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I want to see what people are thinking about the idea of taking in less information via media, including traditional and online in all its forms, about what is happening around the world at a given time. Just disconnecting, intentionally. I had this idea on my own and I looked around and there is a decent amount being written about it, and of course there would be since we all now live in a state of constant media input. It's obvious the more media we consume, the more we learn about things in the world we can never even influence. A lot of these things are terrible, and it feels important to know about them. I don't know if it is, if you can't actually do anything about them. I think the amount of people who even try to do anything about them is vanishingly small. Knowing more doesn't improve our own lives because we are usually learning about things which either don't effect us at all personally, or if they do, they are high level structural things which, again, we can't do anything about, so the effect is a net negative. We might feel momentarily more knowledgable, or righteous, having expressed condemnation of something, but afterwards all we've really gained is the knowledge of another problem in the world beyond our control. There's another effect going on, where people become more invested personally in things happening elsewhere or above their heads which they can never touch, and completely disinterested in things happening closer to them in terms of geography and power. Maybe I'm only speaking for myself, but I know more about things that happen across the world than I do in my own town. You could take this idea to varying degrees. The right balance to me seems to be in reducing your media intake so that you aren't deeply aware of current events, but still read history and analysis to at least have a basic understanding of the major currents for things like voting, or if something within your sphere actually does come up. I know there are counterpoints to what I've said here, which I think I'll just leave open to be brought up if people want to talk about this, because I'm working through this idea and how much I want to disengage from media, and whether my tenative idea of only investing locally (both in terms of geography and power) is the right one. I've also left it vague because I'm not talking about any one or group of events in particular.
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Mar 12, 2022 01:51
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I can tell you that I stopped reading so much about what's going on in the world as part of measures taken to address my declining mental health. I feel much happier these days knowing very little about what's going on politically but does bring about a different sense of powerlessness or insignificance. In a sense it's a new problem but it's also an old one isn't it. There's the old idea that the more you know the more prone you are to unhappiness, but on the other hand there's the righteous quest for knowledge which you could argue is part of what makes humanity special. I do think though, new forms of media might give us cause to rethink those ideas somewhat. The DPRK fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Mar 12, 2022 |
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Mar 12, 2022 02:07
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See the happy moron, He doesn't give a drat. I wish I were a moron! ... My god, perhaps I am?
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Mar 12, 2022 02:12
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I can definitely relate to the odd phenomenon of knowing more about whats going on in the world than where you live. I moved to a new town 2 years ago and with the pandemic its been tough to actually get to know the area. But the huge problem is the lack of local news. Its far easier to access international and national news than dig for whatever volunteer or underpaid reporter is "covering" the place you live
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Mar 12, 2022 02:50
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I feel like people have a psychological defense mechanism where they attribute their problems to being "too perfect" in a bunch of ways to never face any improvement. "Girls don't like me because I'm too nice. I'd be able to have girls like me if I wanted, but alas, it's only my positive qualities that prevent it, so I am forever cursed as too perfect.". I always feel like "I'm unhappy because I'm just too smart and know too much, just like my hero rick sanchez" type claims feel really hollow, like it's a shortcut to attribute the bad elements of your life to your best qualities so you never have to or could work on them. Like if you decided you were unhappy because of a like, negative and cynical worldview you would be responsible for something you could change or fix. But if you define it as being simply cursed with too much wisdom and knowledge then it's a cross you must bare. (or give up by lowering yourself to the level of the mere mortals). The idea there is simply nothing you could do to fix any problem in your life, only be less gifted. It's like a weird secular reverse prosperity gospel, you define bad things in your life as being the punishments for your best traits, then feeling worse and worse becomes tied up as proof you actually are as good/moral/smart/nice/perfect as you wish to be. You never have to investigate if your worldview is making you unhappy, it's simply that you know so much and are so right and are cursed with superior intellect, unlike those dumb worthless normies with their 'reality tv". (I don't mean you have to specifically read about genocide at your birthday party and always need to be consuming all information at all times, but that the more general "I'm so sad because I'm too perfect" stuff always seems suspicious to me.)
