Except that I’m single and live alone, it’s much the same for me. I have no television, and don’t listen to the radio or regularly read a newspaper. I spend a lot of time on the Net, and through that – the Dope and elsewhere – am usually aware in outline, of the major stuff that’s going on.
Count me in the camp of those who find the global and national news highly depressing and frightening – whilst seeing my ability to influence things on that scale, as non-existent; plus at present, it all has little bearing on my daily life. Getting highly preoccupied with world affairs would, I feel, strongly incline me to suicide – which is not a road I want to take, because of envisaged possible eschatological consequences. I have various keen interests, not to do with current affairs, on which I focus my attention; and am fortunate that unlike the OP and his neighbours / employee, circumstances don’t compel me to spend a lot of time with people with whom my lack of profound current-affairs awareness, makes conversation limited and difficult. I kind of envy the couples OP mentions, who are able to be so oblivious that Islamic State, and climate change, mean nothing to them !
Exactly my situation: the epiphany for me was the sudden realisation that all the great screaming arguments in the domestic media a year back, and all those each year for centuries — excluding when we went to war — petered out, often without resolution, and now lacked importance.
In Britain, what Heath said to Wilson; and what Major quarrelled about with his conservative opponents; and despite her drear legacy, the issues that concerned Lady Thatcher before she went gaga are all one with Nineveh and Tyre.
People got hot and bothered about Lord Salisbury’s administration, or McKinley’s back in the day. It all seems futile to us now. And our issues will too in a few years. Results are all that matter.
The nature of representative democracy is that they don’t have to care what you think or want, and that any opposition is invalidated by the fact one can replace Tweedledum with Tweedledee every half-decade. Whatever you think about the news is unimportant to the politicians, tempered only by their own perceptions as to how it will affect their re-election.
A year or so back I pointed out to a disbeliever that old Murdoch would get away from his phone-tapping scandal and not serve time, not merely from his wealth and power, but because in a few months the news narrative would inevitably move on to other stories. And so it came to pass.
“News” is primarily propaganda and spin, designed to keep you tuning in. It’s not that I don’t care what’s going on in the world or find it boring, but I don’t care to get sucked into the manufactured drama. Here in the U.S., the “culture of fear” is spread through lurid repetitions of certain murders/kidnappings/etc., bleating about danger lurking around every corner, and all the ways it is actually worth it and necessary to give up our civil rights for our own protection. I can’t do anything about it, so I don’t actively seek it out and trust that if anything relevant comes up I will hear about it anyway. Even the weather is sensationalist crap, constantly pretending that the next storm will possibly be catastrophic so we’d better keep tuned in to the weather for “updates” for our own protection. It’s like one giant commercial for itself.
As for conversational topics, there are countless timeless subjects to discuss. If you can’t think of anything to say beyond commenting about the latest event, maybe read some books that weren’t written yesterday.
I feel that Claverhouse has “the answer to end all answers” here. I can’t be that radical about the issue: feel that representative democracy is probably the least-bad of a bunch of thoroughly awful ways, to run nations – but that the right to vote should be contingent on one’s having at least a minimal amount of knowledge of, and interest in, the issues affecting one’s nation. I therefore refrain from voting – at important elections, I go along to the polling booth and spoil my paper.
If taken to task by the politically earnest – about the perils of my apathy and opting-out here, potentially contributing to some hideous tyranny taking over my country; I reply: “If my doing as I choose to do, leads to some British Khmer Rouge be-alike (of whatever political slant) taking power, and hauling me off to their equivalent of Tuol Sleng and the killing fields: I promise not to whinge about it.”
I only very occasionally read an article online when someone links to it and it sounds interesting. I never watch TV news or listen to news on the radio and I avoid print newspapers (which are given out for free every day on the tube and often left on seats, so I have to actually physically avoid them).
The news is always just depressing. These kids murdered, this village destroyed, this evil person freed, plus lots of propaganda against people who aren’t rich and white. Me knowing more about all that is not going to help anybody.
