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For me it's just the knowledge that I have around 100 total years on this planet and a limited amount of reach in terms of geography, relationships, etc.
I can't swing an election by myself, but with me and millions of my closest friends we can. But only if we all pull together. It's like a paradox but not quite.
This too shall pass. I take comfort that the pendulum of politics has always swung back and forth. This moment of insanity should swing back to rebuilding, and progressive changes.
When I was in college, we had “the midnight scream”. During finals, entire dorms would open their windows at midnight and just scream. It was very effective at venting frustration, allowing us all to refocus on studying. Perhaps that’s what’s happening now: we’re all just screaming in frustration.
This is crazy, but i read the news on paper. I have a couple of subscriptions to magazines with good reporting, but you could also hit up your library to read for free. For one thing, print journalism is a lot more in-depth and balanced than the outrage-mill crap i find online.
On Lemmy i read headlines only in case something happens that i stay current, but i rarely read a whole article. This contains my news consumption to a small portion of my day.
Plus, Trump says 64 stupid lthings a week. I read all 64 in 1 hour each week and get it over with, instead of poisoning myself with it several times a day.
Insert Invincible 'you don't' meme here
But seriously, you can't. You either choose to be ignorant of 99.99% of the world or to be ignorant of 99.9% of the world and live in a perpetual scramble to absorb all the disparate information. Most news isn't worth knowing in and of itself, only serving as data to construct deeper understanding, so unless you are going to actually connect the dots, it's a better use of your time to let the world act as a filter and only pay attention to what hangs around long enough to get through to you.
I block most news sources and get the jist of events via memes.
I block news from all social media. Then I chose 2 news networks I thought had decent reporting and wasn't too bias. Every morning I read news from the 2 sources and that is ALL the news I consume for that day. That's it.
If this is too overwhelming even you can try starting with 1 news source. I find that news is mostly still pretty boring (in a good way) if you only look at 1 source.
I remind myself that news media have a vested interest in keeping me outraged and on the edge of my seat, addicted to consuming their every update.
There are definitely things worth getting outraged over. But on top of that we have an outrage industry harvesting our attention and fear for ad dollars.
So I remind myself not to spiral down the doomclick drain. If something is THAT important I’m going to hear about it. I don’t need to be checking a news app daily.
On top of this I do what I can to support change. We donate to Ukraine and Gaza relief efforts. We vote. We make our political views known to those around us to support right action in them as well (not talking about politics is what Trumpers want - they want cover for their fascist hate and violence - I make damn sure that everyone I know is aware that there’s no room for that shit in my life).
Conserve your strength. Do everything material that you can, and don’t spend yourself past that point.
But that first part is important: DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN.
Step 1: remove all news feeds from your life.
Step 2: live your life. Be happy. Have fun.
Step 3: if anything worth knowing actually happens, it will filter in through your social networks.
I have a large broken chest freezer I climb into, I shut the lid and scream
So thats how ice scream is made!
It helps a lot that the assholes are not doing well. The Epstein thing has made it easier to breathe.
Going to protests helps too. The energy of the crowd really feels good and assures me that the people are on my side.
I've figured that I can either be informed or happy. Not both.
its all about setting your boundaries being able to say thats enough for today. being able to ask yourself if what you are listening to is new facts being relayed to you or is it speculation to fill air and stop listening if it's the latter.
The news is primarily billionaire propaganda. It does not add value to your life. When it’s important you’ll hear about it, and then you can read up. You don’t have to be the first to know. Nothing bad will happen to you for being less informed.
Activism, contributing to your community, making the world a better place. The crazy-making part is that you know it's crap, and that you feel like you have no agency to make it better, right? Well, doing something to make the world better makes it feel more tolerable, even if the bit that you're working on isn't related to the specific badness that you're paying attention to on the news right now.
And yeah, there's always the possibility that what you're doing backfires, or has no effect, but if you don't do anything at all, then there's no possibility of having a good effect. Also, obviously no one normal person can fix everything, you just pick a bit that seems suited for you and work on that.
My news comes mainly from Lemmy, Wikipedia, sometimes Wikinews, maybe other people, and short daily podcasts. The fun radio podcasts are currently on break (though they're less 'news', more current topics made funny), but I sometimes also listen to a short daily news podcast.
