[HN Gopher] Negativity drives online news consumption
___________________________________________________________________
Negativity drives online news consumption
Author : azefiel
Score : 352 points
Date : 2023-03-17 14:29 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| initramfs wrote:
| A questionable headline- does it frame and try to link negativity
| with news, or choose this proposition because it's more likely to
| get clicks?
|
| If I had unlimited cash and I was the editor, my front pages
| would be tongue-in-cheek nods to negative stories, like "CRIME ON
| PAGE 15" so they'd have to flip through a meadow of full page
| color ads of sakura trees, the textual equivalent of green noise.
|
| Archive.org has a pleasant viewing experience if you flip through
| many of the fully-scanned magazines, simply because there are no
| digital popups- at least the ads on the pages are inert and
| unable to cause a virus.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Sadly, this is old news -
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/if_it_bleeds,_it_leads - predating
| "online".
| thenerdhead wrote:
| Cynicism breeds extremism.
| hi41 wrote:
| What is the evolutionary basis for us being so biased towards
| negativity?
| kerblang wrote:
| The paper doesn't seem to introduce any novel understanding of
| the topic, just reinforce what we already assumed - maybe I'm
| missing something.
|
| I'd be more interested in a study of "persecution" news, the us-
| vs-them narrative that has become much more common in the last
| 20-30 years and which I think drives a lot of the so-called
| polarity of political dialogue.
|
| Also it would be interesting to see effects in decentralized
| publishing, e.g. youtube/tiktok & independent journalism, since
| those are so much more prevalent and integral to the broader
| media narrative now.
| PhysicalNomad wrote:
| I stopped reading news a year ago for this reason, having left
| social networks for much longer. Of course I still have some
| exposure through HN, but overall I'm happier and don't miss them
| one bit.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| One of these days the fountains of poison will have 100% of a
| nearly deserted market.
|
| Great success.
| avereveard wrote:
| And it's not just news a lot of other media is producing negative
| or outright toxic content, and it's super hard to break out
| because drama and gossip are captivating, because satire can be
| fun even if disperse in a negative sea and because there is quite
| some selection bias from our own frustration in selecting the
| content that relates to us.
|
| Let's not forget we went trough four "once in a lifetime
| disaster" by now. Or more depending how you count.
|
| Today I make a conscious effort to check a channel content before
| consuming any drama in it. If the channel is 100% drama I pass,
| regardless of how captivating the original link was,to try and
| break out of the algorithm.
| omoikane wrote:
| The headline of the article is a concept that most of us are
| familiar with, but what I think is the novel part is how they
| quantified it. If you are not planning on reading all 8000+
| words, scroll to the results section and look at table 2 for all
| the headline variations and click through rates.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| It's in the human nature. People are more worried about what can
| affect them in a negative way than are they content about good
| things. Maybe it's the survival instinct that triggers with bad
| news, maybe people consider the good news to be normal.
|
| I try to click less on negative stories and more on positive
| stories. Negative things can make me angry or sad and I dislike
| being angry or sad. Also I find many negative news to be
| tiresome.
| nottathrowaway3 wrote:
| > I try to click less on negative stories and more on positive
| stories.
|
| An alternative approach is to consume news from multiple
| countries (including your own). It's so interesting to see how
| all the fnords are different and just how conditioned you were
| to consume the one kind of media designed for your country.
| nntwozz wrote:
| Kinda like what P.T. Barnum once said: "There's no such thing as
| bad publicity".
| neilv wrote:
| About 20 years ago, I would read many newspapers every day. (I
| care a lot about society, and, therefore, journalism.) I learned
| a lot about both.
|
| At some point, I had to take a break, because awareness of so
| many problems was overwhelming, and also there were diminishing
| returns (most problems are ongoing or recurring).
|
| Years later, I found myself following local news for the locale
| where I was living (and where I had some large complaints about
| that locale). Eventually, I realized that, unlike before, I was
| subconsciously looking for and drawn to stories that reinforced
| my dislike for that locale. Reading was like ranting. This seemed
| very unhealthy, so I stopped.
|
| One idea for LLMs would be to give me weekly or monthly updates
| on the news, or catch me up after some arbitrary break period.
| Maybe a more flexible NYT Week In Review.
| martincmartin wrote:
| I read a weekly news magazine (think Time, Newsweek, The
| Economist) for that reason. No need for AI, actual people can
| give you a weekly update!
| davidw wrote:
| Well that's not good news.
| mfuzzey wrote:
| Regardless of new worthiness it's logical to focus more on
| negative things.
|
| Negatives are problems to be solved, if enough people care maybe
| they will be solved too. Whereas positives don't need solving
| (though can still be good to think about to avoid throwing out
| the baby with the bathwater when addressing a negative.
|
| Of course not all negatives can be solved themselves. If it's "X
| was killed due to Y" then of course X is dead so nothing more can
| be done for X but maybe we can prevent issue Y killing someone
| else Z in the future.
| bleuchase wrote:
| Engagement is engagement. Ryan Holiday wrote about this years
| ago. He's not an academic but has a solid grasp on the practical
| aspect of how to exploit this tactic.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| This is just one form of "information ochlocracy" in all forms of
| media. Ochlocracy is the evil cousin of democracy - basically mob
| rule.
|
| Because the business model of media (old or new) requires a large
| audience, the least common denominator inexorably pushes content
| towards the basest human emotions and targets the least educated
| (as they are the vast majority of people).
|
| This is how we end up with the History channel focusing on Nazis
| and Ancient Aliens and Bravo transforming from a channel focused
| on the arts such as Opera, to broadcasting Real Housewives non
| stop.
|
| In terms of social media, it's the same incentives. Those that
| post or share the most inflammatory content get more reactions
| and engagement. Even cat pics produce the same level of emotion,
| except on the opposite end of the spectrum.
|
| What's not rewarded is intelligent discourse. See also "eternal
| September".
|
| A nice new trend is the small newsletter subscription model,
| where those that most appreciate in-depth, detailed thought are
| able to support it directly. But this model is simply a boutique
| solution, and it won't result in another Time Warner.
| tomkarho wrote:
| Negativity has always driven news and their consumption
|
| If it bleeds, it leads
| EGreg wrote:
| Just as I have been saying, we need an alternative to the
| capitalist profit-driven media organizations. Outrage drives
| "engagement", for both social networks and for publishers.
|
| All of the profit-driven outleys are subject to market pressures.
| Even NYTimes which won more Pulitzer prizes than anyone admits to
| A/B testing headlines for clickbait. Let alone FOX News or
| YouTubers with "X does Y, immediately regregts it" and "Foo
| DESTROYS {group we hate}"
|
| The profit motive and private ownership of the social networks
| and publications inevitably drives people into echo chambers and
| creates tribalism. Because the market selects for that over
| anything else. It's not an accident that Twitter is so toxic, for
| instance.
|
| Worse than just negativity, the media outlets selectively report
| on events in order to support their country's narrative, often
| due to their government's pressure. This can lead to wars and
| misunderstandings between huge populations, leading to violence.
|
| This is why I started https://rational.app
| koheripbal wrote:
| There is a lot of negativity on your site.
| [deleted]
| EGreg wrote:
| Can you give some examples? Elaborate?
|
| It highlights what's wrong with the for-profit news industry.
