SDMB Dopers -please advise how do you retain your basic empathy and humanity in these troubled days?

In My Humble Opinion
41

I wonder how much of that is the evolution of the 24 hour news cycle.

I mean, “if it bleeds, it leads” has been the motto of news organizations forever- look at Weegee’s photography for newspapers.

The difference is that competition among news sources has increased dramatically since that era. In 1910, there were only newspapers. In 1940, there was radio, newsreels, and newspapers, in 1970, there were newspapers, radio, and TV. In 1990, there were newspapers, radios, TV, and 24-hour cable news. In 2010, there was all of that, AND internet news sites. And today, we’ve got all of the above, as well as things like X and other “instant” social media sites that compete with each other on the immediacy and luridity of their content. Newspapers and radio are getting murdered in terms of those, in fact.

So if there was a school shooting in 1915, someone who was in the immediate area would read about it in the newspaper- that day in a large metro area, the next in a smaller area, and even later in smaller markets. Word of mouth would probably get news around faster. In 1940, it might make the radio news in the local area, would be in the local newspaper, and might make national news somewhere deep within the newspaper. In 1970, it would make the local TV news, papers, and radio, and might make the national TV and radio news if it was big enough.

In 1990 it would have been much like 1970 except that CNN would have shown it much sooner, and it probably would have been breaking local news. And today we’d hear about it on X while it was happening, and we’ll hear about it non-stop on all the news outlets on the internet and broadcast media, regardless of where in the country you live.

To use a very immediate example, there was a mass shooting in Prague yesterday at a university. Had that happened in 1910, your average Dallas resident like myself would never have heard of it until about maybe 1990, if it made CNN. Even then, it would have been a one sentence mention. Now there are THREE mentions on the CNN main page about it - two stories and a “breaking news” banner. Same thing with the Icelandic volcanic eruptions- that’s something I’d have read about in a damn science book years later when I was a kid, but now it’s big news on national outlets.

I’m not convinced things are actually worse than they used to be. I am however convinced that our awareness of them is both more immediate and more negative than it used to be because of the news cycle and their competitive need to have the fastest, most lurid/sad/violent/shocking news.

Which after scrolling a bit is also what @LSLGuy is saying…

42

The news is a bit like a huge lunch buffet with

  • Ham
  • roast beef
  • pork loin
  • fried chicken
  • roast lamb with mint jelly
  • sweet potatoes
  • corn
  • lima beans
  • french fries
  • turnip greens
  • fried green tomatoes
  • green beans
  • 4 Cakes
  • 6 pies
  • Topped with 3 flavors of Ice Cream
  • Washed down with a liter of Coke and a Carafe of black coffee

Served every day at precisely 12:00 noon

You can eat yourself into a glassy-eyed stupor until throwing up

It’s incumbent on the public to know when to stop gorging and walk away.

Even worse, so much news is useless bullshit. Who gives a damn that Taylor Swift is datingTravis Kelce and attends Kansas City Chiefs games? Celebrity news and gossip will always be part of that gluttonous lunch buffet.

I’m learning to eat a ham sandwich and a cup of coffee for my lunch. :wink: Ignore everything else on the buffet.

43

Preach it. Mentioned that in the other thread. In 2020 I kind of went off on the deep end and found myself in rehab. Right around that time, I just decided to stop following the news. I wasn’t exactly a news junkie back then, but I mean like really, I check a news organization home screen maybe once every two weeks or so now. And I absolutely do not watch the news. It’s mostly garbage designed to make you angry, and I don’t understand how people can listen to it in the background all day. I don’t care if you’re listening to “liberal” or “conservative” news sources, they’re a constant litany of everything that is wrong with America, the world, etc. It is awful. And I come from a journalism background, to boot.

Just cutting that out of my life has improved it so much. The next step is to read fewer and fewer comments on YouTube, Facebook, etc. In most of the subjects I watch, they are innocuous, but even so, I can be watching something about Portillo’s hot dogs and somehow it still ends up devolving into a stupid Biden/Trump debate. I just lefe a local hot dog/hamburger/gyros stand Facebook group because the moderation sucked and they let shit like this play out.

44

This is a cliche, but it’s a cliche because it’s true.

If my grandparents could trundle through the Depression and the war, we can all get through the shit happening today.

Has there ever been a time in history when there WEREN’T several wars going on? Not in my lifetime.

If I can offer a piece of specific advice:

GET OFF SOCIAL MEDIA. (And watch less news.)

To pick a random year, I turned sixteen years old in 1987. In 1987 you had a number of terrible wars going on; the Iran-Iraq war had already killed a million people, the USSR occupation of Afghanistan continued killing people, bloody insurgencies were happening all over Latin America, Libya was losing a war in Chad, and any number of other horrors. The difference is that you didn’t have this shit pumped into your eyeballs all day every day. You didn’t have a smartphone and many people still didn’t have a 24-hour cable news channel. To get news you read a paper once a day or watched a half hour of news at six o’clock.