Lemmy is by far the worst source, because 'Murican-centrism. So much US spam. If I could easily filter out the US off Lemmy, I'd do it in a jiffy. I'd even be willing to cut off English entirely. Or leave Lemmy, touch grass. The latter seems to be the most likely option, from what I know of Lemmy.
With Wikipedia, and Wikinews, I append a relevant language code to the url, like xx.wikipedia.org, and get stuff in my language, less 'Murican. I sometimes do that in other languages I know (including English).
Podcasts are relevant by location and/or language, depending on the podcast (they sometimes bring up US stuff, but that's far less annoying than Lemmy's spam, and sometimes actually relevant (for the news one, at least))
Alcohol
You do something, anything, about the shit you disagree with. Usa stops famine support? Fuck you, Unicef is not going to die on my watch. Etc.
I try to read an equal amount of theory and history as I do news. Context is everything. When you read about these bastards doing evil deeds, read too about Mussolini hanging from a bridge. I enjoy learning about coups perpetrated by the CIA last century (there’s 70 of them) and all the horrendous fallout it caused so that I can taunt nationalists with facts about the nature of the empire that they’re only just now recognizing.
News is only a part of the process. Theory, praxis, cadre, in equal parts.
I'm not. Homeless, trans, old, disabled. I am the fuckin news. I take my meds and do my best to keep an even keel but sanity is long gone. LOL @ DOOMSCROLLING wtf eat good and enjoy your pillow and hug your friends if you still got any. its not your fault. i love you. be safe everybody.
You don’t.
I read news once a week and this is it
That’s the neat part. I don’t. I’m depressed as fuck.
And how does keeping up with current world events help you in that situation?
If something like 911 happens again you’d find out anyway, just an hour later that you would now.
I’m not being paid to care about all that benign bullshit so I don’t anymore
Because I don’t think sticking my head in the sand is good either. Besides, it’s not just abstract far away things that are bothering me. A lot of what depresses me in my personal life is connected to the broader problems we face as a society. I kind of can’t ignore that if I want to make sense of my own life. That doesn’t stop it from feeling hopeless, but the alternative isn’t really an option even if I didn’t care about others.
I ignore the news, because I'm probably dying withing a few years, so I'm just chillin' and enjoying whatever's left.
Don't need to make depression worse, I'm not a politician, I can't change anything.
I'm not a cis white dude (I'm Chinese-American), its not my fight. Like what am I supposed to do? Protest, get a lot of attention from the government, and then get labeled a "CCP Spy" get set to some gulag. Then they'll raid Chinatown and pillage everything. Then some of the first-gen inmigrants are gonna go on wechat and blame me for "stirring the pot". I mean, can you imagine if Thomas Matthew Crooks was a gay black guy? It would've been so much worse. So much scapegoating. If I do anything, they'll just scapegoat everyone that looks like me.
So good luck y'all, my health is deteriorating, don't have the brain energy to take action, and I've already accepted death, literally hurts my brain to think.
I’m not sure you can. I think boundary setting is important and also contributing to causes you care about. It’s the difference between things you can control and things you can’t, and letting go of the things you can’t control.
Because there's always a possible path out of the forest...
Sometimes the path gets dark, sometimes it changes directions.
But there's always a path thru it.
Sometimes you need an up-armored Komatsu D355A to cut that path through the forest.
That's my secret Cap.
I've always been insane! 🤪
Sanity is over-rated, now if yall dont mind. Im going to spend the rest of my day swimming in a lake that thinks its a gin+tonic.
A ridiculous amount of copeing mechanisms and my supportive close family and friends where we keep eachother sane. Growing up in all this bullshit, you get used tovit somewhat.
Scan headlines but only read what affects me. These days we hear about all the awful things that happen around the word but our ability to do something about them is still the same as a hundred years ago
news - disinformation bureau. might read headlines. can't watch national news with daily disasters
I find old Stoic philosophy helpful. If I can't do anything about it, I stay informed but try to be mindful of my limitations. If I can do anything about it, even if not much, if I'm worried about the thing I use that to do what I can.
This is exactly the problem and how we got into this mess in the first place. When we read terrible things are happening, instead of getting mad and doing something we choose to ignore it and pretend it's not happening. That allows the terrible people to keep doing whatever they want.
Sure, it's easier to ignore it now for your mental health, but when things get even worse, you'll be worse off too. It's worth some stress and pain now to prevent even more in the future.
