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Comment by rightbyte | Hacker News Reader

> It is not something one can run from and everyone will eventually be exposed to it.

Oh you can. Just don't visit news sites or watch news TV channels. Paper news papers are way better and don't shove stuff down your throat the same way as rage baiting "this just in" news outlets -- who talks for a day about vague rumors.

I think people zoning out from the spam one thing news cycle is the reason The Man decided to start pushing propaganda in the Windows start menu and Facebook feed or whatever.

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Yeah, I am not sure it's actually the being aware part, it's the pressure to performatively take a stand - "upvote this comment to change the world" sort of stuff, which turns into "you're a bad person for not upvoting" through the social media treadmill. Stating your position unequivocally as possible and/or demonizing your opponents acting like an influencer gets more clout than actually volunteering or working on problems. It's got to be a nightmare if you fall into that cycle and it seems a lot of kids do.

> actually volunteering or working on problems.

This is a huge problem for communities. The same people that you'd want to run the local kids hockey association or sewer board are drowning in work.

I think the fundamental problem is that society has become to competitive, optimized and effective for our own good.

Like, you'd want the genius entrepreneur guy to run a pub, not some 100 million dollar tech company.

You notice that when visiting poorer countries, that normal people have restaurants and that they are way better. Where as restaurants where I live are run by shady bad people to a big extent -- and by bad people I mean both in a moral sense and a practical sense.

Agreed. There's a world of emotional difference between being philosophically and abstractly aware that the world has a lot of suffering, and spending each day reading/watching/listening up on the fresh new hell of the hour.

Paper News is just as bad regarding this. You’re more likely to see shelves full of celebrity gossip mags at the checkout than you are to find spotlight journalism.

So it’s not the format. It’s our nature to want to understand what’s on the minds of people we care about.

Although I agree the scale in which we are exposed to shit on the internet is unprecedented, I disagree that we can run from it.

Just go to a library. Start browsing. Eventually you will stumble upon a book about the Secons World War. Or about Rwanda... In the information era, you will be exposed accidentally to these kinds of stuff, and learning to recognize that and to develop strategies that prevent this exposure to numb us I think is much more effective than trying to run away from it.

Ye well I didn't mean running away from eventually knowing something, but rather running away from the nagging propaganda spam.

Yes... This really is a problem. Coupled with the fact that big social networks are designed to maximize engagement, they work in a way that depending on how you interact with it you get fed only the worst most horrifying news articles. I see that with my parents. Talking to them and seeing their feeds it looks like the world is ending before we had time to prepare for dinner today.

My mother had her Iphone with all default app notifications enabled. It was a nightmare. I disabled them all except Whatsapp and Messenger at some point. But I imagine that is how most people phones look like?

Or you just dehumanize those suffering.

... it is an easy road to go down on. In politics you can notice politicians start blaming the voters for not voting in a way that they can get a majority but have to cooperate with other parties.

You’re not supposed to run from it, you’re supposed to help. Only a sociopath would turn away from suffering and not try to help.

That is not my point. I am all for helping those in need. The main problem with trying to help is that "trying to help" and "doing something" way to often is used as an excuse to drop bombs over people. Trying to help should be boring and long term and is not what is propagated in the spam news cycle nowadays.

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