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
Have an AI summarize it for you?
I’d be happy with a few less legitimately rage-inducing events too.
More than few of these rage-inducing events are people saying they or someone else is going to do something that never ends up happening and tens of millions of people got angry literally over nothing. A quite significant portion of today’s “news” are pure speculation.
Unfortunately we are in clown-world and the actual fucking news is rage-inducing, even with impeccable journalism.
I don’t feel rage when I watch the news, even when I see stories I don’t like.
There is no line for me.
I’m incredibly fragile and seeing people
I care aboutbe 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.
Godspeed in your efforts! I am of the mindset that there is no benefit, whatsoever, to seeing an incredibly great majority of news. It’s just so depressing most of the time.
Been talking to folks more and making more friends, which has been great. Seems like many people are of a similar mindset.
You’re a good person. Please take care of yourself today I want you around later when it’s not crazy outside, okay?
I’m glad you keep your joy but if we lose your activity it’s a huge detriment to everyone.
I stick to few sources that generally cover major without the doom and gloom. Generally YouTube channels are pretty good imo.
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TLDR News (UK, EU and Global) is a great series of channels for that.
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Caspian report on YouTube for some geopolitics/strategic outlook.
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Real life lore for couple of deep dives on non-current issues.
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Money and Macro for macro economic news.
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Just have a think for climate science and energy transition news.
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“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.
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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.
Only issue with that is headlines don’t always tell the truth or the whole story
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%2Fjournal.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/
Solid post
Wish I could upvote this comment much more than once
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.
It’s ok to be angry or upset but if you can’t do anything about it, it’s not worth it. You should remain informed and also know that if you’re feeling frozen or at a loss, the plan is working. It’s meant to keep you down, drown you, and cause you to desensitize or lose hope. Don’t fall for it. Rise up in ways that you can.
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.
Why is news via RSS better than news via Reddit? Or news via TikTok?
I’m asking why this technology solution is better for maintaining a healthy mental state.
And can you give more specific examples on how to achieve it?
Because you don’t keep doomscrolling. You subscribe to your most important sources and ignore all of the noise of short form posts. If something is truly important enough that I really must read it today, then at least one of them will have written about it. The filtering out of what you don’t care about has already been done. That means I have a reading list where everything is a 100% must read for me and I keep it manageable
A good reader will let you filter your feeds further if needed too
The algorithm is designed to enrage you
I find it better because I can choose exactly which feeds, websites, and creators I see all in one feed. Therefore there is little chance of seeing something I have deemed undesirable. I also like it because I can follow people I like on youtube without having to sign in! :) Prior to making my own lemmy instance I would follow specific coms and reddit subs too. Now I don’t do that because I just ban rude people or coms.
Also, I rarely go to new sites. Accessing them via RSS allows me to only read content without ads or trash articles not related to the feed I want.
Finally, it brings all content together. Humans are lazy. It’s hard to go to a ton of different sites to form an opinion. It’s much easier to put it all in one place! :)
Any recommendations for an rss reader on iOS?
I think Inoreader is a good standalone app if you don’t want to host anything
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.
at best political soap opera entertainment far removed from reality.
Unfortunately for those of us living through the bullshit, it’s all too real.
Not a good proportion of the things Trump claims - most of them are either misrepresented or outright lies. But yes, of course, his disastrous decisions and policies still affect citizens and thus become reality.
We here in Germany also have such a MAGA-style Nazi bullshit party. Fortunately, they didn’t do as well as many feared in the last election. But unfortunately they still got a frightening 20% of the vote. If these people somehow manage to seize power, we’ll be in exactly the same situation.
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.
