I quit Facebook and Twitter around 2008, and the biggest downside in all that time was finding out about my niece's birth days later than everyone else in the family, because it was only announced on Facebook. Not a huge issue in the scheme of things.
The biggest upside is that I'm completely disengaged with a lot of things people are angry about, because they aren't on my radar at all. In practice, I don't find that closely following breaking news is all that useful to me, since I'm not in a position to do anything about it, and it just makes me anxious to worry about things which are out of my control.
Instead, I read longform articles about major events when they get written a few weeks later, and supplement that reading with Wikipedia. This alternative seems to work well enough. If someone wants to talk to me about current events, I just ask them what their opinion is, which is usually what they want to happen anyway.
One way to be aware of current events is to create a recurring calendar invite for yourself (e.g. Sunday mornings) with a link to the Wikipedia current events page (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events). Tab-open 20+ Wiki pages of interest, and immerse for an timebox (1-2hr). The outcome is having a greater mental
map of the news, without all the deliberate emotional provocation of mass media headlines. “Aged news”
I've found myself browsing the current events page every morning and I think I would prefer your method much more. As emerging stories are verified and context is added, I've found I'm revisiting the same pages over and over.
I'm going to set up a calendar event right now. Thanks!
When there is breaking news, and there are not sufficient details yet, one option is to get the Wiki URL of the news event, and add that URL to your calendar’s recurring “Read the news” event’s description field. As a result, in several weeks you will have a backlog of news articles to read, and you will be confident that you’re tracking the article and that it will have more value over time. As you mentioned, if there are evergreen topics you want to keep track of, you could include those links in the calendar invite - easy to tab-open & catch up.
I also does this.
The main problem IMO is info duplication: sames infos are duplicated on different websites/sources & sometimes inside sources (eg Twitter) and some is missing on individual one. I’m thinking of an aggregator that would group info (preferably free of rights) per individual news and summarise it.
low effort post: I've been thinking about a (real time) 3D point-cloud (news articles) NLP-summation visualization of the news, seeing it skew towards certain directions like war or something as the "absolute worst case".
My data source would be for example Reddit's API for worldnews/news top rated.
Working my way through this, wish they lowered speaker's voice on the English version so it's easier to focus on the English one for me/don't know German.
But it's better than nothing, certainly better than the auto-translated captions ha.
This sounds interesting. Seeing a map, the dots of interest - you could even have “related wikipedia pages which reference this data point, and which have a sudden influx of view/edit activity”.
As a result, a user could explore a map, and could see the most relevant wiki pages (or even extracted insights) on the sidebar. Date range slider could explore the past (eg previous wars in Afghanistan, and which articles are most relevant), and zoom to the future (many Wiki pages reference dates & plans - it would be interesting to zoom to 10 years from now, and see planned initiatives, construction projects, trade agreements, and so on)
Before coming down with anxiety (it's health anxiety and not really social anxiety or anything like that), i wasn't always teh most aware of my emotions. But since, I'm pretty sensitive and aware and always kinda checking-in with myself.
And one thing I've noticed is that after years and years of online interaction, much of it on Reddit, Twitter, a little Tumblr, and a tiny tiny tiny bit on Instagram - is that the more i interact on these things, the more anxious and just generally stressed that I am.
I feel increasingly alone in the world - i feel that when i lean left, when i lean right, within fandoms of this or that, within FOSS communities, or just in general.
But then I talk to the people in my actual life - wife, parents, neighbors, and sure - we're all different in a variety of ways, but the in person evokes more of a connection even if the people around me aren't all rubberstamping my views and tastes.
I'm very addicted to the dopamine rush of the upvote. It feels like i'm a petty or a small person to admit that, but I am. Quitting social media has been harder than giving up tobacco (smoked for 15 years), or energy drinks (drank for almost 20 years). I've given up most recreational drinking - no problem.
But the rapid fire nature of social media.. that hole that it fills when you in these moments where you're bored but don't really have time to ramp up into anything important.... for instance - i have a hard time just stopping/starting books or long form articles. If i watch a video - i want to watch it all the way through. If i want to listen to a record - all the way through. If i get into a project, i want to make some kind of headway. Social media fills up the 10 min here, 15 min there and by the time you're sucked back in you're devoting time to it that you COULD devote to something worthwhile.
The thing that sucks is i feel disconnected from what's going on - with entertainment, with politics, with everything. I always go back and say "this time i'll be more balanced" but i never am. It's like an alcoholic saying "ok, but just one drink".
> In practice, I don't find that closely following breaking news is all that useful to me, since I'm not in a position to do anything about it, and it just makes me anxious to worry about things which are out of my control.
Bingo. This is why I never got into the habit of watching the news at all. This exact line of thinking.
This is also why I think society is kind of mad. I can clearly see when the news has people in their grip because then everyone talks about what happened, and eventually almost everyone has the same opinion about what happened (which is the opinion the news has given them and put in their heads).
I wonder if people in the west realise there is propaganda here too, and it's not just in Russia and China.
I ran into this out of touch out of place person at a party recently, good conversation, he asked if I had a business card (no), then he tried to be trendy and asked if I had a Facebook (don't have that either)
The biggest upside is that I'm completely disengaged with a lot of things people are angry about, because they aren't on my radar at all. In practice, I don't find that closely following breaking news is all that useful to me, since I'm not in a position to do anything about it, and it just makes me anxious to worry about things which are out of my control.
Instead, I read longform articles about major events when they get written a few weeks later, and supplement that reading with Wikipedia. This alternative seems to work well enough. If someone wants to talk to me about current events, I just ask them what their opinion is, which is usually what they want to happen anyway.