Ask Lemmy

I listen to my body, which includes my mind. I start feeling bad physically or mentally, I disconnect and do something else.

Read news

Get involved

Have a really good revolution

Stop ignoring your whole body telling you to resist

To do something about it

Slow news.

Seriously, you don't need to know all of this shit every day. I do a weekly catch up on Saturday and indont think I've ever missed anything important. If anything some times gives news to clear up.

I wish there was a way to stay informed without the rage-bait delivery methods

I stick to few sources that generally cover major without the doom and gloom. Generally YouTube channels are pretty good imo.

• TLDR News (UK, EU and Global) is a great series of channels for that.

• Caspian report on YouTube for some geopolitics/strategic outlook.

• Real life lore for couple of deep dives on non-current issues.

• Money and Macro for macro economic news.

• Just have a think for climate science and energy transition news.

• "Good news" is just nice feelgood news.

Traditional media for closely following elections when they come out such as exit polls.

For the Gaza issue I did break the cycle and check on Al Jazeera which is the best for middle East news.

There is no line for me.

I'm incredibly fragile and seeing people ~~I care about~~ be hurt by all this hurts me incredibly much.

I'm now avoiding the news and doing my best to instead be a positive influence, help where I am able, offer support, donate what I can, etc.

I refuse to let evil fucking idiots steal my joy.

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/journal.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/

I use an RSS reader to grab headlines from several sources. I read the headlines once in the morning and once in the evening. My goal is to know what is going on. As much as possible I try not to get too emotionally engaged during this process. I try to be informed without being outraged or depressed.

I actually had this issue months ago, I kept seeing everything on Instagram regarding a particular major problem. Seeing the deaths of innocents and the governments cheering it on just made me angry, moody, anxious and an immense hate towards humanity in general.

I was also jobless in these months (glad got work now) and that made it worse.

Eventually I heavily restricted myself;

• Only 30 mins of scroll in Instagram, checking the news and such.
• No talks about politics for at least a month.
• Read more books to dive in.
• Play fun games (Mario Wonder, Captain Toad Tracker, Mario kart and Catherine Full Body).

Got a job now but I still keep most of the things I restricted myself. Despite everything, I’m in a much better mindset than before.

This video helped me A LOT: https://youtu.be/yxAd8Owl-7A

Reduce the amount of news and media you consume. It isn't healthy. Check in with your own mental health on a regular basis and use that as a barometer. When you start feeling overly stressed and frustrated, it's time to take a break.

Here’s the thing I’ve discovered over the past two months. You can block every keyword you can think of involving politics and you will still be subject to them in memes that don’t happen to mention the keywords, comments where the blocking isn’t effective, and friends and spouses mentioning them, if not more. Politics pop up in every context. Video game YouTube, programming subjects on hacker news, pretty much every single subject at this point in time is inundated with politics.

For a long time I was the most informed person in my social circle. I can’t deal with it anymore. I blocked every mention I could think of and yet I still think I’m just as informed as everyone else in my circle, at least to a certain extent.

You can’t avoid it. So block everything and you’ll still be informed.

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.

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.

I'm from Germany. I subscribe to a decent weekly newspaper ("die Zeit") and follow German news sites. I try to stay away from news on social media, but that's hardly possible.

On Lemmy, I've mainly blocked keywords and names relating to US politics because the ridiculous bullshit from the White House is unbearable. Despite this, my feed is still full of the stupid drivel from Trump & Co. This is not news, but at best political soap opera entertainment far removed from reality.

Because this stupid stuff potentially affects me too, of course, I have subscribed to a decent monthly newspaper with an international focus ("Le Monde diplomatique"). I can't stand US politics in particular any other way.

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.

Oh shit. Drawing a line is a really good idea.

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.

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.

So far, I've stayed in the know on every god damned thing, even going deep enough in some cases to explore the damage caused. It's stressful, but somebody has to do it and I'm someone less impacted than the targets of this insanity (although I've dated a transfem for years and am trained in education policy, so obviously the news gets to me on a personal level).

One lesson about stress: you've got three ways to cope: (1) you address the source of the stress (or at least feel like you're doing something, like protesting). (2) You ignore it with distractions, which is perfectly fine if it's out of your control, (3) you reframe it, such as "this will pass" or "there's still good in the world", etc.. All three will reduce stress.

We all do all three, and whichever one you find yourself doing is fine. For example, I feel good by trying to share my knowledge and convince my students to give a shit; I still play video games to relax; and I have told myself plenty of times that, while it's bad (very, very bad), that as long as we survive we can build back our institutions (and believe me, the DoE is both important and deeply flawed-- as someone who survived a failed k-12 education and got a PhD in spite of it, education reform has always been my dream).

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”.

You can read a list of news article titles and not go deep.

i simply stay uninformed. all the important news will come through memes and bypass all keyword filters i set anyway

we weren't made to receive bad news from around the globe 24/7 beamed directly into our pockets. i prefer to be happy

Lemmy is my line. Have one account just for politics, and another with everything but - that way I can control my exposure.

I follow a single news source which doesn't just focus on US politics. They only write about it when there's actually something to write about. Other than that, I take active steps to block it everywhere else. On Lemmy I stay out of political communities and I have set content filters to cover everything from Trump to measles and I keep adding new ones every day. In today's world the only way to consume anything even remotely resembling an "optimal" amount of news is by avoiding them. People who have never tried this get the feeling of FOMO and think that they're going to then be ignorant then but the truth is that you simply cannot insulate yourself from world news unless you go live alone in a forest. When something major happens you will hear about it. Anyone consuming an unfiltered Lemmy feed because they feel the responsibility to "stay informed" are just masochists doing self-harm.

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 stop reading when my brain starts hurting.

I read weekly newspapers. I used to read Morgenbladet, now I read NZZ am Sonntag, and there are many others to choose from, but getting away from trying to find something engaging each day solves a lot of problems.

Tried to filter out as much stuff that I find annoying as possible and block things as well. It doesn't get everything unfortunately but it gets close. I think the only thing that could make it better would be some kind of image scanning filter that would remove things from the feed if it detected them in a posted image or a website preview.