| nipponese wrote:
| What some people might call "negativity", others might call
| "risks", and I want to have as many risks on my radar as
| possible.
|
| The crime is marketing benign events as risk.
| dbtc wrote:
| This headline is itself an example of the phenomenon.
| api wrote:
| "If you mistake a bush for a lion, you are fine. If you mistake a
| lion for a bush, you are dead."
|
| Your ancestors clicked on the article that said "lion."
| varelse wrote:
| [dead]
| psychoslave wrote:
| Just flip your coordinate system, and voila, it's all positively
| existing people roaming the world in wonder.
| rohankshir wrote:
| correct - the SVB collapse was pretty bad on its own, but it
| provided the perfect opportunity to jump on the blame train and
| spin a bunch of negative narratives.
|
| News(events) = boring but useful News(events + narratives) =
| juicy and less useful
|
| I wrote about this more extensively here:
| https://claritynews.substack.com/p/a-lesson-in-how-media-and...
| ouid wrote:
| this is a bad headline. Drives is a causal word, which is not
| established. Indeed, a much more reasonable hypothesis is that
| both negative headlines and consumption are caused by high
| information events, which are more likely to be negative.
| havblue wrote:
| TFA discusses how randomized controlled trials were used to
| obtain their conclusions which do actually discuss causation.
| You're free to disagree with the study but you are incorrect in
| calling the article out as having a causation fallacy.
| ouid wrote:
| they controlled for information content?
| [deleted]
| gerad wrote:
| In other news: the sky is blue and water is wet.
| terran57 wrote:
| Good ole' negativity bias at work here...
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Wish people could turn back time, and get back the time spent
| reading news/politics articles. Such a waste of time. Nothing
| ever happens. And if WWIII happens, nothing you can do about it
| reading articles.
| arooni wrote:
| I read far too much news/politics articles and I'd like to read
| more books instead. How do I go about doing this? The novelty
| of news and perhaps the uncertainty of rewards (slot machine
| syndrome) makes it appealing.
| [deleted]
| wallfacer120 wrote:
| [dead]
| medill1919 wrote:
| Make news irginizations non profit. Gove them the same tax breaks
| that churches get. Then they dont have to worry about clicks to
| pay their staff.
| oblib wrote:
| Back in the late `70s early `80s I lived in Los Angeles and I'd
| grab some fast food after work and go home and sit down and watch
| the "News". There was only one channel we could get using an
| antenna. They had 3 half hour news programs back to back. They
| started out with local news, then National news, then World news.
|
| Basically they scraped up every bit of "Bad News" they could
| find. Murders, robberies, car wrecks and natural disasters. After
| a few months of that I noticed I was getting depressed after
| consuming all that. I'd wake up feeling fine, go to work and get
| done and still feeling fine. But after that hour and a half I
| felt like life sucked.
|
| So I quit watching it and the depression went with it. Since then
| I've made a point monitor the news and learned to keep that in
| perspective with what's going on close to me.
|
| BTW, that News station was one of the very 1st to be bought up by
| "FOX". Since then they pivoted from focusing on tragedy to
| political outrage, but the effect on ones view of life is
| obviously very much connected to the "news" they consume, and a
| great many are attracted to gloom and doom and outrage.
| [deleted]
| specproc wrote:
| We've got huge quantities of multilingual news data with social
| metrics (e.g. newsapi.ai), classification models, research APIs
| for Twitter.
|
| But Nature's running Upworthy and dictionary-based
| classification? It's almost low-N by today's standards. This is
| the sort of paper that could have been written a couple of
| decades ago.
| ilamont wrote:
| A tale that predates the "yellow journalism" movement. One of my
| favorite anecdotes about Ben Franklin (via the Isaacson
| biography) was his tendency to deliberately gin up stories or
| controversy in his publications, using fake letters to the editor
| and other tricks. This was in the mid 1700s.
|
| TV news has the same problem. After the Eagles broke up, drummer
| Don Henley nailed it with one of his first solo hits, Dirty
| Laundry:
|
| _I make my livin ' off the evenin' news
|
| Just give me somethin', somethin' I can use
|
| People love it when you lose
|
| They love dirty laundry
|
| Well, I coulda' been an actor, but I wound up here
|
| I just have to look good, I don't have to be clear
|
| Come and whisper in my ear
|
| Give us dirty laundry_
| poo-yie wrote:
| I came to make same comment about Don Henley's song Dirty
| Laundry. The song sums it up perfectly. It's also a great song
| musically.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| There's a podcast called "The Past Times!" where two comedians
| just read a newspaper from 200 years ago. They're _insane_.
| lawrenceyan wrote:
| Negativity (anger, fear, anxiety, etc...) has a way of getting
| you to cling onto it in an incredibly insidious way. It's hard
| because usually you don't notice it until you've already started
| spreading it to others.
|
| Let that shit go immediately, once you become aware. And if at
| all possible, spend time working to develop mindfulness (a
| meditation/introspection practice is very helpful).
| drak0n1c wrote:
| I follow the Community Impact paper for my city. It's a Texas
| firm that has specialized papers for each area of each major
| city. It's filled with very informative mostly positive community
| developments -- oriented around new establishments, expansions,
| road improvements, city parks/rec proposals, and events.
|
| https://communityimpact.com/
|
| Every state should have a similar paper.
| burlesona wrote:
| I'll second that Community Impact is an excellent paper and a
| real service to the community. Wish it was typical instead of
| such an outlier.
| BirAdam wrote:
| I thought that essentially everyone knew this and had for a very
| long time... "if it bleeds it leads"
| t12hrow wrote:
| Define news. Is it the local gossip section or large social
| shifts or trends? Is the release of GPT-4 news? Was covid news?
| Any sufficiently important event will eventually knock on your
| door, so it's not like you can stick your head on the sand
| completely.
|
| Ultimately, news is indistinguishable from information, and
| information is valuable if you're able to tell the signal from
| the noise, extract the meaning, and find the balance between
| getting the most value and not wasting time. You can use that
| information to make decisions over your own life: should I invest
| in X? Should I work in Y? Should I move to Z?
|
| For example, amid the tech layoffs and the rise of AI tools to
| write code, I think one should reconsider starting a career path
| in software engineering
|
| That is, unless you're completely self sufficient and living off
| the grid, in which case you don't need any of it.
| rr888 wrote:
| I agreed with the headline but now I think about it lots of
| interesting and or funny stuff too. Look at HN as an example.
| [deleted]
| 1270018080 wrote:
| Ever since I started my news diet I feel better overall and less
| stressed. Sure you can claim being apathetic/ignorant towards
| global current events makes me a bad person, but I do not care.
| To me, no human is designed to handle as much information input
| as we experience today.
|
| Maybe I'll become informed again when news becomes more balanced,
| but I am waiting.
| [deleted]
| gwbrooks wrote:
| Former newspaper city editor here. With few exceptions, positive
| stories -- although readers clamored for them in surveys -- never
| drove newsrack sales the way negative stories did. That's why we
| had a whole section for feel-good features but they didn't
| usually get prime front-page real estate.
|
| In the age of infinite content, headlines have become a sort of
| drama arms race. But the basic dynamic of what works and what
| doesn't for drawing in readers hasn't changed.
