Recently, I have been looking at the news. This is because I began to research all this DEI nonsense (the source of several articles). I normally don’t look at the news. But since I was doing it, I thought I would see how I naturally reacted to it. I decided to do this as I am familiar with how news can affect people and wanted to see how I reacted in order to better understand what news does and how it affects people.
What it did not do
What’s interesting is what it did not do:
- It did not make me “informed” or “knowledgeable” about the world. I knew of happenings, but it wasn’t like some education.
- It did not help me or contribute anything to me. In other words, I did not seem to be better off.
- I saw no real benefit in knowing the news. I could of not known the news and it would of had the same effect.
As I was brought up these are things that I was always told the news would do. To be frank, I saw no great value in watching the news.
Negative effects
Some of the negative effects that watching the news did include:
- I began to develop bad feeling about things. Everything seemed to be horrible. I joked that “after watching the news it seems like the world is falling apart”.
- I became appalled and disgusted at things.
- I lost faith in people, society, and the government. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
- I began to get in bad moods. I often was angry, disgusted, and depressed.
- I began to feel helpless. It was like there was nothing I could do about anything.
- I began to get “too involved” with things and began to take things too seriously. I started to get “wrapped up” in things.
- I began to worry about things.
- I began to believe things that, when I think of it latter, was obviously nonsense.
- I couldn’t tell what was important and what wasn’t important.
- I couldn’t tell what was true or what wasn’t true.
I would say that most of my reactions were negative.
Positive effects
Some positive things watching the news did include:
- I found some of the things interesting but not valuable
- It was sort of fun reading about this or that
- There was a thrill in wondering what was next
- From time to time, I found some information beneficial
It’s interesting to note that most of these, it seems to me, have a quality not unlike a game, like playing a computer game. In many ways, that was its dominant positive trait, not because it has valuable and useful information.
The biggest benefit, really, is that I knew of various important happenings and things that were good to know but this was a small percentage of the news and, to be frank, most of it wasn’t that important to know. I could of not known about it and it wouldn’t of changed anything.
Overall impression
In general, my reaction to watching the news was not good. In a way, it showed me a number of things:
- It showed how useless the bulk of the news is. The amount of the news that was actually beneficial would probably be like 1 percent. Most of it was trivial.
- It shows me how a lot of the news is hype, ridiculous, and deceptive. A lot of the news is not really news.
- It seemed that a lot of news is acting more like “business”. They do whatever they think will work so that they can get a sale.
- It showed me that knowing the news isn’t that important or all that beneficial. You could live without it. I have lived for years only knowing a small amount of the news and I survived.
- Watching the news creates a particular world view that is warped and inaccurate. In a sense, the “news world” is something like an “alternate reality”.
I’d say that only a small amount of the news is really relevant and important and worth knowing.
What I was reacting to
I seemed to be reacting to something specific. These include:
- That a lot of news is hype.
- That I was hearing of the absurdity of things, more specifically, the absurdity of the times as well as the absurdities of people, events, society, and the government.
- That a lot of news is trivial. Most of the news that was “believable” was trivial stuff, but it really has no value.
In some sense, the news had a quality much like a filter that filtered these qualities out of life. Because of this, the news created what can be described as a purified hype, absurd, and trivial type of information. This is done to such an extent that it exceeds valuable and meaningful information. This creates something like an “alternate reality” that sounds like reality but isn’t. It can be described as a “filtered reality”.
I suspect that the reason why hype, absurdity, and triviality became so prevalent is simply because it sells. We must remember that news is a business like any other. In some sense, that’s the problem with news. It’s not “news” but “news that sales” which is often not news at all.
The natural reaction to this “filtered reality” is that we react to the “alternate reality” it portrays, of purified hype, absurd, and trivial information. Because it is an “alternate reality” it appears like reality and, accordingly, we react as if it is. In other words, we react to it as if it were real. This reacting to “filtered reality” causes things like:
- A tendency to over react
- A tendency to react in a way that is out of context to life
- A tendency to become engrossed with the “alternate reality”
Avoiding the negative effects
After a while I found that I had to start to avoid the negative effects of the news. In other words, I noticed how I reacted to it and did things to avoid the negative effects. This seemed to happen naturally as I didn’t think about it.
Some things I did include:
- I developed a “thick skin” . . . I become indifferent to anything I didn’t like or bothered me.
- I ignored things.
- I developed contempt for some things and would sneer at it.
- I acknowledged that things were ridiculous, hype, and such and treated it as such.
- I tried to understand what was going on, of how the news distorted things and such.
- I avoided the news.
I have found that many people do similar things though I don’t think many people realize it or notice. In other words, news is something that many people will slowly learn how to “interpret”.
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Here is another article on similar subject:
Thoughts on how to watch the news media with remarks about problems associated with news media
Copyright by Mike Michelsen
Mikes passing thoughts Blog 