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Mar 12, 2022 19:53
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:I feel like people have a psychological defense mechanism where they attribute their problems to being "too perfect" in a bunch of ways to never face any improvement. I think you're misinterpreting the motivation behind the idea of not taking in a lot of media information. I'm not coming from a place of 'i'm too smart', at all - it's the opposite. It's that I am compelled to pay attention to things for reasons that, when I think about it for just a minute, I realise every time aren't actually smart or useful at all. But the process repeats itself, and not even with 'important' things, it's just an ingrained process. We like to stay current in our information for obvious reasons of being safe, knowing about opportunities, forming bonds. When you're actually participating in a social space, you need to know what is going on. The same motivation applies to watching hours of coverage, scrolling endless opinion tweets - even though this information is now being beamed in from a disconnected context and has no relevance to you. The brain processes it like it is somehow happening in your life, while you know it isn't. The information is heavily mediated if not outright misleading, to produce an effect in you that keeps you in a state of compulsion to take in more. You actually only know what someone else wanted to show you. It isn't smart to keep doing that. Then there's the moral aspect. Even though I know all of the above, I still feel kind of bad about how little attention I'm paying to certain things, now and then. I don't think me knowing more about it would help anybody, it wouldn't help me, and yet it feels like I should so that I can broadcast, to myself and anyone who will pay attention, that I am smart and on the correct side of this issue which I'll never actually participate in beyond barely informed commentary. A lot of times I'm not even really paying close attention, I barely know anything at all. There are people who think that being unhappy is evidence that you're intelligent, but that isn't where I'm coming from on this. The DPRK posted:In a sense it's a new problem but it's also an old one isn't it. There's the old idea that the more you know the more prone you are to unhappiness, but on the other hand there's the righteous quest for knowledge which you could argue is part of what makes humanity special. I do think though, new forms of media might give us cause to rethink those ideas somewhat. Yeah, it isn't really a new problem. The only new thing is the extent of it. I don't think I'm in the minority when I say I spend the majority of my life disconncted from my immediate surroundings. In other eras, you'd spend an hour reading a newspaper and then go back to dealing with your actual life. As I've been writing this post, and the OP, I keep thinking - y'know this is all really obvious stuff, I am not really covering new ground. It's more like I'm checking my assumptions are valid. some plague rats posted:See the happy moron, I'm not talking about wilful stupidity, I'm mainly talking about distinguishing between things you can effect and things you can't, and giving them proportional attention. Although I recognise that I'm opening myself up, by not following the news and not expressing opinions on things I know little about, to either being called stupid, selfish, regressive (if the issue is some kind of social justice thing), and all sorts of things. I've definitely said that about people and had that reaction to them before. I'd just have to live with that, though, if I know my actual rationale for not paying attention, not investing myself in distant arguments, is basically sound.
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Mar 12, 2022 20:59
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roomtone posted:I want to see what people are thinking about the idea of taking in less information via media, including traditional and online in all its forms, about what is happening around the world at a given time. Just disconnecting, intentionally. I had this idea on my own and I looked around and there is a decent amount being written about it, and of course there would be since we all now live in a state of constant media input. It’s a well established fact that people are so drowned in “shocking” infomation they stop trying to effect any change at all. What’s the point? You’re trying to empty the ocean with a bucket with other are filling it with tankers.
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Mar 12, 2022 21:15
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I feel like the problem described is more about the opportunity cost of spending too much time consuming a type of media. Like the way watching anime or sitcoms or playing MMOs or something all day is harmful not because the content is harmful specifically but is harming you because you are doing it all day to the exclusion of other things. Like, if you read news 12 hours a day and were having a bad time then took a class to learn to speed read and read the same news in 6 hours a day then spent the extra time on a pottery class and rock climbing I feel like your life would have improved, because the issue was news over consuming your time, not that the knowledge of the news itself was harming you.
