I try to avoid it. It's too much of a time sink and there's almost zero pieces of actionable information.
I know it's offensive to claim it's merely entertainment but in concrete terms there's no material difference resulting from tuning into daily banter that's any different than watching some serial drama on television.
I understand why you'd reach this conclusion. I would like to offer another viewpoint for you and others reading this to consider.
Simply put, you are underestimating the impact you have on those around you. Every media literate and well-informed critical thinker has the ability to dramatically change someone's perspective. Not just by knowing what to say, but even more importantly how to listen.
Empathetic 1:1 conversation that is respectful is literally the only way to help people escape their bubbles. If you don't know wtf you're talking about, you're missing every shot you don't take.
Essentially, this would be fine if you lived alone, but in reality when you insulate yourself from politics you're just setting yourself up for frustrating moments where you know that your racist uncle is wrong but you have neither the facts nor the confidence to address his ignorant points in a way that doesn't just boil over into hurt feelings.
In short: this attitude taken to the extreme is an abdication of social responsibility. Much like herd immunity, you don't need to be a hero... just not part of the problem.
Yes, empathetic 1:1 conversation is critical, and yes you can have a huge impact on those around you. But this has nothing to do with keeping up to date with news. Facts will not change your racist uncle's opinion. 99% of the news you consume will have absolutely 0 effect on your ability to convince others to be better.
Develop a vision for your life. Become an expert in topics that are important to you. Read good books, befriend interesting people, and focus on problems where you can make a large difference, and inspire others to do so as well. Daily news plays no role in this.
You are, forgivably, projecting several assumptions onto my words. Give me an attempt to clarify my intent further.
As I explained in another reply, I am not advocating for keeping up to date with the news so much as I refuse to absolve smart people from accepting responsibility for confident media literacy, and it's hard to be media literate without at least parsing what's being reported so that you can reason about it, even amongst people who are in your bubble. I am suggesting that if you think you can avoid this step and still be able to hold your own in a discourse, you are willfully proving the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Our goal should not be to enter a conversation intended to change the racist uncle's opinion. That is, indeed and sadly, a fool's errand. But it's also the wrong tactic.
I would argue that the #1 goal of such a family dinner should be to listen compassionately, being the progressive that defies all of the stereotypes about elitist, know-it-all coastal intellectuals, and choose your battles really, really carefully. At the very least, the other people observing are judging every subtle nuance of what's going down, and even though uncle racist will still likely be a terrible person after dessert, the other six people at the table will find themselves much more confident that you quietly made him look like an asshole.
The left is far too hung up on the shallow win of a "fully pwned" outcome, where the racist uncle is sobbing and begging for forgiveness and promising to lead a better life. Not only is this a stupid goal, it's insulting to the fact that your racist uncle probably has some ideas that are not fully wrong. The notion that the left is right and the right is dumb is roughly 95% of the problem.
I left a longer reply on another comment, but if you're interested and willing, I think that this Big Think clip sums it up (for me): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFfWv0EnHQw
I'd prefer that you not put words in my mouth when it's such an important concern. I didn't come close to suggesting that news == critical political theory.
Media literacy is actually the opposite of just consuming a lot of news. There is absolutely a skillset that must be developed and exercised which allows an individual to see patterns and tune their BS detector. News - even FOX "news", contextualized - is all necessary and loaded with information. It just isn't the information Rupert Murdoch and pals consciously engineer.
Late thought: I want to say that as someone who reads or listens to 3-4 books a week, there are a lot of mediocre, terrible books out there. Many non-fiction books are based on opinion instead of research.
Just because something is printed and bound doesn't make it inherently better than a profoundly insightful series of tweets.
Then again, don't believe everything you read in the comments on Hacker News, either.
This is my point of view as well. Even (especially?) for things like politics. I might read a quick summary about whatever the current big issues are every few weeks and around elections, but that's it.
