I think your problem (regardless of its causes) is to aggregate your news better. There are some worthy news every now and then, and completely cutting out news consumption makes one rather stupid and blind (to trends, to global affairs, …). Considering we currently lack effective tools for aggregation, going cold turkey can be worth the costs (assuming the most important news are received via our social circle). I personally prefer to pay the costs of aggregating my news, which I currently do by subscribing to a few RSS blogs, lobste.rs top posts, hacker news +500 posts, a few Telegram channels (themselves news aggregators), TLDR newsletter, and O’reilly’s monthly trends newsletter.
I don’t think cutting my mass media consumption would make me blind to trends. For example, the big political trend these days is advocated for on the homepage of a webcomic I read three times per week, graffitied twice on the path from my house to the nearest grocery store and displayed in giant bold sans-serif on Amazon’s AWS sign-in page. Two of my immediate family members actively participate as leaders in the streets and hundreds of protesters marched through my neighborhood while I was working out in the park. When the city police repeatedly teargassed the protesters I received a series of emergency curfew notifications on my phone from the city government. Such trends are hard to miss.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
If I had trusted mass media then I would have under-prepared for COVID-19 instead of starting a company to mass produce preventative equipment the day the virus was discovered in my country. I even ordered masks many weeks before the virus was discovered in the USA. This all happened months into a period where I had stopped following the news.
That said, I absolutely agree that there are no good tools for aggregation. I might reconsider the value of news if someone could build a good AI to filter it for me.
I think your problem (regardless of its causes) is to aggregate your news better. There are some worthy news every now and then, and completely cutting out news consumption makes one rather stupid and blind (to trends, to global affairs, …). Considering we currently lack effective tools for aggregation, going cold turkey can be worth the costs (assuming the most important news are received via our social circle). I personally prefer to pay the costs of aggregating my news, which I currently do by subscribing to a few RSS blogs, lobste.rs top posts, hacker news +500 posts, a few Telegram channels (themselves news aggregators), TLDR newsletter, and O’reilly’s monthly trends newsletter.
I don’t think cutting my mass media consumption would make me blind to trends. For example, the big political trend these days is advocated for on the homepage of a webcomic I read three times per week, graffitied twice on the path from my house to the nearest grocery store and displayed in giant bold sans-serif on Amazon’s AWS sign-in page. Two of my immediate family members actively participate as leaders in the streets and hundreds of protesters marched through my neighborhood while I was working out in the park. When the city police repeatedly teargassed the protesters I received a series of emergency curfew notifications on my phone from the city government. Such trends are hard to miss.
If I had trusted mass media then I would have under-prepared for COVID-19 instead of starting a company to mass produce preventative equipment the day the virus was discovered in my country. I even ordered masks many weeks before the virus was discovered in the USA. This all happened months into a period where I had stopped following the news.
That said, I absolutely agree that there are no good tools for aggregation. I might reconsider the value of news if someone could build a good AI to filter it for me.