| pmarreck wrote:
| Do you think this is just how we're wired? What is so extremely
| disappointing to me is that, across many objective measures,
| many things seem to be improving, yet the perception most
| people have of reality is the complete opposite, thanks to this
| perverse incentive.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| > Do you think this is just how we're wired?
|
| I think the way the news is reported says more about _us_
| than it does about the organizations that do the reporting.
| If _we_ didn 't want all the negativity, _we_ would reject
| it, and they 'd stop reporting it. But that doesn't happen.
| So, essentially, _we_ want all the negativity - yes, it 's
| how _we 're_ wired. _We_ just don 't want to accept it.
| pydry wrote:
| >across many objective measures, many things seem to be
| improving
|
| Are they the things that matter to the people who have the
| perception, though?
|
| I don't think it's all about the news.
| VLM wrote:
| Most people don't read online news. Online news is a
| subculture at this point and they're not interested in happy
| stories so happy stories are not produced.
| Aperocky wrote:
| Not a psychologist but I feel like appreciating things are
| more of a learned trait but jealousy and wanting are natural.
| RajT88 wrote:
| > many things seem to be improving, yet the perception most
| people have of reality is the complete opposite
|
| Online news (as well as cable news) in particular has taken
| to farming any kinds of changes to society as moral decay.
| Airing or printing only outrage is a business model unto its
| own. See: Huffpost, Breitbart for examples.
| somenameforme wrote:
| I'd argue that people's impression of the world is going to
| be driven largely by their own perspective, not media.
| Borrowing a quote [1] from Stephen Pinker, probably the most
| visible advocate for 'things are getting better' :
|
| "... the United States is an outlier among rich Western
| democracies, with a stagnation in happiness and higher rates
| of homicide, incarceration, abortion, sexually transmitted
| disease, child mortality, obesity, educational mediocrity and
| premature death.... "
|
| Many of these issues are ones people are going to be aware
| of, and that is going to impact, them on a day to day basis.
| And that's going to inform their decisions much more than
| whatever the news is saying. And that was written back in
| 2018 which absolutely feels like the "good ole days" compared
| to now a days!
|
| [1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-
| life/wp/2018/02...
| [deleted]
| themitigating wrote:
| Politicians are also pushing the notion that things are
| getting worse for support and those politicians are supported
| by news networks who may skew coverage.
| adamrezich wrote:
| sometime around the 2016 US Presidential elections, when
| outragebait headlines had arguably achieved a local maximum, I
| will now never forget how I overcame headline rage forever.
|
| I saw some headline about how students at some school, Berkeley
| I believe, had joined arms and surrounded the front entrance to
| the school, and would only allow non-white students to go
| through, forcing white students to go around and enter the back
| way, or something to that effect. I felt the all-too-familiar-
| at-that-point boiling rage enter my mind--this was an outrage!
| a clumsy attempt at making a political statement about racism,
| enacted through an act of mass racism. did these idiots not
| understand that they're not making things better for anyone,
| that their actions served only to divide rather than unite?!
| how could they not see this, it was so obvious?!? I could feel
| my blood start to boil: rrrrRRRRRAAAAUUUUUGHH--
|
| suddenly, I had this moment of clarity out of nowhere, as
| though from God Himself: I was fully aware, somewhere in the
| back of my mind, that the whole _point_ of this stunt was to
| cause outrage locally, and the whole _point_ of the article
| about it was to spread the outrage globally, even though the
| article reporting on the event was politically opposed to the
| actions the students had taken. yet, in the end, their goal was
| the same: to cause outrage!
|
| woah. "both sides" here want to cause me to be outraged, and
| here my dumb ass was, just letting it happen. why should I
| oblige either party? was I really so simple and manipulable
| that just seeing some words and photos on a screen about
| something dumb and wholly irrelevant to my own personal daily
| life could work me up this much? what the hell was wrong with
| me? why did I let myself fall for this bullshit?
|
| since that day, I have never once felt that familiar blood-
| boiling rage as the result of reading a headline or news
| article again. I can't really explain it but something just
| clicked in my head that day, giving me insight into just how
| emotionally manipulative pretty much all "news" so obviously
| is, and how, once I was made consciously aware of this
| phenomenon, it was really on _me_ to _consent_ to this blatant
| emotional manipulation--which, I then realized, I had totally
| been doing for _years_ at that point!
|
| I had nearly forgotten about this having ever happened until
| recently a very close friend saw a news article about something
| that had happened over a decade ago, politically framed such
| that it was relevant to contemporary politics, and it
| _significantly_ emotionally affected him in a way that reminded
| me all too much about my past self. I talked him through this
| story and showed him how much better off I was today now that I
| _choose_ to refuse to let news headlines and even stories
| massively emotionally affect me. it took awhile to talk him
| down from his irrationally outraged state but in the end he
| calmed down, heard what I had to say, and thanked me profusely
| for the perspective I gave him, as, much like the story that
| outraged me years ago, this too had caught him completely off-
| guard such that before he knew it he was an emotional mess, all
| because of something he read on the Internet, about something
| that had happened over a decade prior.
| froh wrote:
| "dependent origination" is a name for that chain from a
| thought all the way via emotions and physiological reaction
| (blood boiling) to new thoughts and so on.
|
| catching oneself in that circular road and taking another
| turn off that wheel, that aha!, that enlightening moment is
| what some people invest heavily into, time, energy even
| money.
|
| and you have it just like so, ten years ago, from that news
| article on racists blaming anti-racists for a racist anti-
| racism gig...
|
| what a gift :-)
|
| and thank you for sharing!
| kukkeliskuu wrote:
| Great insight! Thanks!
| double0jimb0 wrote:
| Had similar experience watching TV ads. It started with a
| beauty ad which was plainly targeting viewers' body image
| insecurities. Was very jarring to recognize how dark and
| manipulative the glossy, "upbeat" ad truly was.
|
| Then recognized same pattern in every TV ad afterwards,
| almost all target some sort of insecurity or feeling of lack.
| mncharity wrote:
| I was surfing market analyses one day, and stumbled on
| this: in the US, the largest personal care product category
| was shampoo, but in India, it was skin lightening products.
| And then I found a multinational doing shampoo to be
| beautiful ads in the US, was doing whiter is better ad
| campaigns in India. Which long-term gave the former a
| rather different taste.
| zpeti wrote:
| Yeah, I actually get more annoyed when "my own" political
| side does this. They take the worst possible example of the
| other side and make outragous article about them. Yet I know
| most people on the other side are actually good people, with
| good intentions, we just disagree on a few points.
|
| Yet all I ever see in the media are ridiculous parodies of
| the other side. I've basically stopped almost all politics
| reading at this point. It's no better than gossip columns,
| and big brother level entertainment, it's just packaged for
| people who think they're more intelligent than those who
| watch big brother.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| I guess it comes down to caring more about engaging your
| base than it is appealing to a broader audience. Which is
| unfortunate.
|
| > Yet I know most people on the other side are actually
| good people, with good intentions, we just disagree on a
| few points.
|
| I think this is the attitude most people have if they stop
| consuming so much news. And I think it dissolves a huge
| amount of animosity we see between different groups in
| western society atm.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Do you think it's always been the case ? I have a strange
| belief that people before the 60s, through harsher lives, were
| a lot more resilient and thus less interested by petty news
| cycles.
