I never bought a TV when I moved to my own appartment many years ago. Now when I visit people having their TV on in the background it feels like overly loud. Am I getting more sensitive to noise too? It feels like information overflow and the only thing I can do is give up and just disappear into the TV. I never regret not buying that TV 25+ years ago. Now we do have one but it's only used for selected programs a couple of times per week or the odd movie or game. When ads show up, sound is off and we do the dishes or whatever.

I gave up watching TV news at least ten years ago. The combination of owning no television at the time and dial-up Internet virtually eliminated my consumption of always-on visual news. I'm not sure if I'm happier, but the few times I've switched on the news in recent years, I've noticed almost immediately how I felt after viewing.

24-hour TV news is in a position where there is only so much data, but the staff has to keep talking to avoid dead air. What we end up with is mostly speculation and banter without a lot of substance. The next big reveal is always after the commercial break, and there's only enough morsels to keep you watching, never enough to satisfy one's curiosity.

In spite of the urgency with which television news is framed, very little of what makes the news has short-term consequences to me. Typically if there's a situation where I'm affected, I already know about it. The streets are flooding, the phone is receiving alerts, or whatever. Everything else can be reflected upon over a period of time. One thing I've noticed with regards to TV news is how little agency I have as a person over the situations presented. It's a litany of reminders of things we can't control.

I will soon be buying my own house and have vowed that the idiot box won't be a part of it. Also, I am going to make this abundantly clear to my future wife - whoever she may be.

you should still get a tv and hook up Netflix, don't get the damn cable or any other ad infested services

Ditto. I was also surprised how much happier I was when I deleted all the news apps off my phone. I realized that there's really no good reason for most people to get real-time news alerts except to feed an addiction.

I'm confused. How are y'all saying these things on a site called... Hacker.. news?

It may be called HN, but most of what gets posted here is not really "news".

Yes. I would categorize as "bad news" (or "news news") all the FB outrage, policital stuff, the Waymo lawsuit, etc. Bad as in getting to read them for very small content almost everyday doesn't help.

On the other hand, HN is very useful for keeping up with developments in my area, interesting technical articles, insightful discussions. HN is usually not "news news".

Somewhat agree as I'm not as depressed as when I'm on reddit. But just in the past few weeks we've had things like: active shooter on youtube campus, all the facebook doom and gloom, cell phones cause cancer in male rats (I think I got that from hacker news), China's social credit system, etc.

I have a friend who actually doesn't follow the news (I'm not sure he knows what cambridge analytica is yet) and he tells me all the time how doom and gloom I am just from reading hacker news.

HN is a liberal echo chamber identical to all other social media where all dissenting viewpoints get suppressed.

The truth is HN is Reddit, but with a better interface and a smarter crowd.

HN's bubble is a bit more tone-sensitive, where rowdy rabble-rousing from any side usually gets squashed...but the thresholds of tolerance are a bit skewed with softly-worded comments.

Carefully crafted traditional/conservative comments do get voted up, particularly if written knowing that they're addressing a potentially hostile audience. Those posting progressive viewpoints can generally get away with more blunt/aggressive language.

Others would classify it as "conservative" or "libertarian" rather than "liberal". Which really means it's not a very effective "echo chamber". You will read opinions different than your own on HN. If that's upsetting to you, HN may not be your cup of tea.

I don't think anyone would classify the HN crowd as "conservative" in the US political spectrum sense. Libertarian I can see, but I don't think I've ever seen socially conservative posts/comments voted up.

I watch TV occassionally while cleaning the apartment etc., but only the public broadcasters' documentary channels. No ads, no breaking news, no day-to-day politics. The only thing that annoys me is when a historical documentary pushes its narrative of what's good and what's bad without allowing for any shade of gray inbetween.

How do you stay up to day?

Ideally Id like a weekly review or something where I can spend 30min.

I recongnise it would be beneficial to give up news, but I need to know a bit about whats going on to be social.

" but I need to know a bit about whats going on to be social. "

I've found that I don't, nearly as much as I would have thought.

If people really want to talk about a current event, you can usually get a lot of mileage out of asking them to explain what's going on.

