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I Hate Watching the News

I actively avoid watching the news, and have for a lot of years now. A good portion of the "segments" are ads, and the ones that aren't paint such a skewed picture of the world, reporting on only the tiny subset of events that's going to garner the highest ratings. It twists reality into a pretzel - making it seem like everything is always going wrong everywhere. Every school is getting shot up. Every cop is white and goes around shooting unarmed black people for kicks. Every place in the world is being blown up and terrorized and every other terrible thing in the bloody world. Racism and corruption and murder and terrorism are the only things that ever happen. And I think that if most regular news watchers took an honest look at the skews in their own views, they'd recognize that some of those skews are in exactly the same shape of the skews in the news. And hell, if something's really important, then I inevitably hear about it from the people around me.

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Lochlee · 51-55, F

An interesting approach, one I also follow. With access to the "whole world", the whole world's problems bombard us daily - situations we cannot alleviate or change. There is only so much horror, pain, despair and cruelty you can internalise. So while I don't follow the "ostrich" approach, I too, limit my exposure to atrocities.

BlueDiver · 36-40, M

It's funny - we have access to more information than at any other time in human history, and yet that access has seemingly only served to make us understand less. To see ever smaller slivers of the actual picture.

Lochlee · 51-55, F

@BlueDiver True, and many lose sight of what they CAN control.

BlueDiver · 36-40, M

Do we lose sight of what we can control - or are we just afraid of the responsibility and the freedom that would be involved in enacting it?

Lochlee · 51-55, F

I think both. People forget that on a face-to-face interaction level, you can control your actions and impressions you put forward. You can, with effort act in a non-racist way (for example) or just show some kindness... all is not lost. The second part of your comment is also true - sometimes people are aware of what they can control - but may be unwilling (afraid?) of the responsibility/ demands that might arise to that control.

BlueDiver · 36-40, M

Why would you need effort in order to act in a non-racist way? That's weird to me. But I get what you're saying though - that rather than focusing our attention and our efforts on what's going on in the world, it makes more sense to remember to focus on what we actually do, especially toward other people.

Lochlee · 51-55, F

@BlueDiver Yes, I see what you mean with that word "effort". I come from a country where racism has been entrenched -we have been, and continue to be socialised to hate/mistrust/blame/despise each other. Not easy, it requires an effort or a hyper alertness to act correctly..not to offend. And the word "act" is used in the sense of action. So we can control our interactions to ultimately build a better society (albeit on a tiny scale).

BlueDiver · 36-40, M

Hell, I spent years working retail in an area where where the socioeconomic reality made is so that very few black people came into the store without the intention of stealing something. It had nothing to do with race - it was just a rich area surrounded by poor areas, where the 99% of black people (and the 99% of people for that matter) who didn't want to steal anything lived far enough away that none of them were going to commute all the way to our overpriced store when there were stores that sold the same crap at a much better price much closer. When 80% of the black people who you deal with are criminals trying to steal things and do credit card fraud and whatnot, then yeah, it takes effort to remember that black person does not equal criminal.

So yeah, I understand choosing to defy your automatic psychological instincts, and to instead logically remind yourself of how things really are, and then act based on that logic.