Have you tried yoga with baby goats?
(Got that one from** running coach** over in this thread, but thought it would be spot on for this thread, too!)
I am seriously considering leaving the internet forever. I’d still use it for work and finances but nothing else. I left Facebook maybe a year ago with great results, so why not the whole thing?
LSL guy, great tips! What’s your chosen weekly publication?
I’m pretty addicted to reading news sites, but I ended up using Leechblock (a Firefox addon that allows you to block websites completely or during certain hours) to completely block the lower-quality news sites I used to read.
These days The Economist. Although in decades past I also read US News and World Report. Hard to believe they gave up on the weekly format almost a decade ago. Given that the Economist is Brit they have a sorta lopsided take on some things US, but on the other hand they don’t think or act like we’re the only country in the world. Which is a refreshing POV. They also have a decidedly free market capitalist editorial slant, but unlike, say, the WSJ, which thinks corruption is just fine as long as it’s in the service of our corporate overlords and other Republicans, they’re real aggressive about the downsides to the power of capital.
I have other specialist mags, but for the big picture of what the world’s getting up to the *Economist *is hard to beat.
Hmmm… there’s a whole world on the internet beyond Facebook. I’ve never been on FB, but I’d be hard pressed to do without amazon and the IMDB…not to mention recipes, cute cat videos, symptom checkers, weather maps…
I guess ‘‘finances’’ would include shopping. I’d just cut out anything recreational, social, or media-related. I’m not sure if this is a serious consideration or just like an addict promising herself she’ll get clean someday. The internet brings out the worst in me.
I got comfortable distancing myself from news for a long time. I pretty much ignored the first four months of Trump’s presidency (if something really important happens, I will always hear about it.) I started paying attention more when I started posting on the Dope again more often, but it didn’t get under my skin. Then Charlottesville happened, and I’ve been emotionally sucked up, depressed, anxious, feeling hopeless, and generally wanting to die. The internal conflict I feel, trying to figure out the best/right thing to do in response to racial hatred, has made me miserable.
I dunno if it’s my ADD or what, but I have a really hard time regulating my time or emotional investment in the internet. It usually requires fairly drastic measures, such as using apps to lock down access to certain websites or the entire internet after bedtime.
One alternative might be only using the internet (other than absolute necessities) once per week. I’m still giving it some thought.
I can’t take credit for finding this (**running coach **did) but if you have severe news fatigue here’s a snip from the real big city TV news that’ll probably put an involuntary smile or two on your face: 'Goat Yoga' a hit on New Hampshire farm - YouTube
My Aunt says she’s coped by listening almost exclusively to PBS. Apparently it’s a good, hysteria-free news source.
Interesting question. The main way I do is to remind myself that media nowadays is much more pervasive. Right? Could we fight a WWII with modern media who need to make a story out of each causality? A media that needs to critique and leak each and every action or planned action? Probably not.
But the people of that time dealt with it. We were fighting a war on 2 fronts, there was rationing, segregation, all sorts of stuff that made life a lot more challenging then life today.
So, what’s the difference? They weren’t plugged into the internet or listening to a radio talk show guy for 3-6 hrs a day then going home and watching more news. They also weren’t getting each every bad event from the whole nation. What happened across the state probably didn’t reach their consciousness unless they read the paper and it was covered. Now we get clickbait about all sorts of nonsense the 2nd we open a browser.
Solution to news fatigue? Just disengage from it. Ration yourself. Give yourself 20 minutes a day to read and engage in current events and then get on with your day.
For me that’s usually playing a game or reading.
Ninja yoga is even better. 
- four different ad block apps
- trump kitten app, which turns all images of him into cute kitten photos.
- heavily edited FB feed, now mostly limited to my niche interests. When someone posts something outside livestock for sale or meditations for the day, they get unfollowed.
- peruse NYT headlines every morning and that’s it.
- I do read my local town paper online. That’s generally about knife fights in the barrio, what to plant in your garden now, the upcoming wine and something else festival, and why the city council isn’t doing its job according to some.
If something really terrible happens (British Columbia on fire, Nazi terrorists), you can’t help but find out anyway.