For my vote I have a choice between three parties (with some more parties standing who will never win), two of whom I loathe and would have to be masochistic to vote for. If they suddenly changed all their policies overnight I’m pretty sure that’d be on Facebook. As it is, I don’t actually need up-to-date news to decide who to vote for.
I’ve only recently run into one person who admits they don’t watch the news and don’t care about it.
What I find maddening is people who get their news from only one source (one that supports their previously-held beliefs) and think they are well-informed. This I notice most with the Fox News/supportive Facebook memes crowd (thanks, family!), but I **know **it also exists with more left-wing folks as well.
I think it’s important for people to consume news actively, with many viewpoints. You aren’t really well-read if not.
But I admit that if I’m feeling down and out of sorts, a short news fast will help reset things. I always have to stop watching the news shortly after any tragedy. At some point, it’s all emotion and conjecture and damned light on facts. Once you’ve helped out (if possible), what do you gain by watching the non-stop breast-beating?
I’ll admit, in college I didn’t check the news whatsoever - and I barely check enough for substandard knowledge of events even today. Katrina happened in college and I didn’t even know until 3 days afterwards that something had happened, that’s how little anybody checked while there.
But I don’t watch news on tv. I don’t listen to the radio. I don’t read the paper. I only check online of my own volition…what. Once a month. Everything I hear about I hear from other people, through linked articles on facebook, or on message boards, which may spur me to look up the original article plus a tertiary article or two, but otherwise I don’t really bother. I check in slightly more often during voting season.
Yeah. It just doesn’t have any impact on my daily life. I don’t feel as though I can affect it or it can affect me.
I just turned to a co-worker and told her that they were about to announce the grand jury’s verdict in the Michael Brown shooting. She gave me a blank stare and said, “Who?”
I tried to recap it a little, but she cut me off saying (somewhat proudly), “Oh, I don’t watch the news.”
I’m not saying you need to be up to date on every matter in the nation, but I’m shocked that she’d managed to go this long without knowing anything about the matter.
I work in an industry where for 8 hours a day, I have the news shoved at me (professionally) every second, of every minute, of every hour.
I get home, the only news i pay attention to is local. And it better be on the front page of the paper. Then I switch off.
I mean, there’s just so much you can take.
And honestly, no matter how much you care, or whatever you feel there’s almost nothing you can do to change things. The people who just ignore stuff may be a lot better off than you. They’re not worrying about stuff they can’t impact and move on with their lives.
It’s not that hard. I only know about it by osmosis; the occasional headline I spot when reading sites for other content. And by any reasonable standard, it’s a totally irrelevant thing; no more and no less a tragedy than the other 150,000 people that died that day. The event as a whole will have some imperceptible effect on race relations in the US, but I doubt anyone can confidently say what the direction of that effect even is. Someone that only checked the news once a decade would have a clearer picture of things than someone that followed the news by the hour.
I’m not proud of paying very little attention to mainstream news, but I also don’t see news junkies as being any different than celebrity followers, reality TV watchers, sports fans, video gamers (my own vice), etc. They’re welcome to enjoy it but it’s largely meaningless noise.
Ninety percent of the time, staying informed is only useful for social situations. “Hey, did you hear about that Michael Brown verdict? Fucked up, right?” Small talk is definitely useful for making friends and influencing others. But you can also talk about the weather, spots, and TV shows–and at least with these topics, you don’t risk offending someone or embarrassing them because they don’t know who Michael Brown is.
I didn’t expect her to know all the details, but she was honestly completely in the dark on the matter, even though co-workers had talked about it in the past few months and whatnot.
I’ve not quite taken it that far, but I sure don’t regularly check the news. A lot of stuff I only know about because it’s fun to talk about. I definitely see no value in knowing about things that aren’t interesting, stuff that makes me feel bad, and stuff I can’t do anything about.