| csharpminor wrote:
| I highly recommend reading old press clippings from your
| area. Reading headlines from 100 years ago personally made me
| feel as though not much has changed.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Spectacles drive the news. It's easier to frame a negative
| issue as a spectacle than a positive. Say you have a local
| festival. That's supposed to happen. There's no news there
| except for the time and date the festival is open, and any new
| or interesting things can be found by going there. Car drives
| into a festival and runs over some people? Wow, unexpected.
| Might wanna read about that and get the details.
|
| But if your local high school football team wins a state title?
| You'll sell that paper out. Local refinery explodes? Likewise.
| mmaunder wrote:
| "Think of our newscast as a screaming woman running down the
| street with her throat cut." -Nightcrawler
| terran57 wrote:
| I find myself nodding in agreement.
| milsorgen wrote:
| It makes sense at a surface level, if you ignore negative
| information it could potentially lead to negative outcomes for
| yourself. If you ignore positive news, what's the worst that
| could happen if you're caught unawares? Something positive or
| at least personally benign?
| themitigating wrote:
| Is missing out on something positive bad? Don't positive
| stories contribute to a positive outlook on life? Therefore
| missing these stories could be a negative?
| yifanl wrote:
| As the saying goes, if you never know you have it, you'll
| never miss it.
| jader201 wrote:
| I this this is a fair point. I would argue, though, that 99%
| of the negative news (or most news, for that matter) will
| have zero effect on 99% of the population (e.g. focusing on
| individual crimes vs. aggregate crimes or a systemic crime
| problem).
|
| In an ideal world, news outlets aren't pushing news that is
| shocking for the sake of being shocking (and therefore,
| increasing viewership/readership), but pushing news that is
| actually relevant to a good percentage of their viewers.
|
| Sure, report things like severe weather forecasts, boil water
| advisories, etc.
|
| But I don't need to know about every crime, or every scandal
| in Hollywood, etc. -- and this is most of the negative
| information that's covered. Not the things that are genuinely
| relevant to most of us.
| Gare wrote:
| Yes, we are primed as animals that we are to be scared and
| vigilant. Because that ensured survival.
| themitigating wrote:
| I watched a farewell video of a very far right person dying
| of Covid. He didn't get vaccinated but I don't know if it
| was because he was anti-vax, didn't think Covid was real or
| didn't get a chance as this was early in the pandemic. It
| was a recording made from a hospital bed and uploaded to
| Facebook. As he was saying his goodbyes he said something
| like "...and tell Brandon (son) I love him, not to trust
| anyone, and no one will ever help you in life"
|
| I realized that certain people indoctrinate their children,
| and this is the correct usage of the word, with a negative
| outlook on life. They ignore the altruistic nature of
| humanity for a distance based trust system. Assuming the
| son takes this message to heart he'll likely experience
| more problems because of his mistrust and when he examines
| his situation in life confirmation bias will prevent any
| self reflection. I don't understand why you reduce us to
| "scared and vigilant" and I wonder if that is a self
| fulfilling state.
| initramfs wrote:
| hah, the person below you did a nice imitation. They
| forgot "Assuming the daughter" not son.
|
| But more seriously, the reason people indoctrinate isn't
| because they want them to be negative, but to realize
| that being pessimistic is actually going to be a more
| reliable way to have a plan for life when no one is able
| to help.
|
| For example, if your car breaks down and your cell phone
| battery is around 30%- you have time to make a few phone
| calls, but instead of wondering if your friend can pick
| you up (assuming he has a cheap pickup truck that can
| tow), you rationalize- he might be sleeping, working,
| unwilling to answer the phone. You have three phone calls
| to make, so you decide you'll compare the rates of the
| two nearest towing companies.
|
| Which do you call? You have money and time to spend, but
| you don't want to be stranded for a very long time, even
| assuming you were able to pull your car over to the side
| of the curb. Being pessimistic is just being prepared,
| and similarly, you want to try to save for a rainy day.
| sammalloy wrote:
| > the reason people indoctrinate isn't because they want
| them to be negative, but to realize that being
| pessimistic is actually going to be a more reliable way
| to have a plan for life when no one is able to help
|
| I take it you are a conservative. This is a perennial
| city people (liberal) versus rural folk (conservative)
| discussion that will never have a resolution.
|
| Liberals generally don't believe in the idea that "no one
| is able to help" because they live in larger urban
| populations that see the government as beneficial.
|
| Conservatives tended to live in more rural areas where
| there weren't as many people to help them, and they
| couldn't depend on the government.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Urban living is more anonymous and alienating than rural
| living.
|
| There are too many people in a city to form relationships
| with everyone, you don't know 99.9% of the people you see
| in daily life because there are so many moving around. On
| the other hand in a small village, most times you see
| another person it's a repeated interaction and you have
| met that person before.
|
| So the rural conservative view and values on social
| interaction is more based on repeated interactions with
| people you already know, whereas the urban liberal has
| values and prefers systems that work well with anonymous
| people; the government needs to step in to help people in
| need (because their neighbours won't).
| specialist wrote:
| In my experience, neither urban or rural communities are
| impersonal.
|
| Suburbs, however, are dystopian soul destroying
| hellscapes. Simultaneously parasites feeding off of the
| prosperous urban areas while descrating previously
| productive lands.
|
| Urban and rural peoples are natural allies, kept apart by
| pro suburbanite propaganda.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| [flagged]
| yifanl wrote:
| I don't think the relevant part of the previous comment
| was the political affiliation of the patient.
| initramfs wrote:
| there was no reason to flag it. It was a lighthearted
| joke.
| switchbak wrote:
| It's a low effort brainfart of a comment I'd expect on
| Reddit. I would downvote it too.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > "and no one will ever help you in life"
|
| Strange thing to say in a hospital bed? Also, if the
| doctors know you are dying of Covid you can hardly talk
| right? Seems fishy.
| nottathrowaway3 wrote:
| > "and no one will ever help you in life" ... strange
| thing to say in a hospital bed?
|
| It's strange until you get the hospital bill in the mail.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Yes, but ignoring some bad news can make you healthier and
| happier. It's just that you should know what you can afford
| to ignore.
| Forestessential wrote:
| heedfullness and fear are closely related. similar to hate
| and resolve.
| attemptone wrote:
| We were also primed to seek comfort and stability. Because
| that ensured survival.
|
| Like OOP said, that was a surface level thought. Finding
| evidence in evolutionary psychology seems like a big leap
| from that.
| bawolff wrote:
| I don't really think that's a good counterexample
|
| News of bad event could directly impinge survival. News
| of a good thing happening to someone far away does not
| really improve comfort and stability.
| wrp wrote:
| _Tell me, Avram, surely somewhere there are good things
| happening? Can 't you buy a paper that prints those things?_
|
| --The Rabbi in _Fiddler on the Roof_
| silisili wrote:
| Is it possible it's a scale/impact issue? I tried subscribing
| to good news, and most of it seemed...just not newsworthy.
| Small happenings?
|
| But large notable news probably still drives clicks, yeah? The
| moon landing was the most watched program in history, after
| all.
| joegahona wrote:
| I used to work at a food/recipe publication and had a similar
| experience -- users constantly complained that they wanted more
| healthy recipes, but those types of recipes always performed
| poorly. Meatloaf and other comfort foods dominated traffic.