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Mar 12, 2022 23:41
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I want to know the statistical relationship between alcohol abuse and posting in D&D a lot. The news is MEANT to affect you, is the thing. The news is, among other things, propaganda, which is generally exhausting by design. It's outrage porn, entertainment, real life action and drama, a rapid fire series of contradictory stories you might not even have the means to sort through, and 24/7 appeals to the strongest emotions they can get ahold of. A lot of the information we need to be decent citizens is only available in ways made to make your neurons sizzle. We have our responsibilities to learn whatever we can, but we also need to consume responsibly. Unfortunately, one of the messages of news is that it's your job to watch more news. Not your job to watch news -- MORE news, specifically. You're supposed to only stop when you can't physically handle anymore, and then feel guilty later when you don't know something that you might have heard about if you'd watched/read more news. Personally I try to identify subjects I can safely ignore due to my own specific circumstances. A lot of people do this. It's tricky and dangerous, of course. But I have never once needed to know what Tucker Carlson thinks, for example. The fact that I know his face and opinions has never helped anyone. I've stopped bothering to read the words typed above or below the puzzled nazi man. Maybe if I knew someone I needed to help deprogram? I don't need to know the day to day thoughts of white supremacists, thank god. I have to understand the overall philosophy because the world is hosed up and busted, but this particular shock jock is irrelevant to me. Ragnar34 fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Mar 13, 2022 |
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Mar 13, 2022 00:58
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If you compressed twelve hours of news consumption into six hours I think the probability is more that 1. you would spend the new six hours of time also reading news and 2. that is the worst use of your time imaginable. If you spent all twelve hours doing pottery you would produce some sick rear end pots. As noted, the point of news is to get you to consume news and to do whatever the person paying the news broadcaster wants. It seems like a tremendously bad idea to spend any significant fraction of your time doing that. It would be like if eating burgers directly gave you bad ideas and also didn't have any nutritional value. OP I don't even think you're "knowing less" as you put it, you are just filtering less information through your brain, the amount of actual knowledge therein is minimal, in the sense of knowledge being useful information. How much of the information you are exposed to can you actually apply to your life other than as a social activity centered around news consumption with other people? How much of your life are you spending doing something that you don't really enjoy doing and makes you feel like poo poo afterwards, but which you feel like you have to do because there is a whole pile of social pressure and internalized guilt on you to be "informed" or whatever. If it were any other behaviour that produces no value to the individual, does not make them happy, occupies a bunch of their time, and leaves them feeling like poo poo you would probably call that an addiction and think they should stop doing it. The only person benefiting from your news clicks is the news company, it's not doing you any favours the vast majority of the time. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 01:34 on Mar 13, 2022 |
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Mar 13, 2022 01:22
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Ragnar34 posted:I want to know the statistical relationship between alcohol abuse and posting in D&D a lot. Gotta be higher than average, even considering the higher than average rates of a chronic internet user. OwlFancier posted:OP I don't even think you're "knowing less" as you put it, you are just filtering less information through your brain, the amount of actual knowledge therein is minimal, in the sense of knowledge being useful information. How much of the information you are exposed to can you actually apply to your life other than as a social activity centered around news consumption with other people? How much of your life are you spending doing something that you don't really enjoy doing and makes you feel like poo poo afterwards, but which you feel like you have to do because there is a whole pile of social pressure and internalized guilt on you to be "informed" or whatever. That's probably a good idea for me to keep in mind when I talk about this in the future, rather than saying I want to know less, I should say I want to be exposed to less information, because the actual knowledge contained within it is minimal other than a vague representation of something that is happening somewhere. quote:
Definitely - I've come to realise lately that my definition of addiction was pretty narrow and actually a huge amount of my own and human behaviour in general can be understood on those terms. It used to slightly annoy me when I'd hear people say they were news junkies or y'know, chocolate addicts - because since I've got addiction issues, I felt like they weren't taking it seriously. Now I realise that it actually applies perfectly well. Addiction is a pretty universal human trait. It doesn't always have as dire of a result as substance abuse, but it does have consequences. Maybe it doesn't completely ruin your life but that kind of binary distinction isn't useful, if it is still deteriorating its overall quality and basically warping your mind in detrimental ways.
