I try to read an equal amount of theory and history as I do news. Context is everything. When you read about these bastards doing evil deeds, read too about Mussolini hanging from a bridge. I enjoy learning about coups perpetrated by the CIA last century (there’s 70 of them) and all the horrendous fallout it caused so that I can taunt nationalists with facts about the nature of the empire that they’re only just now recognizing.

News is only a part of the process. Theory, praxis, cadre, in equal parts.

This is exactly the problem and how we go into this mess in the first place. When we read terrible things are happening, instead of getting mad and doing something we choose to ignore it and pretend it’s not happening. That allows the terrible people to keep doing whatever they want.

Sure, it’s easier to ignore it now for your mental health, but when things get even worse, you’ll be worse off too. It’s worth some stress and pain now to prevent even more in the future.

If you don’t like what you read in the news, organize and take action. Don’t bury your head in the sand. It won’t get better on its own.

I don’t consume a lot of content from mainstream news sites, and that helps. Those agencies, like major social media sites, are designed to piss you off and keep your eyes glued to ads.

Most of my news exposure is through Lemmy or Mastodon, through which I can automate the curation of my feed and I don’t see things that are going to rile me up as much; and therefore, I only see things that might rile me up when it’s my intention to do so.

50% is recycling old garbage, 30% is things that don’t affect you in any way, 15% is nice to know but it wouldn’t change your life if you didn’t know, 3% is actually newsworthy and affects you, rest is weather.

There’s a lot of it you can just tune out

Not because it doesn’t matter, but because it’s not actually new.

“oh Israel is still doing its genocide. Yeah, they would, no one is bothering to stop them. Don’t give me details. Let me know if something CHANGES”

The “news” cycle has a way of always finding further details on what is actually very old information, and those details serve you, the reader, no purpose other than creating emotional distress.

Be aware of your personal bubble. If there’s anything important enough to be an issue, you’ll hear about/read about or see it.

By looking at it from a larger perspective. You can always get worked up about things but if you zoom out, you see that most of it is just a temporary trend. Some things trend well, some trend poorly, but these tend to be blips in the span of a lifetime.

Especially when comparing with the past you will see that things really aren’t all that bad in general.

I ignore the news, because I’m probably dying withing a few years, so I’m just chillin’ and enjoying whatever’s left.

Don’t need to make depression worse, I’m not a politician, I can’t change anything.

I’m not a cis white dude (I’m Chinese-American), its not my fight. Like what am I supposed to do? Protest, get a lot of attention from the government, and then get labeled a “CCP Spy” get set to some gulag. Then they’ll raid Chinatown and pillage everything. Then some of the first-gen inmigrants are gonna go on wechat and blame me for “stirring the pot”. I mean, can you imagine if Thomas Matthew Crooks was a gay black guy? It would’ve been so much worse. So much scapegoating. If I do anything, they’ll just scapegoat everyone that looks like me.

So good luck y’all, my health is deteriorating, don’t have the brain energy to take action, and I’ve already accepted death, literally hurts my brain to think.

Nihilism. Everything is terrible and there’s nothing you can do about it. Take care of yourself, enjoy what you can while you still can and don’t have kids.

I just don’t really read the news. Might listen to a bulletin here or there on the radio.

It helps a lot that the assholes are not doing well. The Epstein thing has made it easier to breathe.

Going to protests helps too. The energy of the crowd really feels good and assures me that the people are on my side.

I listen to one weekly news podcast (Lage der Nation), that focuses on the most important topics for where I live, which includes big international events.

Getting an update on the relevant happenings once a week, feels way healthier than reading what’s going horribly wrong somewhere multiple times a day.

I had to unfollow and unsubscribe a bit on mastodon and Lemmy to reduce the amount of news I see there, but now it’s tolerable.

However, I still have to take breaks, when I feel my mental health isn’t up for it.

Activism, contributing to your community, making the world a better place. The crazy-making part is that you know it’s crap, and that you feel like you have no agency to make it better, right? Well, doing something to make the world better makes it feel more tolerable, even if the bit that you’re working on isn’t related to the specific badness that you’re paying attention to on the news right now.

And yeah, there’s always the possibility that what you’re doing backfires, or has no effect, but if you don’t do anything at all, then there’s no possibility of having a good effect. Also, obviously no one normal person can fix everything, you just pick a bit that seems suited for you and work on that.