|
| This has been a good opening for niche creators on Youtube and
| such -- i.e., there are plenty of people out there interested
| in vegan, oil-free recipes, and that audience can go to a
| specialist on Youtube and the creator can be successful
| covering only that one niche. But in aggregate it's not going
| to outperform food that provides more dopamine, so the major
| food publications have to deprioritize it.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Is meatloaf really unhealthy?
| Merad wrote:
| I wouldn't call it _unhealthy_ , unless you're of the
| mindset that red meat is inherently unhealthy. It does
| retain most of the fat from the ground beef which would
| cook out of normal burgers or hamburger steak. But it's
| also more filling than either of those due the fat and the
| inclusion of bread crumbs or oatmeal as filler.
| ragingrobot wrote:
| I suppose that depends on the meat you use and how else
| it's prepared.
|
| Use a high fat ground beef and bread crumbs that'll soak up
| that fat, and I'm sure many would consider that unhealthy.
|
| Use lean meat and something else as filler (oatmeal is
| common when trying to fill out meat) and it would be less
| unhealthy, but far more prone to error, resulting in
| perhaps a tasteless brick.
|
| Never read on meatloaf, but I'm sure a publication would go
| the "easier but fattier" route.
| mistermann wrote:
| Has anyone tried a _serious_ meta-approach: introducing the
| public to the notion and methods of contemplating the nature
| and consequences of _the abstract phenomenon itself_?
| 65 wrote:
| As they say, "If it's a bad day, it's a good day!"
| ta1243 wrote:
| If it bleeds, it leads
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| If it bleeds it leads
| nonethewiser wrote:
| If the news is inherently skewed towards negativity then maybe
| it's not as valuable as we assume it is.
|
| This isn't an argument against the free press or anything. As
| bad as bias and fearmongering in news is, adding government
| oversight would make it way worse. It's just a thought
| experiment.
|
| To elaborate, if news is inherently skewed towards negativity
| (and I'm just taking that at face value), then maybe it
| shouldn't be revered as much as it is (by my estimation). I
| think people tend to think that news is sacred - more is better
| and it should face no challenges to its existence. But I also
| think we find ourselves in a predicament that we don't
| associate with times where news consisted of a daily paper and
| perhaps the radio. I'm not sure those times were any less prone
| to bias an negativity. The bigger difference is there was just
| a lot less news. Maybe the world would be better off with less
| news.
|
| I'm not really sure what sort of attitude change or direction
| this would dictate. Like I said, it would be terrible for the
| government to limit news, and this negativity exists because
| there is strong demand for it. I guess I think people just
| shouldn't watch the news much, with some exception. I mean if
| you look at cable for example, it's virtually all garbage.
| indymike wrote:
| > If the news is inherently skewed towards negativity then
| maybe it's not as valuable as we assume it is.
|
| I suspect discussing knowledge of the news is some kind of
| social signaling.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean by this. In particular what
| "knowledge of the news" is.
|
| What I'm getting at is that the premise that news is mostly
| negative seems to pretty clearly dictate that we would be
| better off without most news. Yet this seems to contradict
| a pretty wildly held belief that getting rid of news is
| troubling.
| MikeSchurman wrote:
| I think what they mean is that, someone knowing what is
| happening in the world, and being able to discuss those
| things, could be seen as them being part of a certain
| level/caste in society. Being able to discuss issues,
| being seen as intelligent and knowledgeable.
|
| Ie, you will be looked down on in some circles if you are
| not aware of what is going on. Knowing what someone else
| doesn't know is a way of being better than them. Or
| signalling that you are better than them.
|
| It's not usually as overt as this, but it's there.
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| I will admit that while reading the news I have on occasion
| consciously committed certain details about recent events
| to memory knowing I had an upcoming social gathering
| specifically for this purpose.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Its valuable to us because of how our brains work. Learning a
| piece of info that is bad actually adjust our internal
| networks more effectively than learning what is good.
|
| It works for ML too. If Tesla had a set of training data that
| was inversed, ie the vast majority of cars were involved in a
| crash, it would have a fully working level 5 autonomous
| autopilot 2 years ago.
|
| Its much more efficient to have the knowledge of
| statistically improbable but bad actions to avoid, rather to
| have a set of good actions where you don't know where the
| boundaries are.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| That's an interesting take. I'm not sure I fully agree.
| Lots of things are scary. But not everything that is scary
| is worth constantly defending against. When the news
| oversamples or misrepresents then people will orient
| themselves towards a worse world that doesn't exist. It
| leads to unjustified resentment and animosity.
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| There's a whole category of widely believed and oft repeated
| historical myths that originated from journalists trying to
| sell newspapers, writing articles that were later cited as
| "contemporary accounts" once the truth had faded from living
| memory.
|
| A few examples; the Titanic was never called unsinkable until
| after it sank, no one committed suicide on Black Friday as a
| result of the stock market crash, and there was no public
| panic caused by the original War of the Worlds radio
| broadcast. All of these things were reported by the media at
| the time.
|
| Think of the stories you see day to day and imagine in 100
| years if these are the go-to source for information about our
| time how skewed a picture you would have of how things
| actually were.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| That's interesting. I'm not sure what you point is. I think
| it reinforces my point that news in the past wasn't
| necessarily more informative. I'm not really sure though.
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| That it has never lived up to being the bastion of truth
| and democracy it's sometimes made out to be, it has
| always been about getting eyeballs and selling ads.
|
| These examples are more "sensational" than negative, but
| it is essentially the same idea.
| phs318u wrote:
| > The bigger difference is there was just a lot less news.
| Maybe the world would be better off with less news.
|
| I think you're close. There was a lot less repetition of
| news. Now the need to fill endless hours with content means
| stories are repeated ad nauseam. Keep in mind that repetition
| is known and used as a torture technique. "Repetition is an
| important neural linguistic programming interrogation tactic
| to influence the target mind" [0].
|
| [0] https://neuralguantanamo.com/no-touch-torture-techniques/
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| And thus, because profit motive drives literally everything
| (because it's impossible to forestall a takeover if you're
| broke) then all news-media trend toward maximum tolerable
| negativity.
|
| That is, there is a saddlepoint for how much negativity viewers
| desire.
|
| While I don't personally know what the threshold for
| psychological damage from exposure to this kind of media is, I
| would guess it's lower than the average exposure level is now.
| bachmeier wrote:
| This is in no way an attack on you, but your post shows exactly
| the problem. You first wrote
|
| > With few exceptions, positive stories
|
| and then you wrote
|
| > a whole section for feel-good features
|
| "Positive news" is more or less orthogonal to "feel-good
| features". When I moved to my current job, I had the option of
| watching Kansas City news or Topeka news. The KC news stations
| took the route you're suggesting. Everything was negative and
| intended to shock/alarm ("Joe Smith was murdered and then the
| police were involved in a car chase to catch the murderer. When
| they shot out his tires, he took his own life.") The Topeka
| stations did mostly positive news, with some negative mixed in.
| As any sane person would do, it didn't take long for me to go
| with only the Topeka news. It was nice to know what was going
| on in the area, to see a review of a local restaurant, or to
| hear about the debate on a change in the sales tax. I don't
| watch the news to see someone's good luck.
