[txcwpalpha]

I agree. About a year ago I made the conscious decision to remove the vast majority of "news", particularly political news, from my life. On Reddit, I blocked all political-related subreddits, removed CNN et al from my bookmarks, unsubscribed from news-related podcasts, removed all news apps from my phone, and I only browse sites /subreddits that pertain to specific interests of mine (HN, subreddits about programming, technology, fitness, financial news about specific companies I am following, etc). I will open a "news site" very rarely when I catch wind of a significant event happening (impeachment, bombing Iran), but again this is very rare. When it comes time to vote, I'll spend some time doing active research on current topics so I can make informed decisions, and the active research helps significantly to avoid clickbait/ragebait that pops up when passively browsing the internet.

I can say without a doubt it has made a significant improvement to my general mood and demeanor. I no longer get sucked into a trap reading infuriating news about the government or inane comments on social media sites. Now when I do happen to come across a clickbait/ragebait headline, my brain seems to just ignore it and carry on with life. Sometimes my friends will bring up the latest "omg Trump, did you hear?" news while we hang out and it will devolve into a bitchfest where they get visibly angry as they talk about it, meanwhile I just sit back and say "I have no idea what you're talking about". Ignorance is bliss, and I say that completely unironically.

It is a little sad because I previously loved being "in the know" and always kept up with the news and wanted to be involved in politics. I miss that aspect a little bit, and I'm certainly wary of the greater effect if everyone in society just disengaged from public debate, but for the most part the improvements have far outweighed that negative.

If you find yourself spending more than even a couple minutes a day being angry/stressed at current events, I strongly recommend limiting, if not totally cutting out, that type of news. It really is great.

[jariel]

One thing you can actually add: local news.

The local news people don't put every fire or robbery through some ideological/woke lens, generally, it's just facts.

Moreover, that it happens near to you gives it some extra empathetic relevance.

When it's 'people you kinda might now' you don't think of it as an abstraction.

I'm in Montreal and I watch PBS Vermont often. Burlington/Montpellier local news. It's so provincial it's almost funny.

It's really refreshing to see regular people, and to know that even if the events are 'local' - it's these kinds of events that are actually most relevant to most people's lives. The political stuff is weirdly not that important.

[trophycase]

Yes, I deleted reddit altogether and rarely read/watch the news. Yes maybe this is a "privileged" position. But it's not as if I can affect much other than local happenings in my community. The thing about most political issues is that they are all more nuanced than we pretend and unless we're experts, we're probably wrong and/or underinformed so it's mostly a waste of time anyway. I stick to a few personal axioms and leave the rest

[Clent]

Sounds like you're a few axioms short of nihilism.

[mistermann]

Another approach is trying to take a disciplined, abstract view of the situation.

For the news, pay less attention to the content of the news, but the style in which it is delivered, paying particular attention to word choice, chosen perspective, suspiciously excluded details, double standards, epistemic soundness (how would one actually know the "fact" that is being reported), etc.

For internet conversations, try to remain undecided on the particular issue being argued, but closely observe the nature of the conversation, using the same techniques as above.

I think if you can manage to do this skillfully, what would normally be an exercise in frustration and stress can transform into a pleasurable study of the nature of human beings, if you're into that sort of thing.

[smolder]

I'm with you, though it's hard to talk about what you observe from this point of view with people who are neck deep in a given narrative. It's isolating at the same time as enlightening.

[mistermann]

Completely agree. On one hand, this seems like little more than plain old common sense, little more than observing the peculiarities of human psychological quirks in action. But then on the other hand, I can't escape this feeling that's there's something actually quite interesting going on here...more specifically, that relatively more intelligent people tend to be aware of these psychological phenomena, and are able to discuss them when the topic is the phenomena themselves, but when a topic is something else, this ability/knowledge "seems" [0] to ~vanish. And it seems it's not only that a strong psychological resistance to the phenomena arises, but that perhaps something occurs in the mind that makes prior knowledge ~literally inaccessible.

It seems fairly unlikely that this is a novel idea, but I've yet to come across any literature that discusses it directly. I imagine part of the problem is that studying such a thing would be incredibly difficult.

[0] I say "seems" because I am running purely on heuristics derived from aggregate patterns of aggregate behavior, comments, and voting - to be more certain, one would require the ability to somehow monitor individuals to see if this theory can actually be observed at the individual level.