Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

I quit reddit too recently, I still look at it for info but I'm not logged in/scrolling through it

I find myself reaching for something when I have YouTube/chilling at my desk at the end of the day, can't code anymore/make something just on till I sleep. Sometimes have the desire to play a video game (I have a gaming rig too funny how that works)

I've been trying to read HN or IEEE, TechCrunch stuff like that as my "lazy fun"

I will miss posting stuff like "what is this car" or being part of the car talk for a sporty car I drive but idk kind of want to just live too

It's unfortunate people expect you to have social media like a girl asks me if I have Instagram and I'm weird to not have one, I get it they can scope you out too for safety but when I tried using that stuff I felt this pressure to post about something

Anyway my main goal in life right now is getting out of debt/staying fit and work on projects

This is the way. I was a director of the community team at deviantart when it got going and I remember so many times thinking "if we get one of these apps for everything people are going to drown themselves in the internet" - because I used to have to actively check in on community members who we deemed addicted. Sure enough, here we are, except it seems nobody is looking out for the best interests of their communities anymore. Thank god for dang.

Alternatively carefully curate your social media accounts. My reddit home page is all books and formula 1. I'm quick to hit 'show me less like this' when anything drifts in from the front page.

My Facebook feed is all friends and family who don't discuss politics and ads for nerd shirts. I've purchased a few. It is also easy and effective to hit show me less of this.

I agree about LinkedIn and don't go there unless I'm actively job hunting, something I hope never to do again. I don't feel any bitterness when I see friends and family on FB go on expensive vacations, but I do feel an unhealthy and indefensible jealousy sometimes when I see former coworkers getting new jobs or promotions.

In principal it's a great method to get back to normal, however there are key areas (subreddits, local groups, etc.) that really do provide information, expertise, and news content that isn't available anywhere else online. It's a double edged sword. The best way I've found is to be in there with a read-only mindset or perhaps only participating inside those key areas where political discussions are strictly prohibited.

<< One thing to consider for those of us who are more sensitive to online outrage is to just quit social media all together.

Yes. I still have to be at least aware of what is happening for work reasons, but removing social media was one of the better decisions for my sanity ( I stil comment on HN, but the quality of conversations was degrading as well, which in itself is a concern suggesting further digital landscape deterioration ).

I considered some more obvious solutions ( from buying subscription to WSJ/FT to personal news aggregator -- and objective/neutral observer rewrite using LLM and they all are not exactly ideal ).

Here is the good news. All this chaos is an opportunity to stand something useful up. And I mean something useful that cannot be so easily dismantled by powers that be ( and there are already heavy indications they are aware people may try going outside the defined paths ).

Why do you exclude HN from your list? It is literally social media, but with the dial turned down a little. Yet, you don't have to dig to deeply to see flamewars, outrage, and trolling. I mean, look at many of the garbage comments in this very thread that are on par with /.,xchan.

I reduced my news intake to a daily email from reuters + HN. Special thanks go to AI, as reddit and others no longer allow reading content without login.

The services go through phases (I suspect depending on botnet activity)...Middle of the day, Threads is a fun place to hang, 9pm? It's a wall of anxiety producing ragebait, 2am? It's even worse.

Looking at it on my phone, if I can see three entries and 2 are anxiety inducing, I close the app. (I'm 99% certain they get that telemetry too)

That said, I also had days where I doomscrolled instagram and thought 'it's been 20 minutes and I haven't seen anything entertaining yet.' And that's when I decided to drop it. (It was the only app I could chat with my kids with...we've since moved to other methods)

I haven't cut it out completely, but I'm not hyper aware of how I'm consuming it.

I agree that most messaging is propaganda, but that doesn't really counter the real pain that is being inflicted upon large populations of people by these government (and corporate) moves, and being cheered on by pretty large masses of people. The propaganda is like environmental pollution -- hard not to breathe it in. That said, I have no answer here..

Easier said than done. Bear in mind that the way information is served is meant to trigger strong emotional responses, skip the prefrontal cortex and tickle your amygdala. You can limit how much it impacts you, say, through reducing exposure, but you can't reason your way out of it.