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Mar 13, 2022 04:07
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Whether it technically counts as an "addiction" sure you can debate but like, there are a bunch of behaviours in society that either are, or historically have been, encouraged via a variety of vectors (marketing probably being the most prominent) and I think honestly the lion's share of them have been pretty bad, on the whole. Whatever you want to call them I think it is generally better for us if we don't engage in them. They are not promoted for our benefit but rather because someone, somewhere, wants to extract value from us by our engagement with them. I agree that it being a binary is not a great way to look at it. And I might also go so far as to suggest that binary mode of thought is promoted because it allows some damaging behaviours to be described as just "bad" because of their very nature, while at the same time shielding others from criticism. Drugs are bad but alcohol is not (and if it is that's a personal moral failing) fast food is bad if you're middle class but buying expensive coffee is not, poor people buying nice things is feckless waste but rich people wrecking the planet is deserving. There are grains of truth and utility out there but I think it is generally a much better application of your time to ask whether or not the thing you are doing is helpful to you, and helpful to anybody else, rather than going with the option that has the most social reinforcement (which for a lot of people, "watch more news" is certainly going to be) Especially, I think, if you already have some good systemic pictures of the world, then after a while the news is just a very anxiety provoking form of giving you examples of things you already know, while also seeking to give you the impression that there is something new happening that doesn't fit into your existing systemic picture. It probably doesn't hurt you too much to occasionally check that your existing map still describes reality, but even then broadcast news just seems like a very bad way to do that because most of it is pure meaningless shite and even the stuff that isn't is wrapped up in a format that I think is very counterproductive to just getting useful information out of it. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 04:28 on Mar 13, 2022 |
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Mar 13, 2022 04:20
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Extra row of tits posted:It’s a well established fact that people are so drowned in “shocking” infomation they stop trying to effect any change at all. What’s the point? You’re trying to empty the ocean with a bucket with other are filling it with tankers. What is important is what you can do in your own life to help yourself and help others. If you have time, joining community-based organizations or charities and learn how they work while volunteering your time. Or maybe foster animals or work at a shelter. That makes a real, tangible (albeit small) difference. Be extremely careful with donating money to anything but verified local charities. Chances are it will not go to where they claim it will go. You can also participate in local politics, which absolutely DOES matter and you can have an effect on far more than, say, a county, state or national election.
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Mar 13, 2022 13:02
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There's a few topics I've decided to remain ignorant on because it would just infuriate me more about the political right, and it's not really going to help me win political arguments in the sense that it'll change someone elses mind. It seems like in order to really change most people's minds, you have to approach it in a way that doesn't involve giving them bullet-points of counters to their arguments. I have the sense in the back of my mind that I have some "moral obligation" to stay informed, but I think most of that is my brain trying to justify my desire to read up on news. With my anxiety the way it is, I am doing a disservice to myself by being plugged in. I've begun to notice the difference when im reading news to be informed, vs reading the news to calm a fear by trying to know all about something that appears threatening. By knowing all about it, I can feel some level of control of the situation which is out of my hands. Media, especially twitter, are inclined to elicit a reaction in me to keep on digging. Reminding myself of this has been very helpful. A while back, my therapist and I agreed to put me on a week long covid news diet. Its shameful to say it was actually pretty difficult to do. She had reminded me that if there was something really important development that truly deserved my attention, it would filter out in real life through my friends or social circle. After that week was up, I realized I didn't actually need to read the covid threads on this website or F5 my favorite news sources. It does me 0 good to see blue checkmark people go "oh this is bad!" and then spend a half hour going through discussions to see what was actually bad. I compromised with myself to limit my covid news intake to the weekly updates the TWiV podcast gives out. The news they give out isn't sensational and allows me to know just enough without the rollercoaster of emotion mass media and D&D give me. I've also cut out US politics entirely for similar reasons. My healthy compromise is to stay out of it until voting time. Outrage fuel or fear-baiting isn't going to make my vote count any more or less. When that time comes, I know I can ask this forum for a voting guide.' It's been far easier to stay out of news since Trump has been out of office, so I think that might also be a big reason as to why i'm not so plugged in as I was in 2020. I'm going to make some attempts, with the help of my therapist, to remain healthily unplugged with midterms.
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Mar 14, 2022 07:17
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A huge issue is that “news” isn’t really about staying informed as it’s provided in its current form. Most sources exist to piss you off. This is why NYT does safaris into Trump-land, this is why CBC talks to morons who supported the Freedom Convoy. These things have no value as news, they are not important, they do not inform you. They exist to piss you off and make you angry about poo poo you can’t control. Stay informed, by all means, but when you get pissed off at the news, remember that the news is provided in such a way that does that on purpose to keep you engaged, angry, and coming back for more.