If you don't like what you read in the news, organize and take action. Don't bury your head in the sand. It won't get better on its own.
It's tough. Stick to AP, Reuters if you can afford it. The entire news environment is pretty crazy right now though. I think once the US gets through Trump the rest of the world might calm down some and we can all relax a little bit.
I'm not sane I take my meds I only pay attention to non sensational news (Reuters,NPR,AP) I spend time with loved ones I have no interest in associating with conservatives.
One day at a time and knowing that at some point I will no longer exist.
There's a lot of things that have helped me, so I guess I'll just dump some of that here.
First of all, make sure that you keeping up to date is deliberate, and consensual. News should not unconsensually cram itself into your eyeballs. Try out an RSS reader to keep what would be newsletter subscriptions or social media feed scrolling for the news in one single app that isn't part of your other online activities, or keep relevant news sites bookmarked rather than followed or subscribed to.
When you feel you want to be more informed about what's currently going on, you can then chose to be so without it happening at times you're not ready for it.
Eliminate redundant media. So much of the media we consume isn't truly new to us, whether that's following people you already agree with then just liking all their posts, or reading news articles about something you already know about, just because they drop a very tiny morsel of additional information in there, burying the lead, so you have to constantly come back again and again to be truly up to date.
If you're reading an article, watching a video, or scrolling social media, and you realize that what you're reading is something you already know, that should be a sign to stop and take a break for a while, so the news cycle can progress further, rather than you very closely following its every little step. This is something that can take some mental training before you eventually get it down, so just try to be more aware of what you're consuming when you consume it.
A lot of the news we see can also be something that, while technically interesting or engaging, simply doesn't matter to us or our ability to impact others around us. Like how a TV station might show you a sad story about someone who had something bad happen to them at some time in some random small town you've never heard of. Sure, it's news, but do you really need to know about that? Is that keeping you sane and energized for what comes next?
And speaking of being energized: do shit. If you care about politics and there's a local rally or protest march, go to it. If you have a local rights organization that does outreach work, volunteer. If you can phonebank for a political candidate you like, make a few phone calls in your spare time.
I particularly like this quote from Joan Baez, which is "Action is the antidote to despair." Even if you have a healthy diet of media consumption, are up to date without feeling overwhelmed, and are generally a well-informed individual, you can always still feel that nagging feeling that things aren't changing.
You've done everything you can to know what's going on, and yet what's going on isn't getting any better. There's no point being informed if it doesn't help you, your community, or the world at all, so when you're able to, do literally anything you can to make even the smallest difference using what you know. If someone says something you don't agree with politically, ask them why they believe that and use what you just learned from current events to back up your opinion. Who knows, they might change their mind.
I was ecstatic when Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic primary in NYC, but I was even happier because after I'd informed myself about the race, his policy positions, and what prior mayors had done so terribly wrong, I had phonebanked for him, and was in a small way, somewhat responsible for that success. And can you guess how much less despair I feel when I see things in the world imploding around all of us now?
Doing anything can make you understand how much of an impact you can have just as an individual, and that makes any bad news infinitely less damaging to your mental health. That said, don't feel bad when you can't, we're all people, and we have our limits and responsibilities.
And even without all that, the best advice I can give you is to just be aware of scale. We live in an age where problems well outside our control are something we're aware of all the time. If something is a problem, sure, be aware of it, but don't beat yourself up over how little you're capable of doing as an individual. It's like when recycling was proposed as a responsibility of individuals rather than corporations, and now people feel bad for throwing out the plastic waste that the corporations made.
Don't doomscroll, reduce pointless media, take action where you can, and don't beat yourself up when things don't change overnight. Just do what you can. You've got this.
Nihilism. Everything is terrible and there's nothing you can do about it. Take care of yourself, enjoy what you can while you still can and don't have kids.
Slow news. Literally nothing is "breaking" these days unless you're juggling stocks and you dont really need to know news as soon as possible.
Check out https://www.slow-journalism.com/
Realise u have no control over 99.999% of it and remember their is no point worrying about shit u can't control.
50% is recycling old garbage, 30% is things that don’t affect you in any way, 15% is nice to know but it wouldn’t change your life if you didn’t know, 3% is actually newsworthy and affects you, rest is weather.