(this is a response to the comment, not the article)

I had used ublock-origin on youtube to disable the right-hand sidebar of "recommended" videos so that I could just view the stuff in my subscriptions. A couple of years ago, they started detecting and blocking ublock-origin, so I stopped using it (ublock).

It's not really the ads that bother me. It's the "recommended videos". Is there a way to customize my view of youtube to avoid the shit I don't need to see?

The thing about youtube is that it's very easy for propaganda/click-bait to creep in during moments of weakness.

Maybe it's time to go cold-turkey? Failing that, maybe it's worth it to try and take some control over the experience?

I love the idea of this tool, but there are serious issues with using LLMs to summarize articles and text. Re: Apple’s Notification Summary Debacle

For example, this headline with a score > 5 is flatly incorrect.

“China launches innovative flying robot to explore Moon's south pole for water resources”

Every article listed in the summary says the launch is planned for 2026.

> Avoid following the news constantly. Check in every once in a while—a couple times a week at most.

Agreed. I personally believe that checking the news everyday is akin to something like a ‘news overdose’. There’s nothing wrong with spending just 15 minutes per week. At least for me, that’s a far healthier dose.

>Avoid following the news constantly. Check in every once in a while—a couple times a week at most. Get your news from long articles, not tweets. Actually read the articles, don't just learn about the world from hot takes.

This 100%. If a piece of news is truly important, then it'll be important tomorrow or even a week from now. You'll even get clarifications and corrections along the way.

I like to use Pocket to build a list of long-form articles I want to read, then EpubPress (https://epub.press/) to compile that into a weekly EPUB that I can read in-full on a distraction-free e-book reader. It's a much less stressful way of consuming media than the whole neverending drug-frenzied quick-hits world of online news.

> Actually read the articles, don't just learn about the world from hot takes.

Or, even more difficult: Actually read the science paper, or the court ruling, or the executive order, or the proposed legislation, rather than the journalist's hot take. A lot of these journalists takes boil down to "tweets with more words."

A little weird to see the Bitcoin price listed top-and-center, when it is a hype-driven security. Watching the market, especially crypto markets in real-time is also quite stressful. I don't see the point of having it listed first, before the news...

I’ve generally found that overtly biased outlets on the right aren’t a huge source of outrage for me because their spin is so blatant—once I notice the propaganda, it’s easy to tune out. The bigger frustration is knowing how many people take that coverage at face value. It’s not quite the same “outrage” the article describes, though.

By contrast, the NYT often feels more subtle and therefore more effective at stoking that sense of constant agitation. They’re meticulously fact-based, but their editorial choices—what they highlight, the framing they use—can seem designed to provoke a reaction rather than just inform. It’s not only about the content of the stories; sometimes it’s also about how they present or prioritize them. If you haven’t encountered this firsthand, checking out “NYTimes pitch bot” on Bluesky can illustrate how their style can veer into outrage territory. It’s a satirical account, but it often points out the patterns in the Times’ headlines and story angles that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Twenty+ years ago an aunt of mine regularly called our local news on channel four the Channel Fear news.

"In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention"

Platforms have realized this long ago, that as info explodes people pay attention to the easiest things to pay attention too not the hardest, so they move resources to designing things like reels and shorts and tweets etc etc. Every earnings call they gloat about how shorter form content is exploding and how thrilled they are about it.

The long form stuff only holds attention of the majority if you keep throwing Novelty on the table every two sentences.

Platforms are basically running an animal domestication program, where people have been rewarded with high rep and status for extremely low cognitive work.

So that entire group that has benefited doesn't see any need for nuance and depth in anything. "Cause look how many likes, clicks, views and followers I have accumulated without it"

> I definitely wouldn't leave social media though! Instead, harness them! Train those algos to give you science, book clubs, fascinating music niches, travel, culture - go deep, explore, and 'follow' liberally - you can very easily remove yourself from a group/page. I've found insanely interesting chemistry and physics pages, not to mention domains I never even knew existed, like color theory and a handful of others. Once you start clicking on politics, you'll only get more of it. Click on the good stuff!

Sorry, but that last paragraph sounds like AI generated Meta PR.