Someone mentioned Reddit: that’s a lot better than “news.” You’re still keeping up with the world. Just not necessarily the crappy part of it.
I glance at USA Today in the morning on my iPad before work, but that’s about it.
If something big is brewing I’ll probably hear about it there or on this board.
The news is chock full of negativity and depressing stories, and I don’t enjoy that.
I’m one more person who does not exercise my right to vote—I hate politics and feel my vote would be wasted if I were not deeply informed on all of the major issues of the day. Besides, my failure to vote gives other folks something to smile and feel smug about.
As a mostly-news-ignorer – as mentioned in earlier posts – (I could offer here as a bit of justification / mitigation, if any sought, that I’m neither American nor in America): on reading the above post, I had to Google Michael Brown. Hitherto, I wouldn’t have known him from the Akhond of Swat. I’d been dimly aware that there’s this town in Missouri called Ferguson, where something nasty had recently been done, which there’s been a big to-do about…
I’m not precisely proud – like “non-news-lady” above – of my obliviousness – feel more like Dr. Strangelove does; feel that this choice made by me, and other posters on this thread who do likewise, is a valid one.
I think US news in particular is in large part about trying to make you angry or scared about something. The benefit of hearing about things that might actually affect you is very much diluted.
And furthermore it doesn’t really foster a great deal of understanding (I think it’s more that people knowledgeable about the world tend to find the news interesting, rather than the news helps you become knowledgeable).
So I don’t think it’s actually a big miss to not watch the news. Of course people who don’t watch the news don’t necessarily know that.
What a great paragraph, thanks for sharing!
As for me, I manage to catch a fair bit of news on my local public radio station while in the car, as well as from threads on this very board. But, I don’t generally head down the rabbit hole of detail and commentary. If I have a general sense of what’s issues are important nationally/internationally, I’m happy. I don’t much care for the day-to-day news about, say, the Russian/Ukraine situation, Ebola, Ferguson, etc etc. I guess, like Thoreau says, it all feels like gossip to me.
It is so blindingly obvious to me that, for the most part, people have emotions first, opinions second, seek selective validation and justification third. People vote the way they’re going to vote regardless of the small details of the news. Look at threads on this very board; Democrat(liberal)- and Republican(conservative)-leaning posters live mostly in completely different worlds, not because either is more or less informed than the other, but because they feel arbitrarily different about different issues, and perceive the world in a way that supports their natural feelings.
Even the informed vote based on the feelings they bring to the facts, not on the facts themselves.
While I think transparency in government is important, an informed electorate is only a small piece of what makes Democracy the “best of the worst” forms of government.
I firmly believe that what you put in your head stays there forever. I read about the girl gangraped on the Indian bus a few years ago and the imagery of what was done to her seriously gave me nightmares. That is not a horror movie or a book, that is what real men did to a real woman. Even after the nightmares stopped, it pops in my head now and then and still manages to horrify.
So yes, I try to be very discretionary in what I read. I don’t ever watch TV news, and anyone who thinks any of the TV news actually gives you any information is deluded. Between the hang-gliding budgies and the “POISON IN YOUR DRINKING WATER???” crap, they just lie through their teeth to get people to watch. The last time I watched TV news was during Hurricane Katrina, for reference.
What I do is research. If I hear about a subject I am interested in I will go looking for more articles about it and read as many as I can, from different places. That way I get a fuller picture of the subject.
Same goes with voting. I take my time to research the candidates I think I might want to vote for. I am pretty firmly liberal so I admit it’s mostly a case of “Is there anything this politician does that makes me not want to vote for them?” I generally don’t vote Republican. If my choices are a sucky Dem or a Repub, I usually abstain from voting entirely or vote independent if that is an option. There’s just too much in the Repub party I can’t behind.
As others have said, I don’t need to know every bit of news. I listen to NPR when they have good shows on. Otherwise hearing all of the bad news all the time will make you depressed and angry.