| Frost1x wrote:
| I've noticed some programming and sources have sort of jammed
| feel-good pieces in some weird attempt to counter balance
| things. People dying on Ukraine, banks defaulting, Little
| Timmy in nowhere USA is taking steps to setup his lemonade
| stand and donate to the local food shelter to make a
| difference.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I think efforts like Little Timmy's are
| great and in the scope of their lives is probably
| significant. It doesn't however hit the level of
| magnitude/significance and scope of their negative counter
| parts. It's only in local news sources that I tend to see a
| better balance of things that truly effect, are relevant to
| me, and aren't full of doom and gloom.
| ar-nelson wrote:
| The way I see it, news serves three purposes:
|
| ---
|
| 1. To let you know about local or world events that could
| affect you and those close to you.
|
| 2. To let you know about world events that affect others far
| away, in order to judge the effectiveness of political
| decisions and the necessity of future political decisions.
|
| 3. As a form of entertainment derived from the ongoing story of
| world history (or celebrity gossip, or whatever else).
|
| ---
|
| #1 is the reason that news feels important enough that tuning
| it out completely feels irresponsible, but it's a very small
| component of most news.
|
| #2 is perhaps necessary for democracy to work, but it's so easy
| to manipulate, and the incentive to manipulate it is so high,
| that it's questionable whether this type of news has ever
| existed without being more manipulation than fact---and this
| has been true since long before the internet.
|
| #3 is the real reason most people (myself included) read news,
| even when they convince themselves it's #1 or #2. And it
| becomes unhealthy because, as long as you're convinced you need
| to care deeply about what you're reading because it's actually
| #1 or #2, it will inspire constant anxiety.
|
| I would be interested to see a type of (perhaps government-
| funded) news service whose sole purpose is to publish only news
| that fits into category #1: if it is not reasonably likely to
| affect the average reader in an actionable way in the next 6
| months, then it can't be published in this outlet.
| claytongulick wrote:
| State sponsored media generally hasn't worked out too well.
| paulmd wrote:
| BBC is one of the best news sources around.
|
| For a long time, Al Jazeera was great on anything that
| didn't directly impact Qatari domestic politics.
|
| PBS is pretty fantastic overall and serves a lot of niches
| that aren't served by commercialized media and _really
| shouldn 't be_.
|
| Like yes if you set out to make a state-sponsored
| propaganda agency then that's what you get (see: Voice of
| America, etc), but state sponsorship of media doesn't
| inherently corrupt. If anything it's the opposite and
| really the accusations of bias end up being a way to try
| and control coverage that you find inconvenient and force
| faux-centrism (see: NPR).
| gwbrooks wrote:
| PBS is essentially corporate media, getting ~15% of its
| budget from government. NPR is even less at ~2%.
|
| Corporate vs. public ownership matters a lot less than
| institutional standards and the org's cultural commitment
| to a rigorous journalistic mission. BBC has a relatively
| strong commitment; NPR (my favorite whipping boy for bad
| journalism packaged as Thinky Stuff) does not.
| tootie wrote:
| That's a pretty facile analysis. PBS and NPR both have
| affiliate models where the dozens of local public radio
| and tv operate independently and are funded separately
| utilizing the affiliate network to buy and sell content.
| They are mostly funded by membership, by government
| indirectly via CPB grants, and sponsorship.
| bawolff wrote:
| CBC (in canada) is decent enough. I wouldn't call it
| amazing, but its not a failure (or propaganda) either.
| t12hrow wrote:
| > perhaps government-funded
|
| I suggest the opposite. I'd like a proof that there is no
| government involvement.
|
| Believe it or not, I think the closest to this is ideal is
| 4chan /pol/. It's not backed by any major corporation (unlike
| HN which is backed by Y Combinator), it's not partly owned by
| Tencent/China (unlike Reddit), and so on. There's no
| algorithm, there's no karma, there's no blue badge, it barely
| scrapes by using shady NSFW ads. That's the closest to the
| libertarian anarchy ideal we had in 90s.
|
| There's of course alphabet agencies mining data and pushing
| narratives, but that's fine.
| ar-nelson wrote:
| I don't see how an unmoderated, anarchic space like 4chan
| is close to what I described; the entire point of what I
| had in mind is a very specific kind of moderation: stories
| are only published if (a) they're reasonably likely to
| materially affect some significant portion of readers
| sometime in the next 6 months, and (b) there's something
| they can do about it or in response to it.
|
| For example, if the readership of this news service was
| entirely US-based, then it would only publish a single
| article on the Ukraine war---when it started---and then
| might only ever mention it again if it has a direct
| practical effect on US residents, like travel restrictions.
| t12hrow wrote:
| > (a) they're reasonably likely to materially affect some
| significant portion of readers sometime in the next 6
| months, and (b) there's something they can do about it or
| in response to it.
|
| That's the entire point. Who are you to decide that? How
| can you quantify 'likelyhood to be materially affected'?
| How can you empirically determine if 'someone can do
| something about X'?
|
| Your opinion is worth the same as the next guy's. Anarchy
| and no moderation whatsoever, in this context, is always
| better no matter how you try to rationalize it. The only
| problem is that it makes is harder to tell the signal
| from the noise (noise being fake stuff, tangential
| topics, hearsay, bullshit, etc.). But the opposite is
| much much worse.
| ar-nelson wrote:
| I get the sense that you think I'm saying more here than
| I actually am. I'm not proposing that this is the only
| kind of news that should exist, only that it would be
| nice if it existed for the kind of people that want to
| read (only) this kind of news.
|
| And I'm generally in agreement that most attempts to
| quantify 'truth' in media are hopelessly dependent on
| personal bias---but this mostly shows up in category #2
| in my list. In things where you'd never know the
| difference if it were true or not, because it would never
| affect you either way.
|
| The reason I thought a news service like this would work
| better as a government service than a private entity is
| because a government news service's commitment to the
| principles I listed could be defined by enforceable laws.
| "Likely to materially affect people" is something that
| you could reasonably argue about in a courtroom, just as
| much as other fuzzily-defined legal concepts like libel
| or false advertising.
|
| I'm imagining a news agency whose legal responsibilities
| were defined in such a way that it could be sued if one
| of the following happened:
|
| 1. It reports something that no reasonable person would
| believe meets the criteria.
|
| 2. Readers experience some kind of material harm that
| could have been avoided if they had read news reported in
| another outlet but not this one. And this harm is not the
| result of the reader being in some very small minority of
| readers (say, <1%), because after a certain point this
| will always be true for things that affect a very small
| number of people.
| t12hrow wrote:
| I understand what you're saying, and it would definitely
| make for an interesting experiment. If every news piece
| meets that criteria, it would be a very specific subset
| of news, but valuable nonetheless.
| zztop44 wrote:
| But of course, that misses the nuance. Lots of US-based
| readers come from Ukraine, have friends or family in
| Ukraine, or friends or family in Russia or another
| neighbouring country. Of course, that might be fine if
| your media hypothetical outlet is just one of many. But
| then people will probably just still end up the ones with
| categories #2 and #3 regardless.
| suzumer wrote:
| I wouldn't describe 4chan as karmaless. While the site
| bemoans the idea of upvotes (updoots), they'll also be the
| first to tell you how much they crave replies (which they
| call "you"s). We can see how much this affects the forum,
| with many people posting content, not because they think it
| is the best thing to post, but because they think it will
| get a reaction.
