like Citations Needed, Zeteo, American Prospect, Dropsite News, or specific journalists like Edward Ongweso Jr. One thing to remember that it's still just consuming news, consuming things are very little part of the human experience. You need to actually socialize and discuss things with other humans, it's a real need; but you can still find high quality people to follow the news, maybe this is up your speed:
Creating is a human urge that you need to fulfill, as is socializing; with socializing it comes in many forms, but a core component needs to in some form of mutual aid. You need to have solidarity with your fellow man for we all share the same struggles together.
The urge to create for others is a human trait founds for 100s of thousands of years before industrial usage (people created + shared art with one another before things like replicated tool usage). Don't deny your urge to create and share with others. For some it's baking, for others it's raising children; you just need to create tangible things and share them with others. You can do this digitally but it's very hard, and IMO after 10ish years of doing so, also not really rewarding compared to writing music for friends or baking deserts for family. Got way more fulfillment out of helping children set up a bake sale than any amount of open source I've done in my entire life.
Just my experience, but I know I'm not along in thinking so because I ask people about this all the time. Seems to be the simple way to live a meaningful life for very little cost.
Please find your tribe, it is out there and it may give you more meaning in your life than any form of digital consumption/creation.
I'm not saying I can't, as someone who's abandoned almost all mainstream social media.
But I literally cannot afford to engage in this experiment since I'm still looking around on LinkedIn for job calls and have a few messages I'm waiting on.
Think it's often depression rather than addiction that's at the core. Trying to get depressed people to stop ruminating and to start engaging with the world is a notorious challenge, though in terms of potential quality of life improvements, it can be worth putting in the effort even if it feels like you're talking to a brick wall.
No thank you. I had ICE flood the streets where I live with poorly trained thugs with assault rifles recruited from the ranks of neonazis illegally assaulting, detaining and abusing citizens of my country because they had brown skin. They shot dead two citizens (Renee Good and Alex Pretti) doing what I was also doing - relentlessly recording and documenting their behavior and addition to protesting.
I don't think you realize how ridiculous and out of touch it sounds to tell me to "disconnect" from politics to be less angry. I am extremely angry, and I will continue to let that anger fuel my choices until the vile bullshit that has infected this nation is gone.
Enlightening my ass. Tell that to the trodden upon and the dead. Reality sucks and sometimes you have to do something about it or else you're the problem. Tough shit if you don't like it.
> Reality sucks and sometimes you have to do something about it or else you're the problem.
But ARE you doing anything about it? Because unless you're actually taking action it's basically just self flagellation to the benefit of no one. Like if you have some measure of power (community action, organized resistance, political lobbying) and are taking action that's great, reading articles that make you sad and angry and then going to bed isn't doing anything.
The other commenter makes an interesting point though that these behaviors really don't do anything but make people engaging with them feel that they are doing something productive against whatever they are protesting. ICE will still do whatever the hell they want as long as the president continues to give them a 500ft leash. And neither the president nor their voter base care about these protests, so what is the point? The lines in the sand in this case are already drawn and there are no fence sitters left to convince. Record all you want, put up as many cops are pigs signs as you want, they don't care. Call me jaded, but it is true. The way protesting is done in this country doesn't effect change.
At least protesting is doing something. What's far worse is the people getting emotionally invested and then just arguing on Facebook or going to bed sad. That'll just make you depressed and does literally nothing.
certainly not true in this case. The constant protests and clashes and deaths caused a significant national backlash, to the point that operations were dialed way down and even the field chief was replaced. Without the actions of protestors in minnesota we would likely still be seeing similar militant takeovers of cities around the country - it actually did change a lot. (in my opinion of course, alternative histories cant be proven)
It only does nothing if you believe physical action is the only means of mattering. Clearly these broadcasted events changed national and global sentiment, had a few top brass discharged, and most importantly have created communities of means to track ICE and have others get out of harm's way where they may otherwise have been next. Not to mention it's been yet another factor in Trump's declinig polling rates, which affects midterm voting.
