this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2024
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this is so prevalent... and yet a friend told me that he "lost respect" for me because I said I am choosing to abstain from following the news this year.
he acknowledged there's nothing that I could personally do about the vast majority of it, but that I still have a duty to "bear witness". compared it to 1930 Germany and said if he were going down he would want to know about it!
Nah, fuck all that. I've stopped following most mainstream news and my mental health has improved significantly for it. Having a neverending sense of anxiety and impending doom 24/7 is no way to live, and it seems as if that's exactly the effect that major news outlets are trying to have. It hasn't fixed my anxiety but it's a huge improvement not having it constantly exacerbated day after day.
If you had to take a break from that bullshit to avoid going completely insane, then good on you for taking care of your mental health, and believe me that is not a valid reason for you to be respected less.
Hell yeah. Likewise to you.
I think as long as we 1) stay skeptical in our understanding of all systems whilst putting in effort at understanding those systems better and 2) act in accordance with our values in the political process, then we will be doing the good that we thought we would be doing if we constantly consumed news media and designed those beliefs/actions according to that influence. Except we're less influenced by that particular force and less demotivated by anxiety and dread.
The big stuff we're probably gonna hear about anyway. I learned that Trump got shot within two hours.
This is the way I do it. I still hear about everything, I just don’t need to seek it out. And I still feel very informed enough to vote.
https://vote.org