| t12hrow wrote:
| Yes, I've thought about that. In my opinion, the
| difference is that "you(s)" often reward
| controversial/contrarian takes. 4chan is already
| contrarian so what I mean here is going the opposite way.
| That is, you can go and post something that's completely
| against the culture of the forum and you'll get plenty of
| reactions. Even if it's just insults or slurs.
|
| In a funny way, this incentivises swiming against the
| current, so there's never a consensus.
|
| Karma on the other hand only creates a chilling effect,
| beacuse you're either banned or shadowbanned or somehow
| silenced. Take HN for example, if you post something
| controversial here not only it doesn't get more
| visibility, but it's grey-ed out and thrown to the
| bottom.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| What got me to break out of this habit is realizing that the
| vast majority of what news sites/tv report on isn't remotely
| actionable or relevant for the average viewer.
|
| It's basically something that scratches the itch of human
| curiosity, but with manipulative and lowest common denominator
| garbage.
|
| We'd all be better off if we scratched that curiosity itch by
| reading about things we're interested in, rather than current
| events.
| gwbrooks wrote:
| ^^^ This right here.
|
| Most daily-or-faster reporting is so shallow that consuming
| the information may, at times, be a net-negative to your
| understanding of whatever issue they're reporting about.
| warner25 wrote:
| I've moved towards this too, for better or worse. Between
| 18-25, I was very passionate about national politics and
| macroeconomics and consumed by following political news and
| fiery debates, as many young people are. As my adult
| responsibilities grew, I realized that the national political
| stuff was either irrelevant to my day-to-day life experience
| and / or not something that I could affect much (not
| actionable, as you said), and the return-on-investment of my
| time and attention on more immediate things was much higher.
| In my 30s now, I almost exclusively read and listen to things
| closely related to my own work and family finances and
| health. I guess there's a downside of political disengagement
| for society, though. Old people seem to become more engaged
| again when they have more free time, but maybe we end up with
| this donut hole of representation among people who are in the
| middle of working full-time and raising kids.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Do these fiery debates help? I say as someone who also was
| like this in my late teens.
|
| I do local advocacy for transit and civic planning related
| purposes in a US city. A lot of the "work" is really
| boring, just going to long public meetings and listening to
| SMEs drone about very specific issues. But that's where the
| sausage gets made. Our local transportation department is
| very receptive to the public's urban concerns and is doing
| a lot of great work. But they're blocked right now. Not
| just because their funding is uncertain or due to cranky
| old neighbors, but mostly because they have staff shortages
| as Baby Boomers retire. There's nothing we activists can do
| about this, we can't campaign for a measure or bill that
| puts butts into seats.
|
| If you go to Youtube or online North American urbanist
| forums though, folks aren't interested in these local
| issues at all. A lot of it is raving and ranting about how
| the US puts cars first and hates its people. This is fun to
| get emotional about (and believe me I've had enough close
| run-ins with cars as a pedestrian or cyclist to feel the
| rage) but doesn't actually materially affect our local
| urban conditions. But it's a lot less fun to talk about
| budget appropriation and staffing politics and much more
| fun to get angry at the GM Streetcar Conspiracy, so nobody
| does.
|
| I'm not saying these topics aren't important; if you're new
| to the issue it's important to understand _why_ North
| American built environments are the way they are. But what
| 's more important is working to change the reality around
| you, not getting wrapped up in online debates.
| tayo42 wrote:
| There's a reddit post that pointed out how much of an
| outlier your personality has to be to be someone that
| actively posts online. These online discussions are
| almost never worth the effort and don't really represent
| average people.
| numbers_guy wrote:
| Maybe it is because happy people do not consume the news? Happy
| people tend to have full lives and are therefore too busy to
| waste time ingesting news about events that are not going to
| personally affect them. Whereas, I can only speak for myself, but
| when I am down (like right now), I spend lots of time doing
| nothing but browsing news aggregator websites and leaving
| comments like this one.
|
| And of course, negative news would resonate more with a person
| who is in a bad mood.
| now__what wrote:
| Happy person speaking. I subscribe to the physical edition of
| several (paid) local news publications, mostly to keep tabs on
| local events, new businesses opening, and stuff that requires
| political engagement (votes, borough and city meetings, etc.)
| It makes me feel more connected to my community, and I never
| run out of fun stuff to do :)
|
| I don't bother with online news; most of it is irrelevant to
| me. If a national story has some bearing on my life, it'll
| usually end up in the local Sunday paper anyway.
| [deleted]
| dageshi wrote:
| I cut out actively searching for news completely, I'm
| infinitely happier for it.
|
| All reading the news ever did was make me upset about things I
| couldn't change.
| ShroudedNight wrote:
| I can definitely recognise similar patterns in my own behaviour
| and how they relate to mood. Infamy is very effective at
| rallying what is essentially an ad-hoc community, and so is
| viscerally attractive when I feel lonely or have feelings
| adjacent thereof. But the company I find in misery ends up
| being especially unproductive and unconstructive and hostile to
| calls to action that are collaborative, or can't guarantee
| immediate ROI. And so, the payoff I need to feel better,
| collaborative edification and mutual restoration of hope,
| doesn't happen, and so I can find myself having spent hours
| hopping from outrage to outrage, getting progressively worse
| until exhaustion demands a rest that (hopefully) provides the
| respite and reset required to pursue a more productive
| alternative.
| olliecornelia wrote:
| Some people are hoping for a catastrophe that will render all
| their personal problems irrelevant, be it World War III,
| environmental disasters or societal collapse. Like a snow day
| for your whole life.
| slickdork wrote:
| Thank you, that's a great way to describe why I always check
| the news the moment I wake up.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I figure if that were to happen, the first clue would be
| the Internet being out. So, might as well load something
| better than the news.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Always hard to tell if the world is ending or if Amazon
| East is down.
| seysetawt wrote:
| My parents. Never as excited as when they're watching
| disaster on TV.
| redleggedfrog wrote:
| "Like a snow day for your whole life." Thank you, that gave
| me a hearty laugh.
| glomgril wrote:
| That's kinda how the pandemic felt to a degree. A happier
| than average time in my personal life, despite (or perhaps
| due in part to?!) all the carnage and pandemonium throughout
| the world. Feels wrong to say, but I will look back on my
| experience of the pandemic fondly.
| npunt wrote:
| Agree, the pandemic didn't hit the way I expected and I've
| heard many with similar experiences. This type of response
| (generally speaking, not necessarily you) may for some be
| driven by hypervigilance, as one of the ways it manifests
| is a level of calm in emergencies when others are freaking
| out. Rather paradoxical on the surface, but has to do with
| adaptation to certain stress levels and threat/friend
| response. The pandemic made a lot of friends into threats,
| if you were trying to avoid covid. Safety came from a
| greater level of suspicion and alertness to surroundings;
| an unhealthy response in everyday life but rather suitable
| for a pandemic. Another example is soldiers who come back
| from war can feel really out of place in civilian life, but
| in wartime can feel like they're 'home'.
| glomgril wrote:
| Yeah that is consistent with my experience for sure.
| Probably true for lots of others too. I'm pretty neurotic
| about dumb shit on a day-to-day basis, but the few times
| something actually extremely serious has gone wrong
| in/around my life, it's rarely felt particularly scary or
| panic-inducing -- maybe even less so than the usual "oh
| my god I probably left the stove on and the building will
| burn to the ground and it'll be all my fault!"