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Mar 14, 2022 17:28
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roomtone posted:I want to see what people are thinking about the idea of taking in less information via media, including traditional and online in all its forms, about what is happening around the world at a given time. Just disconnecting, intentionally. I had this idea on my own and I looked around and there is a decent amount being written about it, and of course there would be since we all now live in a state of constant media input. OP, you are treading on well-worn Islamic ground. Welcome! One of the most common hadith you will see people cite, whole or in part, is this one, narrated by Anas bin Malik: Anas bin Malik reported that the Prophet (SAW) once said: posted:"Seeking knowledge is a duty upon every Muslim, and he who imparts knowledge to those who do not deserve it, is like one who puts a necklace of jewels, pearls and gold around the neck of swines." When it comes to Shariah, knowledge can be divided into categories: Personally obligatory knowledge, communally obligatory knowledge, purely optional knowledge, and (from Al-Ghazali) useless knowledge. Personally obligatory knowledge are things that are required to live and properly practice your religion. For instance, knowing enough to have a trade and take care of your family, how to do the prayers, that there is only one God, how to clean up after yourself and stay healthy, how to exercise and have a proper diet, etc. You need to know these to live and meet your responsibilities, so they are personally obligatory. You can't skip these - sorry. The good news is that googling "how do I pray" will never result in doomscrolling, only really bad wiki-how articles! Communally obligatory knowledge is stuff that someone in the community has to know, but it doesn't necessarily have to be you. For instance, medicine, weather forecasting, psychology, computer security, logistics, etc. In order for your community to survive and thrive, some people have to know this, but not everyone has to be an expert. To be frank, a lot of the worries we get come from this category. We don't have to know about everything. Someone does, but sometimes the best thing we can do is support people who are really passionate about knowing that stuff, and then imitate them or take their advice. Al-Ghazali added the last type of knowledge in his writing against astrology, which I think fits the problem you are discussing the most: Useless knowledge. There is some knowledge that, while not actually "harmful" (no knowledge is harmful), can definitely make things worse for most people. Not only does this knowledge not help them, but encountering it makes their lives actively worse. For instance, if you are suffering from the implications of an intense theological question, and you are the kind of nerd that reads those and understands them, then reading an argument about causality can be useful for you, because it is speaking to the kind of knowledge you already have and answering questions that are naturally occurring to you. If you take a normal person and try to get them to read the same material, it's not going to satisfy their curiosity, it's going to stress them out - and since they do not have the background or knowledge to come to a satisfactory conclusion, it's only going to lead to them suffering. The knowledge isn't bad, but knowledge that helps someone else can be a source of trouble for another. We are drowning in useless information. A normal person doesn't need to know the nature and depth and terror of suffering in the world right now. Anyone who isn't equipped to deal with how screwed up the world is has a chance to fall into despair if they look into it long enough. They need to know things they can actually do. You don't need to see an endless parade of corpses on twitter to know that a situation is bad, and that you should help: You just need to know what you can do, and that doing something is morally good.
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Mar 15, 2022 12:54
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Mar 15, 2022 16:40
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I understand this compulsion, OP--honestly when I deleted Insta, FB, Tiktok and Twitter and I was unable to doomscroll I started to feel way way way less anxious and worried all the time
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Mar 16, 2022 20:41
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Think local, act local. There is nothing meaningfully gained with the power you have to learn about events you have no control over. You have to consider the cost benefit. Does it bring you joy? Does it inspire you to make the world better? If it doesn't, you ought to stop doing it. Further, if you think you're bad at making that assessment, disconnect. The greatest praxis available to you is volunteering your time to your community, and if you have a surplus of money, give that money to people who need it to live. At the very least, don't burn yourself out and also not do these things. Anything further than that is not really about a moral obligation, that's a trick. The algorithm, main media sources, are designed to sell you misery and frankly too many people are buying. Truthfully, I consider it to be irresponsible of you to waste your mental energy making yourself miserable especially if it isn't spurring you to positive action, and even if it is, there's positive actions already available to you. That position of Islam about useless knowledge is a really good framing.
