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Comment by SomeCallMeTim | Hacker News Reader

I do wonder whether encouraging people to exist entirely in their bubble is healthy.

I agree with the article to a point. I don't really have a "daily news ritual," though I tend to stumble across major stories.

But enough people being isolated from the news can result in an uninformed populace. People continuing to vote R or D simply out of habit.

I mean, I'm unlikely to vote anything but D for the foreseeable future. But if the R party self-destructs and an actual, viable, left-leaning party is created, I'd want to know that.

But that doesn't mean I need updates on every manufactured crisis daily, either.

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I find that "the news" is what is creating those bubbles. The more you read the nytimes, or watch fox, the more you lock into that particular bubble mindset.

Fox? Yes. Absolutely.

NYT? Only if you consider "what's actually happening" or "reality" to be a bubble. I see both liberal and conservative viewpoints in the NYT all the time.

Reality does have a stubborn liberal bias, after all.

That said, NYT is equally driven by sensationalism, in the "If it bleeds, it leads" sense.

You probably can read the news once per month and be well informed.

For whatever reason liberals always seem to be the ones who withdraw into their bubbles. The problem is this leaves the other side the opportunity to capture various government organizations, like SCOTUS.

I'm not sure conservatives are exactly the social butterflies you make them out to be.

It has nothing to do with being a social butterfly. I don't have the quote handy, but it's decades old. A GOP operative said something like "our goal is to get liberals to disconnect from the political process" while at the same time engaging their own base. This is what the GOP is famous for. The social issues (flag burning, abortion, gay marriage, etc, etc, etc).

In the late 90's and leading up to the 2000 POTUS race, with few exceptions all of my liberal friends had disconnected from politics. It's always been the case, in my circle of people I know, that conservatives vote more regularly. This is over more than 40 years.

I think you're mistaking centrists for liberals.

Are you in a predominantly conservative area? A "red state"?

Or is your circle of friends in their late teens and 20s? Younger folks just don't vote as often as older.

In the circle of people I know, who are mostly actual liberals, and who are generally 40+, they've been very engaged and voting consistently.

Heck, even the conservative Republicans I know have been engaged and voting consistently for Democrats since Obama came on the scene. I do tend to hang around smart and educated individuals, and every ethical conservative at this point has defected to voting for Democrats for years now--at least since Trump won.

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