:smack: I actually first saw it in your post this thread. Which led me to the other thread with running coach. I then showed it to a couple of people IRL. Then a couple hours went by and I completely forgot which thread it came from here. :smack:
My apologies. It wasn’t a deliberate attempt to steal your suggestion for mellow news. :smack:
I blame it on the goats. Yeah that’s it. They were sooooo cute I completely lost my head. 
Well, yeah! Shopping, of course! 
I went on a news diet about 10-ish or so years ago. I stopped getting the daily paper and never watched TV news. I still don’t do either of those two things. I read the NYTimes and Washington Post every day on my kindle, and and look at the local e-edition of the local paper most days. There’s not much in it–you can breeze through the whole thing in about 10 minutes.
I never used to follow politics much at all, and the first few years I was on the SDMB, I never clicked into Elections or the BBQ Pit–can you believe it! :rolleyes:
Needless to say, during this past election and ever since, I’ve been here A LOT… for good or for ill. I’ve been feeling much the way you describe since the election. This is different from all previous elections in my lifetime. The polarization it has created and revealed in our country has alarmed me to my toes.
Why not start by just giving up social media? And limiting your deliberate reading of news to once a day? Or set an alarm on your phone and no internet after 7 pm or something? I have an alarm on my Fitbit for 7:15, and I don’t eat anything after that.
Since I got rid of cable, the only channel I get over the air is PBS. But I don’t watch news there either. It’s a blessing, really. I don’t miss “live” TV one bit.
I don’t have any automatic newsfeeds on my main computer.
I turn off the one on my tablet.
I turn off the damn TV and become reacquainted with my collection of lightweight TV shows from the 1970’s and '80’s, cook some good food, read a book or two, and so forth.
^ This.
My TV set is about 20 years old and the characters are all vivid shades of orange so I rarely turn it on. Once in awhile I turn it on for background noise. I do have plans to get a new one this fall.
I have detached from ALL social media including FB. I check my personal emails maybe once a week. Work emails are taken care of all day at work. If people need to get in touch with me they have my cell phone and can call or text.
A long time ago (probably 2007 or 2008) I stopped watching/reading any news on my computer. I became nearly paralyzed by the weight of it all.
That said, this latest white supremacy resurgence has alarmed and horrified me. I have been reading the latest response threads here for about a week along with provided links and my own topical searches. It hasn’t been a good thing for my day to day functioning.
I have noticed a definite change in my overall sense of world stability (peace,hope, faith in humanity to overcome, etc.). My sense of who we are a country has been jolted. Plus my personal sense of well being has taken a nose dive.
I think I need to take inventory of my incessant reading about this issue, make some changes about the length of time spent doing this and let the fear fade into the background. There is nothing I can do about anything on a larger stage. As always I continue to confront issues as they arise in my personal sphere of influence.
The problem with withdrawing from the news entirely is that things like this white supremacist stuff don’t hit your radar until it is extreme.
I think you should “check in” with the news occasionally, because it can affect things like how you vote in elections, or other choices in your life, which down the road becomes part of overall trends that do have an effect on everyone.
You want to aim for moderation, not complete absence or too much.
I am aware that there are white supremacists, along with about 90levenmillion other varieties of violent screwheads. Obsessing over them, since I am not empowered to summarily execute any of them, does nothing but irritate me. Listening/reading to other people competing over just how upset these Nazis/Islamofascists/Commies/Gun Nuts/Gun Grabbers/Vaxxers/Carnies/Belgians/et. al. make them does nothing to improve my quality of life or the world at large. I prefer to walk my Chihuahuas, exercise, drink, fart, and screw.
I’ve reached my saturation point with political news. I’m taking a complete break from internet coverage of politics and terror.
I’m going old school and watching the National news at 5:30 pm and my local news at 6.
That’s enough to keep me informed.
I keep reminding myself that there’s nothing I can do or say that will correct the crazy stuff going on in politics. What ever happens will happen. It’s out of my hands.
I’m tempted to completely shut off the news. Except, I don’t want to be the one guy at work that didn’t know about some tragedy that happened yesterday.
This is very wise, and we could all learn from dogs, too. Look at them closely. They’re happy, they look forward to a walk in the park as the greatest thing in the world, they don’t carry the woes of the world on their shoulders, and they’re not burdened with worries about what the future may bring. We humans are very rarely like that, perhaps only for a few fleeting moments when we get away from our daily lives into the beauty of the natural world.
For my part, I’m just really glad I don’t get CNN any more.