Most of the time you were not connected to a stream of news. You were doing chores, watching sitcoms, walking your dog, going to school, working, or whatever. The average person spent half an hour a day, maybe an hour, absorbing news, and spent 23 to 23.5 hours a day NOT absorbing news. Media is not designed to inform you; it is designed to keep you looking at it, and instilling fear and anxiety in you is in fact part of their strategy because it makes you want to keep looking at it.

That is, in my opinion, the correct ratio, and it does a person a tremendous favor for their mental health to revert back to that ratio. Spend your time taking care of yourself. Delete social media feeds from your phone, and consume media VERY judiciously. Budget your time. Spend time with family, friends and hobbies instead of absorbing current events and other abrasive medias. You will feel better in no time.

45

That’s very true and needs repeating for my own benefit.

News is a product intended to support commercials and encourage sales of products.

I grew up thinking of news as a essential service that informed me. That no longer applies except in the most superficial way. The headlines inform at a glance and the rest is commercial based content.

46

I try to focus on my relationships with individual people: my family, my friends, and my colleagues. The latter is even more important to me now, as in my new job, I have five young people (ages 23 to 31) reporting directly to me. I do what I can to uplift them, and be a source of positivity and empathy.

47

That is one thing at least about the BBC: it does not exist to sell adverts, it’s supported by a government subsidy raised from the TV license fee.

Which doesn’t mean it is free of bias of course: it is a product of the culture it exists in.

48

The issue is not political bias, though of course that exists. The issue is that they manipulate you to get you to watch - and yes, that is true of BBC. Some media outlets may be government funded, but it is still to the benefit of their management to get people to watch.

A person can’t watch this shit all day and remain mentally healthy. Limit your viewing.

49

Focus on people. Not the whole nation or world or anything like that; but individuals. Like, some of my students are pretty darned awesome. And for me, people like my students are the ones who really matter the most.

50

I really wish my Aunt would take this advice. She’s developed crippling anxiety in part because she spends so much time watching the news, but every attempt to point out how harmful this is is met with, “Oh, but it’s NBC.”

That’s fine, but it’s still news, and NBC may have higher journalistic integrity (I have no idea) but it’s still spending hours a day on really negative shit.

51

I said it before. Throw that damn TV in the dumpster. Seriously.

52

Definitely agreed. It’s the TV-viewing equivalent of doomscrolling on social media.

53

Do neither of those things.

54

I like TV. But I don’t go overboard with it. I think we average less than one hour a day. If you go overboard with some kind of media, you need to understand that moderation is just not possible for you. That is the case with me and social media.

55

Entertainment TV is comforting as I get older. I don’t have the energy or as much interest in outdoor activities like hiking, swimming and camping. I do some now, but it can easily turn into a chore. I like playing pool and bowling but I don’t necessarily want to drive at night to visit the businesses that offer it. My nights out bowling are usually with friends.

There is a massive backlog of dramas and crime shows on Paramount and Peacock that I’m just beginning to explore.

I was ill earlier in this past Spring with pneumonia and tv programming helped me get through the time in the hospital.

That’s different from stressing over too much News. The public has very little control of current events and there’s no need to obsess over what can’t be changed.

56

I say, enjoy the things you enjoy with gusto and don’t feel guilty about any of it.

Just make sure you check in periodically and ask, “Am I still enjoying this? Is there something else I would enjoy more? Would I be happier with less of this?” Because it varies from day to day.

There are days I have great fun here and days I feel bad at the end of the day for not doing other stuff I care about more, like working on my novel. Then there are days like today where I’m too sick to do much and The Straight Dope is one of my best options.

57

I focus more and more on my family. Not coincidently my new favorite Christmas song is Tim Minchin’s White Wine in the Sun.

58

You do you, but I find that sort of entertainment painful.

IMO it’s almost entirely bad people behaving badly to one another, and behaving badly to the few good people in the plot who exist only to be victimized. The “happy” ending at the end is like a feast made entirely of shit with a after dinner mint.

59

As I noted in a different thread recently, I have this exact issue with a lot of modern TV dramas. IMO, a lot of highly-acclaimed TV series in recent years (The Sopranos, A Game of Thrones, Mad Men, Succession, etc.) are largely built around terrible people, doing terrible things, and any characters who aren’t terrible suffer awful fates.

I just don’t enjoy that sort of story telling, and I avoid watching series like that because I don’t need that sort of energy in my life.

60

I totally get that. My husband and I reached our limit with that, too. That’s one reason Ted Lasso was so refreshing, and it proved that you can have conflict and compelling storylines without making bad people the center of your storytelling.