Is it enough? Not even close. But ultimately (if you're not going to maintain a well-reguated militia yourself) this is going to be a battle of attrition and this bookkeeping is at worst going to be used for history, or at best will be used to eventually hold many of those accountable when the tides change.
I disagree. But if you want to have a conversation about whether specific actions achieve their intended goals, that’s very different to saying “but did you even DO anything because of what you learned???????”
It's not an interesting point at it. It's obviously idiotic.
You do have a choice, you can change things. Getting angry, especially in large numbers, is a prerequisite to change. Because getting angry is the prerequisite for violence.
His statement is "ignore getting fucked in the ass and take it". How exactly is that interesting?
ICE killed a completely random person, who had every legal right to be here, in Biddeford Maine. There is again video evidence that ICE's claim of self defense is complete horseshit.
You can be 99% sure that the people currently saying that wasn't such a big deal are also saying you should not pay attention to the media because it is just about making you angry.
They say this as they've been consuming Conservative AM radio for decades, which was entirely about making up stories to make people angry.
Meanwhile the local legal immigrant community is terrified, many people have been literally kidnapped and are missing, and this idea that they would somehow be fine if they just didn't pay attention is absurd.
It's insane. These conservatives are acting like it's no big deal real harms are happening, like this is just some sort of game. My brother visited and talked about his complaints about what is happening as if it was a milquetoast yelp review of a local burger joint. Asshole doesn't care that his voting choices has literally killed hundreds for no reason.
Predictably, he's the kind of person that talks about sports teams as if he is a member. "We did so well" in reference to the bruins winning a game for example.
My offline time is spent volunteering with asylum seekers. As an experiment, try actually caring about the people experiencing what you think of as meaningless online negativity.
That's true but it also seems to downplay how much elites + corporations have control over our society and somehow when people want to build a better world, you have to first explain the problems of the current world.
This works really well because most of us are very privileged. I'm white, I have a good job. Yes I live in a republican hellhole state with just about the worst policies on anything you can imagine. But I am isolated because of my status. Things can be shit and I can be fine, and I am. I have gone over 6 months without social media, and it works.
But... you do notice the cracks. Slowly. You see it at Walmart, I see it when I go out to the clubs. Lots of cops around. Nobody dancing. A bouncer for the bathroom? Hm, okay. I travel to south Texas sometimes and you see it there, too. Lots of protesting. Fear everywhere. You drive through maybe 50 abandoned, impoverished towns. I see it in my community. Businesses closing left and right. Replaced. I say "I give them six months". I'm wrong, they close their doors in three. Weird.
And then I got cancer. I knew the healthcare system was bad, but I was young and healthy, so out of sight out of mind. Not anymore. However bad you think it is, it's worse. 10 people in the infusion room, one nurse running with her head cut off. My IV has been beeping for 30 minutes. The oncologist? She's not in the building, because she's the one oncologist for three different clinics 50 miles apart. Luckily, I only have to pay an arm and a leg for this. They had iPads in the infusion room. They removed those after a couple weeks, I guess they were too expensive. And I can't trust my care team. I have to review every single medication, every single scan, everything. My oncologist mentions medications I've never took. She misreads tests. I don't blame her, I know she's overextended, she probably barely knows who I am. So, I review everything, which means I need to call and request they fax it to my line. I guess a portal is too expensive. My primary care? The next appointment is in two months. Well that's okay, I only have cancer. He barely knows who I am, too. "You never did chemo, right, just surgery?". No... I did four cycles of chemo, we talked about this a couple months ago. He sets his phone down on the table and records our conversation. OK, I guess that's a thing now. I go home. Bills just show up every few days. I don't even know what for most of the time. I had surgery a year ago at this point. Random departments in the hospital still send me bills. I did prepay ~3,000 dollars for the surgery, but I guess that money is for something else? Not sure. I would call the hospital and ask to speak to billing, but I don't have the time or energy to be on hold.
Anyway, I guess my thesis is: yes things are good, for us. We need to remain humble and recognize our experiences are tinted by our privilege.