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Mar 17, 2022 17:30
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I think 99.99% of people would be better off never looking at facebook or twitter ever again. There's also a mountain of completely worthless news out there that has zero benefit to anyone at all and that is, if anything, actively harmful to people who aren't equipped to contextualize it, which for a lot of it is basically no one. Pretty much 100% of people gazing into the 21st century media abyss will either be desensitized or hosed up by it. Idk about the idea of actually knowing less, I'm not even really clear on what all that could mean, but certainly consuming less garbage content would do almost everyone well. Your mental state is as much the product of the media you consume as your physical state is of the food you consume.
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Mar 20, 2022 09:01
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:I always feel like "I'm unhappy because I'm just too smart and know too much, just like my hero rick sanchez" type claims feel really hollow, like it's a shortcut to attribute the bad elements of your life to your best qualities so you never have to or could work on them. My child just had their evaluation done by his school district. He is well past three standard deviations from the mean in verbal comprehension, visual spatial, fluid reasoning and working memory. Do you know what that means? Everything happens out of order. The volume on everything is turned up. There are gaps between what his brain can do incredibly well and only normally. These are intensely frustrating. Combined with ADHD and the acute effects of the two pandemic years that means it’s a struggle for him to emotional regulate, even with his meds. I’m literally signing his special education evaluation like after posting this. gently caress you OOCC. gently caress you for always posting about poo poo you don’t know a goddamn thing about. Executive functioning differences, especially large ones gently caress one’s poo poo up. It doesn’t really matter which direction they occur in.
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Mar 22, 2022 04:48
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one can know and be disconnected, OP. i've read cspam for like 7+ years or w/e and could probably say i've only been affected negatively like no way past 10 times. also theres a good reason you can't know stuff that happens in your hometown vs washington dc and that'd require you to know, you know what I mean?
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Mar 22, 2022 05:33
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theres no chance i will ever read the huge post OP, im telling you now i read cspam and can't stand this sacriligous D&D style of long post. but i put in the effort for the first post. brevity is the soul of wit. the only line of interest, to me, is thisroomtone posted:It's obvious the more media we consume, the more we learn about things in the world we can never even influence. A lot of these things are terrible, and it feels important to know about them. where exactly was this learned? I don't see why you would feel any worse when say 12 romans died when their villa fell down in an earthquake in 200BC than that 12 people died in an earthquake 10 minutes ago. for all intents and purposes, to you, the proximity is the same.
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Mar 22, 2022 06:01
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Mormon Star Wars posted:OP, you are treading on well-worn Islamic ground. Welcome! This post is great.
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Mar 24, 2022 00:34
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How about knowing enough and recognizing when you're just pushing the dopamine button for no real enrichment beyond that.
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Mar 24, 2022 02:21
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Bar Ran Dun posted:My child just had their evaluation done by his school district. He is well past three standard deviations from the mean in verbal comprehension, visual spatial, fluid reasoning and working memory. Yeah, it’s another way in which people exhibit a weird dichotomy in their approach toward the physical and the mental. Look at someone like Andre the Giant. No one looked at him and said, “wow, being that huge must be an unqualified boon!” I’m sure it came in handy at least once or twice, but on the whole I think pretty much everyone recognized that most of the time it presented some degree of difficulty or inconvenience. It’s not very different when part of your brain is basically doing the same thing. One can certainly learn to mitigate the problems that arise, but it’s not just “oh wow, you’re really smart, I bet that’s great!” The other thing is that it’s really hard to mitigate those problems in a world designed around the average, in either case. It’s not something you can learn overnight and it’s not something you should expect to conquer without guidance and assistance. To bring it back to the point of this thread: one of the ways you have to adjust for it, is to cut down on the aforementioned “useless knowledge” that causes you discomfort, because your brain will take in a whole bunch of poo poo and worry about it constantly and whatnot. Occupy it with something that doesn’t cause you strife.
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Mar 24, 2022 16:52
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Waffles Inc. posted:I understand this compulsion, OP--honestly when I deleted Insta, FB, Tiktok and Twitter and I was unable to doomscroll I started to feel way way way less anxious and worried all the time While I can't help but look at stuff related to the war in Ukraine, I've done more or less the same. I dont have any social media accounts (unless this place counts, and gaming only discord for finding teammates) and got my wife to delete her face book. We are both measurably less stressed than we used to be. The way I see it we anrt wired to deal with stuff that's isn't immediately at hand and personal, things that effect us directly but that we have some measure of control over. When you start getting too tuned into big picture stuff like beltway politics or some crisis on the other side of the world then you run into a situation where you inevitably make it personal but since you don't have any way to effect it, it becomes an immense and un ending source of stress. This is not to say you can't care about things, just don't let the ones that don't directly effect you and or you have no control over dominate your reality. Pick out some charities and other organizations to support but keep them at arms length. Focus on what you can do, on the things you have real input on, that matter to your day to day life.