Issues that may affect me (which are more local in nature) will naturally come up in conversation, so I don't think I'm really missing out on anything. I'm not in a position where I can change anything, so why bother wasting my attention on these things?
I do the same. If some news is important enough, it'll eventually percolate to HN, or I'll hear about it from someone else.
The way I see it, almost all news is completely irrelevant to my daily life, not actionable in any way, usually depressing, and often very inaccurate. It provides negative information - after consuming them, you end up dumber and more confused than you were before. So I stay away.
Democracy is achieved through active participation in building and maintaining institutions exercising power, not in passively consuming broadcasted editorial content.
It's depressing because consuming content in isolation doesn't materially affect anything. You can't watch your way to political action. It's empty and everyone knows it.
Donate money to causes you care about, attend meetings, help organize things, exercise power.
You don’t have to follow news to make good political decisions. If people read philosophy as the same rates they follow fake political drama, we’ll be in a better place.
We don't have a democracy where you need to stay up to date with events, if this were Switzerland you'd have a point, but in most countries you only need to get the summary once every 4 years. I'd even argue that people will make better decisions if completely stepped away from everything and got some perspective before the election instead of constantly being emotionally involved all the time.
I came here to say something similar. At least with watching some TV shows or movies, you’re more likely to get de-stressed and/or entertained. News is usually the opposite, creating more frustration, tension and stress about things where you may not be able to do much to help. Whatever is called “news” in today’s world is more of sensational, controversial and divisive stuff. Anything to create an addiction and keep people coming back and arguing is what it’s turned into.
It’s good and also useful sometimes to know what’s happening around, but obsessing with keeping up with news everyday is a huge drain.
> there's almost zero pieces of actionable information.
I don't agree with this. The news is filled with actionable information. If nothing more than constant reporting of problems, many of which could be solved with new businesses - there is value in knowing about that if only to be better positioned to start businesses.
The world is full of people in pain, and often the news reports on that. That is actionable information. Other people's pain is not your entertainment. It is actionable information about how to help improve the world and reduce suffering.
Also, the news and happenings of the world do affect you every day even if you don't know it or notice it.
"You may not care about politics, but politics cares about you"
> The world is full of people in pain, and often the news reports on that. That is actionable information. Other people's pain is not your entertainment. It is actionable information about how to help improve the world and reduce suffering.
There is far, far more of this than is actionable, and most of it isn't really actionable from this distance. You end up with "white saviour" disease.
The news is also full of my fellow voters saying that those in pain are lying, or that we should inflict more pain on them as a matter of policy. Those are somewhat hard to stomach.
Sure, if you approach it with a problem-solving mindset, you can ignore the content and the noise and the inaccuracies of the news, and dig into an issue to be addressed that underlies the story.
But there's only so much thing you can act on at any given moment, and actions take a lot of time. In particular, you can execute one, two business ideas at a time; perhaps three if you're Elon Musk. So once you're engaged in action, what's the point of following the news? You aren't going to act on anything else for the next couple years anyway.
A bunch of times have news stories caused me to donate money and write angry emails to politicians. Especially the horrifying 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
I agree with you. I get an email USA news summary from The Guardian in the morning and a few minutes looking at that is suffices. I like democracynow.org also but only give that a good read a few times a month.
When a US politician does something I find offensive, I do take a few minutes to check to see if they are running for re-election in which case I try to donate $5 to their opponent. Otherwise, I am happy being “apathetic” to politics.
EDIT: I volunteer one day a week at my local food bank, and that helps tie me into local events and what is happening in town. Local news is the most important news to me since I have virtually no effect on the world outside of my local community.
Assuming you have at least minimal social interaction, if anything actually important happens, somebody will tell you. So there's really no reason to pay attention to news at all. It's pure entertainment and time wasting.
I know it's offensive to claim it's merely entertainment but in concrete terms there's no material difference resulting from tuning into daily banter that's any different than watching some serial drama on television.