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Stop ignoring your whole body telling you to resist

To do something about it

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.

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

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

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

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

• Money and Macro for macro economic news.

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

• “Good news” is just nice feelgood news.

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

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

There is no line for me.

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

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

I refuse to let evil fucking idiots steal my joy.

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

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/

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

I have a stance where I prefer to be minimally informed than misinformed. I will intake what little information I want before I am overstimulated from the poor state of journalism. I’m sorry but I have to be one of those headline readers and if it’s very, very intriguing enough to want to read it, I will. But I really can’t be bothered to read a lot of what’s out there. I read the comments and reactions which arguably, has proven to be far more knowledgeable than the article in question.

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

I log out when I start feeling helpless and high anxiety and then I go find things that I can control to feel less helpless/anxious.

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.