A short while back I wrote about how I’ve found a new way to check out the news (tl,dr; I check later in the day now, not first thing in the morning, and I’ve unsubscribed to some news-focused newsletters–imagine that, a newsletter focused on news!). Then I received the latest from Adam Mastroianni’s Experimental History, in which he talks about this very thing!
A pretty good rule of thumb is “don’t do things that make you feel terrible unless you have a very good reason.” I feel terrible when I read the news, because all the headlines are things like “Republicans Vote to Reclassify Plastic as a Vegetable“ or “Birder Murderer Murders Thirty-Third Birder” or “Bradley Cooper Calls Holocaust ‘Big Misunderstanding’”. Sure enough: studies show that reading the news makes people feel bad.
While I have multiple reasons for putting more distance between me and the news, the above quote really nails the main point–reading the news just plain makes me feel bad. Good news stories (as in good news, not the quality of the news story itself) are fairly uncommon, so it’s mostly outrage or things gone wrong or people being mean, dumb or evil. Reading these things doesn’t improve my quality of life, and it takes away time I could spend looking at cats, like these:
And so I’ve decided to join Adam and purge news completely from my daily or weekly routines. I am certain I will still hear about stuff, both good and bad, and I am even more certain I won’t spend any time during the day balling my fist and shaking it at the monitor over something I’ve read. We’ll see.
In the meantime, I can heartily recommend Experimental History, which is presented with wit, intelligence and heart or WIH. Hmm, may need to work on that…