I'm sure that ignoring all of the very real problems we have and the ways we're being harmed can make some people feel better, but burying your head in the sand doesn't make any of it actually go away.
You can pretty safely ignore a lot of irrelevant rage bait, but by remaining ignorant to what's going on around you you also risk losing a lot of useful, actionable, information and being blindsided by things that could have been avoided.
I know that if I were corporation hurting and exploiting people for profit or a corrupt politician screwing over the public I'd be very happy to encourage people to "unplug" and stop stressing about things.
What are you doing to fix the issues though? Has the knowledge of the issues increased your agency in a meaningful way such that you've taken actions to improve things or are you just enjoying living in a perpetually outraged state for the sake of it? If your martyrdom isn't doing anything to help fix the problem you're just hurting yourself and stopping yourself from potentially being in a space to ever actually do anything.
Yes, it has. Not "tuning out" the news has helped me mitigate significant problems for me personally, which a delay of a couple days would have meant it was too late.
I think your word choice ("enjoying living in a perpetually outraged state", "martyrdom") seems to show more outrage than a lot of the people you rail against.
It's also my impression that most people who want everybody to turn off the news agree with or don't care about any bad things happening to people that are being reported on.
Yes. Maybe I'm not taking immediate action now (as I'm still looking for a full time role), but it has shaped how I want to go about my next 2-5 years after I fix my own issues. I don't want to just lean on the sidelines, I want to do my part and help out where I can. Be it financially (when money permits) or physically.
You can't always expect to be able to fix everything yourself, but you often can take steps to help or at least protect yourself. It just depends on what's in the news. Very recently, I've started avoiding produce from Taylor Farms. Good thing I was paying attention to the news when that mess started. It was only by reading the news that I became aware of a change in how postmarks were being added by the USPS and that saved me some potential headaches.
Being informed can result in things like patching vulnerable software, withdrawing supporting a political candidate, reaching out to your representatives about issues that concern you, asking your doctor about treatments/medications/vaccines, exploring new media, changing or delaying travel plans, changing your spending habits, making adjustments to investments, etc.
You are making valid points, but most people will spend their day reading about other places governments or presidential scandals. For 99% of people, knowing what Trump or whatever politician is doing does not change anything in your life. Also, you have no control or power for changing something about it. If you spent 70% of your day worried about Trump while you live in Estonia (random example), not reading the news is a good choice. You sound like someone who can avoid these traps, but I can say that this is not a common behavior. Most people will bite the ragebait
Accepting the 99% figure, 1% is not a particularly small number. That's about 3.5 million people in the US alone. And it becomes much greater when you consider anyone who cares about someone in that 1%.
If you are American, yes. If you live in a random country, and don't have personal relations with the USA, reading about Trump's actions will only give you anxiety (if you disagree with his positions, of course)
> but most people will spend their day reading about other places governments or presidential scandals.
Okay. I can't control most people. I can control myself. Even if I did want to control people, influencing comes by the minority choosing to be aware and spread that to others.
We are indeed in this situation mostly because "most people" think that they can't do anything. "most people" in my generations (as a very late millenial, so I have some Gen Z exposure) chose not to vote in 2024, given turnout numbers. I want to at least put some effort in addressing that notion.
>If you spent 70% of your day worried about Trump while you live in Estonia (random example), not reading the news is a good choice.
And I'm sure Estonia has its own domestic issues too. I'm sure they can still influence their representatives to take actions based on Trump if that's a strong influence.
They can't do much in the US, but I'm mostly talking to a US audience here. That's my target.
Yes, not thinking about serious problems because they don’t personally impact you will make your life more comfortable. Butler appears to be making the less obviously self serving argument that spending time being aware of serious problems is only hurting your ability to do anything about them, which implies that he is better able to do something about them because he does not spend time knowing about them. I think that he isn’t doing anything about them, and therefore his pretense that people would be more effective by staying offline is crap.
No thanks. I went too much of life being a low information mostly non-voter. This is how authoritarians win, because too many people don't pay attention, don't protest, don't vote, don't express their disapproval.
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.
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.
>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.
