Egregoros

@fluffy @phnt
It's only as negative upon you as much as you let it be negative upon you, it's not as if being updated on current events is a mental harm unto itself, so long as you understand your own power in the situation (very little).

If you're talking about guys who argue over politics constantly, or spend all day being dripfed clips of propoganda/agitprop, then I'm inclined to agree.

That being said, I hold in equal contempt people who 'don't care about politics' or people who 'don't vote because it doesn't matter anyway'. I despise pride in ignorance.

@yomiel @fluffy
Reading news is consciously adding negative information you have little to no way to influence in your life for zero added value. And very likely one of the biggest reasons why especially zoomies are getting depressed all the time. Their life is pumped full of social media where everybody acts like they are the happiest living on Earth and everything around them has been politicized to bizarre levels.

Reading news to me is like reading gossip. Zero added value and mostly negative noise. Tell me, when was the last time you saw or read something positive in the news? You probably don't remember. Why? Because negativity sells; people want to feel enraged at text on screen for whatever reason beyond my understanding.

@phnt @fluffy
I don't mean to be antagonistic, but this strikes me as a very superficial interpretation of news and it's consumption.

'Negativity sells'? Perhaps, but I'm not talking about reading tabloids, I'm talking about reading *actual* news sites. Go look at the front page of BBC News, is it 'sensationalism'? You can argue there is the regular western bias, but that's about it. Otherwise, it really is merely reporting events that have happened.

Again, this 'negativity sells' is an accurate description of much of Twitter as well, but it's kind of throwing the baby out with the bath water to say that it's either 'cut reading news out of your life' or to scroll 8 hours a day on Twitter.

And "people want to feel enraged at text on screen for whatever reason beyond my understanding." feels downright dishonest, you know damn well why, being angry is fun. People like to have an enemy, this goes for both sides of the politcal spectrum, and honestly just for anything. How many times have you seen an old movie or show and the guy sitting next you says gleefully "They couldn't make that anymore!"

I agree it's a bad behaviour, and one that should be avoided, as well as something you should always be wary of, but I shan't pretend not to understand why it is the case, it's basic human psychology.

@yomiel @fluffy
>Go look at the front page of BBC News, is it 'sensationalism'
It is a bunch of "news" that I don't care about. Also notice the lack of anything positive. picrel

>it's either 'cut reading news out of your life' or to scroll 8 hours a day on Twitter.
Or neither. You don't need either in your life. This is a frequent thing I hear from people that read news before sleep, at work, after work,... They "need" to know what happens. But they really don't, it adds nothing to their life besides getting in a bad mood when the front page of almost all news sites is just negativity.

>feels downright dishonest, you know damn well why, being angry is fun...
No, I don't find being angry fun. I don't like having an enemy. I want to live a life with as small amount of stress as possible, work on things I enjoy and have a family. Nowhere in that is "being angry", or having an "enemy". It's quite the opposite, I expect others except few exceptions to leave me to my own devices and stop meddling with my life. The literal meaning of "live and let live". I don't come to fedi to read some newsbot slop, hear about a shooting or read Trump's senile "Truths" on Glussy-made TruthSocial. I come to fedi to have fun and hopefully make someone else's day better while at it.

Nonetheless this is a great point, because I often see a correlation between news addicts and being pessimistic/finding reasons to be angry/being angry.
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@phnt @fluffy @yomiel
I can dont let news ruin my mood, but I also dont go out of my way to indulge much in it. Do look into it bit when there is big happening but mostly even that after few days of happening.

Jefferson quote,

"To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, "by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only." Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of it's benefits, than is done by it's abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knolege with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables.

**General facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will, &c., &c.; but no details can be relied on**

. I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false."

@Pi_rat @fluffy @yomiel The last time I actually deliberately opened a news site without other outside factors was this september after local government elections. And only for the purpose of reading the comments under the articles, which were almost exclusively two sides barking at each other and making various outlandish takes that everybody outside their sphere would shake their head at. I didn't read a single article. Mostly because I wasn't interested in that them at all, I wanted only the cheap laughs drama.