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Mar 24, 2022 18:18
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My mother always used to say "shrink your worldview" I saw this as wilful ignorance for a long time, but the older I get the more I appreciate her meaning. It's about worrying about what you can control and change and surrounding yourself with positive people. It's hard to do and I can't say I've ever really managed it, I'm addicted to the knowledge available at our fingertips and am reluctant to wean myself off world news. I'm walking a fine line of trying to know everything but not be emotionally invested in things I can't control. 
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Mar 27, 2022 13:40
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It's probably relevant to quote Lovecraft here.HP Lovecraft posted:“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”
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Mar 27, 2022 15:55
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Idiocracy was painful for me to watch.
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Mar 27, 2022 16:08
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CommieGIR posted:Idiocracy was painful for me to watch. I know a series you should see.
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Mar 29, 2022 03:05
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I prefer to be ignorant by accident.
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Mar 29, 2022 18:24
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Herstory Begins Now posted:Idk about the idea of actually knowing less, I'm not even really clear on what all that could mean, but certainly consuming less garbage content would do almost everyone well. Your mental state is as much the product of the media you consume as your physical state is of the food you consume. It's cool you compared this idea to food, because I was just thinking about this at work and the phrase 'data diet' came into my head. It felt like a phrase that must exist already but I googled it and didn't see anything. Using the analogy of a diet is better than the thread title, because the goal isn't to know less exactly, but I suppose being smarter about what you choose to know and not just indiscriminately guzzling whatever comes on screen. It might not even really be an analogy, there's a definite brain fog after binging useless info/entertainment which isn't that far from the fog after eating a bunch of poo poo or just too much of it. bloatbrains. I haven't actually made any changes to my days so far, other than being more aware of this, but one thing I am doing when I move in a couple of weeks is not setting up a broadband connection at my place. I have a phone with a few GB on it and I can do large downloads at work, but if I can limit the amount of data I have on hand at home then I'll hopefully start making better decisions on what I use it on. Maybe get out of the house and look around a bit more often. roomtone fucked around with this message at 07:01 on Mar 30, 2022 |
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Mar 30, 2022 06:57
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Less knowledge that is noise. More knowledge that is rooted in meaning and connection.
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Mar 30, 2022 07:27
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CommieGIR posted:Idiocracy was painful for me to watch. Yesterday HBomberguy said something onstream that seemed reasonable to me: the core conceit of Idiocracy looks more ridiculous than ever these days because IQ scores have been going up over the past few generations, not down. e: More on topic, I dislike the idea that orcs are a genetically engineered race because there's an American racist canard that black people have been "bred" this or that way, by slaveowners or by the Jews. You know what orcs make me think of? Moose, as contrasted with elk, deer, and other ungulates. I'm a fan of reskinning fantasy races as various woodland animals. The goliath race can be rhinoceroses, that'd be fun. The Root board game is doing a good job. Ragnar34 fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Mar 31, 2022 |
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Mar 31, 2022 00:31
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I've been thinking a LOT about this and ultimately came to the same conclusions as these two posts:PT6A posted:A huge issue is that “news” isn’t really about staying informed as it’s provided in its current form. Most sources exist to piss you off. This is why NYT does safaris into Trump-land, this is why CBC talks to morons who supported the Freedom Convoy. These things have no value as news, they are not important, they do not inform you. They exist to piss you off and make you angry about poo poo you can’t control. Waffles Inc. posted:I understand this compulsion, OP--honestly when I deleted Insta, FB, Tiktok and Twitter and I was unable to doomscroll I started to feel way way way less anxious and worried all the time I can think of two things that made a big difference in my life: - I went on vacation in 2019 to a foreign country, and wasn't able to drink from the news firehose like I was used to doing. When I got back I expected that I had missed out on a ton, and that I wouldn't understand the world I came back to. I did miss a ton, but none of it mattered. The major storylines hadn't progressed, but I "missed" a bunch of inconsequential, TMZ-but-politics style bullshit. This taught me I could pay less attention without being less informed. The big stuff will filter through to you. - I read Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport. This re-enforced and validated a lot of thoughts I had been having, and backed it up with research. You are addicted to the news because the news is incentivized to get you addicted to it. They do not accomplish this by informing you better. Completely tuning out the world and staying ignorant would be selfish and irresponsible. We have to stay aware so we can prevent and/or fight injustice in whatever way possible. I think there are a few ways to do this. 1. Get a trusted friend or set of friends who share your values and take turns being the "DD" of news. One person pays attention and promises to let you know if anything big happens (russia invading ukraine, george floyd protests, etc.). Rotate. Share the burden of staying informed. 