"oh yeah? I didn't hear about that, what happened?"

people like getting to be the expert, they usually don't care about our hot take nearly as much as we like to imagine them caring

Exactly. I just let other people obsess over news. They’ll filter through the 99% garbage and I’ll pick up whatever is actually important through them.

I know people in my family whose eyes are glued to news all the time and it’s kind of sad. Blowing all that attention on stuff that ultimately does not affect you.

For the most part why does it matter?

98% of news is of no import. The tiny fraction that will impact our lives to significant degree or have global effect will be almost impossible to miss.

You didn't need to watch the nightly bulletin or check a news site to hear of climate change, the US presidential election, Brexit and so on. You'd get to hear of those almost regardless of where you hang out on the internet.

The rest probably makes no difference to your life.

You could check out Wikipedia's "Current events" page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

I didn't know about that page. That looks quite like I want. Thank you.

The internet changed from an informational "push" method to making it possible and easy to "pull" "just" the information a person is interested in.

Similar to others, I stopped watching the news 10 years ago. Yes, fatal car accidents and scary robberies are unfortunate and tragic but also fairly rare. The worry the news causes is irrational. The news would just stir up FUD and stress, because under FUD people are less likely to think and more likely to follow commands, even "benign" ones and subtle hints like "buy this toothpaste to have a 'socially' acceptable white smile". It's not a social standard, it's a company forcing their standard on the public to make it a social and peer force because the company stands to benefit from it. I feel less compelled to go to a store and buy new electronics and gadgets and a plethora of other things. I spend less time chasing the things TV and media attempts to tell us all to obtain.

Being aloof to the gossip, rumors, and controversies of the "news" seems pro-social to me because it allows you to discuss these issues with people in a more civil manner simply because you are not so emotionally charged over the issues as those who obssesively ruminate on them.

I had a newsletter that went out once a week and summarized the 10 most "important" news happenings of the previous week. Not gossip or politics or entertainment but "this happened and here is why it matters."

Granted I could have marketed it better but there was very little interest.

Ah,

I would have been very interested in that. Too bad there was not enough interest for you to continue.

While I understand the sentiment, I don't think it's fair to deprive yourself of a form of entertainment (i.e owning a TV) because there are commercials. If that were the case, wouldn't you have given up on the internet a long time ago due to the nature of ads and propaganda being everywhere?

On the internet ive used an ad blocker since the ads started showing up on the internet.

I watch plenty of movies and TV series from sources with no ads.

