Ignorance is bliss

How do you consume news? Now a sensible person might ask back, "What even is news these days?" Yes, that’s a very valid question. I think the idea of what is news depends upon the person. What is news for me might be absolute garbage for you, and vice versa. It depends on age, gender, education, circle of friends, etc. That really broadens the sphere of news. What the idea of news was 20 years ago has changed drastically. While on the one hand geopolitical conflict between two countries is news for some people, which celebrity followed or unfollowed whom on Instagram is also news for some.

This broadening of the horizon of news has also, in turn, increased the amount of news that gets pumped out every day. On top of that, if you also account for synthetic news that is pumped out as propaganda or disinformation, things get really overwhelming. That’s why my question is, how do you consume news?

Now I have asked this question to my friends and family, and one thing invariably true is that most people consume news primarily via the internet and that too via social media. One interesting answer was “YouTube thumbnails.” So they are not even watching videos; they are just glancing at the thumbnails of YouTube videos. Well, this is the current state of the attention economy.

The attention economy thrives on two things these days—clickbait and rage-bait. And this has seeped directly into our news ecosystem. Which is why social media and YouTube are the two worst ways to get to know about the world.

Now I, personally, don’t care about social media dramas, celebrities, political news, etc. I don’t use any social media anyway. So, I have no knowledge of what’s trending, what’s viral, or whatever. The only way I could know any of this is if somebody tells me.

For me, print media is the way. This could be in the form of a newspaper or their online website. But nobody is doing a public service; everybody has an agenda, and everybody has a business to run. As reading is becoming less and less, people are having less and less patience; it’s evident that these print media companies will also cut some of their journalistic corners. And this has led to almost every newspaper pushing more and more sensational news to grab the attention and to keep the engagement going on. The Hindu and The Indian Express are the only two newspapers that are worth reading. But The Hindu is too political, and The Indian Express is decent, but their website is filled with masala news these days.

Another of my issues is there’s too much news. Things go on for a few days and weeks, and then suddenly poof! nothing. Something else is viral; something else is concerning. What’s even the point of keeping up? I’m fine with knowing five news items on a daily basis, but how do I cope with hundreds of news items?

Now, I come to my final issue, which is how news affects me. Being a human, I’m also subjected to emotions (what?), so when I read news that someone was raped, murdered, or something else happened, it affects me too—whether that’s anger, sympathy, empathy, disgust, or whatever. Now my point is these things happened somewhere in the world or in my country or city—and I can’t do anything about it. So, what’s even the point of knowing about it if it’s the current state of the world? And you read such news on a day-to-day basis; after a while you either get so desensitized that you don’t care about such things anymore or go so pessimistic that you can’t trust anything or enjoy anything—everything looks so bleak to you.

So what do I do? Well, for the most part I’m cut off from your average internet feeds. I’m not on any social media. I have no idea which trend is going on, what is viral currently, or what the ongoing political issue is. I obviously don’t consume news from YouTube. Two newspapers I mentioned earlier are the best ones if you want the best way to consume news, but I have stopped reading them as well. They are also prone to drama. What I have observed is that business/finance-specific newspapers are the perfect balance of everything. They only report things that concern the economy—which I think is a good barometer for the news that I should consume as a rational person. I like two newspapers, Live Mint and Business Standard. Now please stay away from the website of Live Mint—because they have also given in to cheap news items for obvious reasons. But they do offer RSS feeds for specific news categories, which is good because that’s my preferred form of content consumption these days. In an upcoming post, I will share in detail how that works.

That’s it. This is how I’m not completely out of the loop but also not flooded with the absolute noise of everything that is going on in the world.

But that’s just me. I know people who love drama, who like reading and knowing about all such negative and horrendous news. And these are the kinds of news that they prefer to read or watch. And that’s why news publications or your social-media content creators keep pumping out such news. I can’t even tolerate social media, so maybe my tolerance for content is, anyway, very low. For me, ignorance is bliss. The less I know the better I feel.