2. Read the news, but keep to the headlines of your local news website. You'll get the high level national and world news items, and you'll probably gain a better knowledge of the news closer to you. Don't click the national/world articles unless it's REALLY crazy (natural disaster levels major place) or you see it persistently day after day. This protects you from whatever "scandal" is the main character of twitter that day. I'm not about to say it's flawless, and it's certainly not easy, but it has helped me personally.
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Mar 31, 2022 03:15
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Also, just look at how much attention we pay to complete useless bullshit. Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars and the media gives far more of a gently caress about it than either Will Smith or Chris Rock do at this point. Look at Janet Jackson's pixelated, standard-definition wide-shot tit at the Superbowl all those years back. We're manipulated into thinking these things actually matter on some level, and we discuss them and debate them, but there's no point because ultimately, they are perfectly loving irrelevant. That is the secret of the media. Whether it's the mainstream media, or alternative media, or social media, whatever viewpoint it takes -- it all tries to make you care intensely about nonsense and piffle and get you emotionally involved in poo poo that makes absolutely no difference to anyone, because that's how they make money and gain influence.
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Mar 31, 2022 03:58
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PT6A posted:Also, just look at how much attention we pay to complete useless bullshit. Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars and the media gives far more of a gently caress about it than either Will Smith or Chris Rock do at this point. Look at Janet Jackson's pixelated, standard-definition wide-shot tit at the Superbowl all those years back. We're manipulated into thinking these things actually matter on some level, and we discuss them and debate them, but there's no point because ultimately, they are perfectly loving irrelevant. I...think it's possible to be more selective with your intake than that, and I don't think it's accurate, at all, to say "the media" "all tries to make you care about nonsense and piffle". The Smith/Rock stuff is a waste of time and, yes, it gets coverage, but not anywhere near at the same level across all outlets. Getting their audience involved in things that don't matter doesn't somehow increase the money or influence of an outlet either, versus reporting on things that are more important.
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Mar 31, 2022 04:42
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Two of the three major TV news outlets in Canada have that story on their front page, as does our paper of record. Yes, they have other important things as well, but let's not pretend it doesn't exist from "serious" news outlets as most people would define them. Unless I'm missing out on some obscure only-important-news outlet, there's always tonnes of useless nonsense everywhere. You can certainly ignore it, but it takes awareness and conscious effort, and I have to consider that it's there for a reason. I'm not saying you have to ignore the news entirely, I'm saying that carefully curating your sources alone is not enough to maintain a well-informed viewpoint without useless bullshit. PT6A fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Mar 31, 2022 |
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Mar 31, 2022 05:18
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PT6A posted:Two of the three major TV news outlets in Canada have that story on their front page, as does our paper of record. Yes, they have other important things as well, but let's not pretend it doesn't exist from "serious" news outlets as most people would define them. I got one alert push from the washington post on the slap today, and 12 on other stories. One of them was on Hunter Biden's laptop, but that's because the post was doing original research on that line. Until the same story that generated the push from post hit, the only coverage in the nyt appears to have been one opinion piece. All of this is still massively different from claiming that "it all tries to make you care intensely about nonsense and piffle and get you emotionally involved in poo poo that makes absolutely no difference to anyone" let alone that it's "because that's how they make money and gain influence." Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 05:40 on Mar 31, 2022 |
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Mar 31, 2022 05:36
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