Entairtainment content is much worse then commercials. If PowerRangers are stupid for you, to me all movies and shows are as stupid as PowerRangers, as all of them use fake character building to touch someone's heart (mom got cancer, dad left, girlfriend cheating) they include 'all of the above' to touch as much of the audience as possible, only small part are passive and cold to the lure reach, most are lured in and hooked and are now users of the entairtainment industry. Facebook (friend news) and real news are no beter then this, not even sports are better then this nowdays, before sports were about sport now they use the same techniques as fiction novels and movies do, they build character, they show life of Shaqile Oneal what he does when he doesn't play for instance charity donations, community reach etc, they make stars out of players and everyone has their favorite, muslims like Ronaldo cuz he been to a mosque, jews like Messi cuz, well whatever u get the point, noone would watch South American volleyball or basketball team or Saudi Arabian football league because why, yes u guessed it, you don't know anyone there, there are no characters, only those people there know the players so they watch them. And what happens after the game, an hour of talk "player did this he did that, couach did this did that, should have done that and this and instead now we have this, he gets what he asked for, need a better coach" or whatever, then you listen to those people analyze the game to get you thinking, get your thoughts circling around the same thing, then you go to a bar with your friends order a beer and repeat the same thing those people on tv said, or you throw in your own opinion, cuz who needs those stupid analyzers on tv when you know better, Zlatan Ibrahimovic yey, no I really like that guy as a dude, I could care less about his abilities, I mean he's the new Chuck Norris, he hurt his knees went to a doctor and the doctors wanted to study him because of how good of a shape his knees were haha... anyway, cocky dude. But he's real, noone made him out like that, he made his own character. It's because we do in real life remember characters as we perceive them with values we recognize, because the ones we don't recognize we just havent learned yet, but the problem with fake characters is that they are fake, and people who watch more then 8 hours a day of tv shows or sports really get immersed into those characters that it's a disease, it's an addiction that hasn't been diagnosed yet, Tupac said he didn't promote Thug Life he diagnosed it, he really did. If average US citizen watches 8 hours a day of TV, that means that on the extreme ends of this line there's a dude who watches 0 hours of TV, I saw a guy comment here he don't watch TV, but then this also means that there's that dude who watches 16 horus a day, everything over 2hrs a day is a disease, if you don't know how to select what you watch, and I do mean if you don't watch 'Life of Birds' "Planet Earth" and other shows narrated by David Attenborough you are being dummbed down by occupying your mind with thoughts of the round ball, players, fake characters, made up stories that touch your heart and soul, you're an addict of a storyline and the only place you actually think is while taking a shit on the toilet because there is no TV there, but sometimes even there you bring your cell phone or a news paper and out of a 100% of the day you turn the thinking part of the brain on for 0% and now it's just repetitious things like, today they scored 75, tomorrow 65, tomorrow 32, fauls 32, etc, when you ask a person what you think about so and so, most will not actually 'think' but rather will just pull out an already thought-out thought they had prepared earlier when they were sitting on the toilet thinking, as when you watch tv you don't really think, you just emotionaly invest yourself and your memory to those characters, unless you can rise above this and tune it out , watching static on tv, or a turned off tv, or better yet wathing a blank wall of your house is much healthier than watching tv if you do not choose what to watch, and i do mean documentaries about knowledge that is good and not knowledge how to rob a bank and brew coke, i mean either history biology sciences religion sociology etc etc, all other is a waiste of life and of time. It's really bad when people start to tell me about what they saw on TV, sports or Turkish series, and I'm like if I wanted to waste my time I'd watch it myself, you don't have to advertise it for me. So no, ads are not actually worse then the actual content, ads are just selling product, but also using the same techique, character building, where they have cute fuzzy little animals or hearts or baby faces on toilet paper, dude why is there a baby on my toilet paper plastic wrapper/bag/container, is it because the toilet paper is soft and babies cheeks are also soft, or is it because the paper is soft enough for a babies soft butt, idk, but this is just so it's cute and you buy it, i mean you can't really sell toilet paper with Hitler's face on it now can you. So no, propaganda is in the movies and the entairtainment, only you don't see it, all of these things are there put in place to take away your thinking time of the day where you could be thinking smart thoughts, as Einstein did in his 'thinking room', they lure you in to think about them, and to subscribe for 5.99 Nba APP, and even if you don't , yo might think they don't get nothing from me, yes they do, you go and tell your family about sports movies and then they buy it, your friends buy it, the whole world is hooked. As my grandmother used to say, 'you can't sit on two chairs with one ass' you can either study or go to bar, not both at the same time, but while you watch tv you're not reading about "light, frequency, electromagnetism, synesthesia, fungi" idk universe? there are many things we don't know and ahvent learned but we settle for some dudes rolling a circular round ball or throwing it and we sit there brain dead and stare at the idiot box and when someone says idiot box we say no tv doesn't make you stupider, no it just makes you a smart idiot who could be talking to his daughter but rather instead watches tv where there is a fake dad talking to his fake daughter and you cry inside, it's all a trick to separate you from family, and while you might think watching tv together is a form of communication, no communication happens while watching some other people do their thing while you don't do anything you just watch, all you do is watch and you don't do anything, people are zombies. Thats why i turned off facebook and I'm here now on Hacker news as there is smart educational content here and not just gossip, i have to stop writing now my blood pressure is climbing. Try to stay away from TV for a few days, you'll get the same reaction as trying to stay away from cigarettes, and mind you, nicotine exits the blood stream fairly quickly so on the third day all there is is the psychological addiction as the physical nicotine is long gone. habbits are very powerful and whats inertia, resistance to change. Change dude, dont watch TV don't let them make u a sucker, you're not a sucker are you, you are if you wanna be, don't be, read a book, not a fiction book, book of knowledge, here'a an author Al Ghazali, go see what he did. Iron is not a native element of Earth, it's formed in stars much hotter then our Sun, Sun is not hot enough to create the element, so it descended down to earth and now it's here, and we make useful things from it and there's hemoglobin too. Turn the TV off.