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| This is a pretty common behavior for folks with anxiety
| related disorders, obviously closely tied with neurotic
| behavior. For me, there's nothing like the clarity of an
| all-out disaster to focus and sober me up.
| thrown123098 wrote:
| We had that. It was called Covid. Two years later we are
| still dealing with the first phase of the completely
| predictable results rolling lock downs caused. In another 5
| we will start dealing with the unpredictable ones.
|
| Here's hoping that we're wise enough to not let reddit admits
| dictate world health policy again.
| wafriedemann wrote:
| Very interesting point. The other type is people who think
| they'll be on top after a society-breaking external event.
| It's a very bitter and passive attitude. Something to hold on
| to for the ones who don't have the power to do things
| themselves. I guess News just mirror that attitude. In a less
| dramatic way negative News distract you from your own
| problems for a while.
| unity1001 wrote:
| > Very interesting point. The other type is people who
| think they'll be on top after a society-breaking external
| event
|
| Wait until you see those who want to create a nuclear war
| somewhere to make an apocalypse happen so that Jesus of
| Nazareth can come back. Then there are also ones who
| believe that the nuclear apocalypse must be global for
| Jesus to return. Have your next shock when you discover
| that these people actually have politicians among them.
| Then another one when you discover that the last US Sect.
| of State himself publicly admitted to be one of those...
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| Of course everyone loses to an extent in a collapse but
| power is relative. And short of a meteor collapses are
| usually partial (e.g. the roman empire fell but the church
| remained and consolidated power).
|
| You can only paint with a broad brush but it's not exactly
| hard to pick out groups that will be net recipients of
| _relative_ power and wealth in various collapse scenarios.
|
| If the financial system collapses people who own capital in
| whole (e.g. some tradesman with his van full of tools) and
| people who own "promises" of things (the contents of your
| 401k, bank account, etc) lose. If high level government
| collapses people who are associated with alternate sources
| of organization and administration (local government, the
| church) win. If local government collapses people who
| depended a lot on those services lose and people who
| already went without win.
|
| Remember, money and political capital are convertible to
| each other to an extent so that complicates things as well.
|
| So it's perfectly rational for people to root for the kind
| of specific tumultuous change that would benefit them.
| luckylion wrote:
| In my experience, it's not those that are likely to be
| better off after a catastrophe who are looking for it.
| They are already pretty well off, they have a lot to lose
| in chaos.
|
| Those who don't have a lot to lose are more interested in
| a chaotic phase that rolls the dice and will quickly
| reshuffle the social order. The rich are moving into
| gated communities, they're not looking forward to living
| in a mad max world -- they're trying to keep that world
| out.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| In fairness, there's no such thing as a mad max world. At
| least not one without the rich. A mad max world is
| predicated on companies like Halliburton continuing to
| keep the fossil fuel deliveries coming. Which, in turn,
| is predicated on keeping refineries maintained and
| running. Keeping pipelines secure. And keeping roads
| repaired. All of which imply a very large number of
| wealthy people. (Assuming even state or regional scale
| energy logistics.)
|
| To get mad max, we have to have alternative energy
| production and storage be cheap enough for broke people
| to afford. Even then, they'd need to be able to afford
| enough of that energy that they can spend huge amounts of
| it riding around looking for other people to steal from
| rather than spending the energy on farming and heating
| their homes. Raiding might work for post apocalyptic
| populations in Florida or South Carolina. I imagine the
| climate might be conducive to that sort of thing. But in
| a world with no energy deliveries, spending what little
| energy you have so frivolously would quickly doom you and
| your family if you live in Minnesota, Illinois, or
| Wisconsin for instance.
| ctocoder wrote:
| This is a problem to fix, which society has not itself
| figured out yet.
|
| Hope, being good enough, your time is your time and desire
| mitigation is a solution.
|
| Productize and scale happiness
| ihateyouall123 wrote:
| What does this empty platitude mean?
| mistermann wrote:
| What if fixes exist but everyone is only able to laugh at
| them due to their conditioning?
| avgcorrection wrote:
| While other people project.
| themitigating wrote:
| "Oh thank god, society collapsed, now I don't owe that $5k of
| credit card debt, win win"
| web3-is-a-scam wrote:
| "now if you'll excuse me I need to check my squirrel trap
| for breakfast, hopefully the dogs didn't get it to it yet"
| jckahn wrote:
| I consider myself a happy person and love to stay on top of the
| news. It makes the day more interesting.
| redleggedfrog wrote:
| It works the other way, too. You're happier when you don't
| consume the news. That is also scientifically proven, although
| I have no linkage to support that claim.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _happy people do not consume the news_
|
| Or consume different news. Ad-driven news is vastly more
| crisis-impending than subscription-driven news, which tends to
| be more contemplative as well as zoom out and explore regions
| and issues that aren't in spotlight. (I read the _Financial
| Times_ , _Journal_ , _Bloomberg_ , _Economist_ , _Information_
| , _Monde Diplomatique_ and _Paris Review_ , in addition to a
| number of stacks.)
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| It is a valid question, but anecdotally, I am a happy camper,
| who typically does not really worry too much, but events over
| the past few years forced to cut down on checking news, because
| the more I understand it, the more depressed I get over state
| of affairs I have zero control over. This weird level of
| inability to make any kind of difference puts a damper on
| things.
|
| I set acceptable times for when I review stuff and even then I
| try hard to curate it as much as possible to avoid mindless
| scrolling. It is not easy and you get psychological jitters (
| and you try to channel it some other ways ) and you can feel
| your hard trying to reach for that mouse.
|
| But overall the results were/are worth it. Sure, we are facing
| eventual extinction of human race, but one could argue that has
| been the case for several decades now so I sleep much better.
| themitigating wrote:
| "Don't worry about the things you can't change"
|
| More specifically the things you don't have control over.
| harles wrote:
| I suspect this isn't the case. Even when I'm in a great mood, I
| find myself drawn more to negative headlines. I wonder if it's
| related to our odd loss aversion behavior[0].
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Trolls troll because they enjoy the stimulus that it provides.
| Perhaps there is some overlap with that and posting negative
| news? Prison Experiment meets Social Media (which weaponizes
| and amplifies).
|
| https://theconversation.com/new-research-shows-trolls-dont-j...
| (New research shows trolls don't just enjoy hurting others,
| they also feel good about themselves)
| mistermann wrote:
| > Trolls troll because they enjoy the stimulus that it
| provides.
|
| And normal people love self-serving, simplistic, "just so"
| stories.
| brwck wrote:
| Does it not drive print and cable news consumption too? CNN and
| Fox news are as negative as you can get and the masses flock to
| them.
| gflemingiiii wrote:
| No shit. Negativity drives anything ad supported. Web 2.0 will go
| down as negativity driven. You can see it on Hacker News as well
| spandrew wrote:
| I went for a jog at my condo's gym the other day and the news was
| on. During my 30m session I learned about 3 violent crimes around
| the city. 2 car collisions. And a bunch of political turmoil etc.
|
| I thought to myself: Why do I need to know person-x was one in 3
| million to get killed? Why is this compelling? Is there a risk to
| me?
|
| Was such an overtly negative feeling to watch that. Turned it off
| half way through the run.
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