Non-Americans are also exhausted by US political news…
Lemmy gets better once you filter out:
Trump says
Trump wants
Trump demands
Trump claims
Trump will
Trump threatens
Musk says
Musk wants
Musk demands
Musk claims
Musk will
…that way you don’t have to see the media frantically reporting on every stupid word vomit as if no lessons were learned over the past 10 years. Ragebait headlines is part of the problem, and I will take no part in it.
That was my knee-jerk reaction as well, but sometimes news about them are actually newsworthy. I just was to filter out proof that news media never learned anything in 2016, and block all the stupid shit they say. When they do anything worth reporting on, that’s when I might be interested.
I added RFK to my list as I work in pharma so I can’t stand his nonsense, and I had to go back and add Elon as well, because they call him either equally as much and I was wondering why I was still seeing that dumbass in my feed.
Originally I was worried about missing out on important info. Listening to some people talk about it in one of my podcasts, they mentioned they were tired of seeing people say Trump will do this or that, they only care about hearing about what people are going to do about the dumb stuff he says and does.
That struck me, as firstly, he normally doesn’t do the majority of stuff he says, and secondly, if he does actually do anything of significance, I’ll see it on AP or NPR. If I don’t see it that way, that means nobody is fighting to stop it anyway.
I know everything these clowns do is going to be bad or stupid, I don’t need to constantly be told that because I already know. I want to hear the names of who is going to do something about it, or I don’t want to hear about them at all in my Lemmy feed, which is supposed to be fun or educational for me.
Other news that is less engaging can deliver the bad news when it needs to, but if I control my feed here, I’m going to make it less frustrating. Reading about these jerks the last few years has done any good.
This is by design. As cited here: https://jordanrussiacenter.org/blog/propaganda-political-apathy-and-authoritarianism-in-russia
Russian propaganda derives its effectiveness from political apathy rather than its ability to persuade. Because citizens understand that their actions cannot affect the autocrat’s policies, they invest only minimal resources in acquiring political information or thinking about politics at all. This state of affairs, in turn, leads to a very superficial processing of information. Citizens use narratives imposed by the Kremlin as frameworks for interpreting political events, but do not incorporate them fully and do not formulate consistent political opinions. In other words, propaganda works because citizens are not interested enough in politics to form consistent opinions to challenge—or support—authoritarian rule.
And it isn’t new either. From 1922: https://www.jstor.org/stable/6376?seq=2
Consequently to-day the average citizen confesses he really does not know what the facts are in this and many other important issues. He has been deluged with facts, near-facts and falsifications put forth by interested parties, so that he has a mass of undigested and conflicting ideas on these subjects, or else has become frankly partisan to one view.
Yep, it’s not enough to be realistic instead of pessimistic.
Like, people need to be aware the current system is just a ruse, but it also needs to come with a plausible way out so people don’t just give up and disengage.
But if they do, you can’t shout them into re-engaging. That just drives them away further.
You convince them that it might be different this time. Not even the guarantee, just a semi plausible chance that things could improve if they re-engage.
As you pointed out all this is widely studied in sociology, it’s not some secret knowledge no one has. There’s just no money in it, so sociologists can’t influence the parties when both parties use donation amounts as the only metric when picking leadership.
There’s a couple good picks for the DNC election on 2/2/25, but there’s a very good chance the double down and vote based on who brought in the most donations. If they do that, we need to mobilize a third party asap for 2028.
In 2008, Obama pulled off a surprising victory against establishment favorite Hilary Clinton, mainly off the back of a swell of online, small dollar donations. In his first term, among other things like stabilizing the economy in the midst of what we called The Great Recession (dumb name, I know, though a lot of people did lose their houses and jobs), he gave everyone health insurance subsidized by the government via taxes on health insurance and pharma companies, as well as Medicaid expansion. While not ideal, this was both realistically doable with the degree of Congressional support at the time, and a massive improvement over the previous system.
For some reason people have forgotten this in their zeal to pressure the dem party. I do get that, though I think it’s important to retain a degree of memory of what actually happened and why. Anyway, are we really sure a third party is necessary, when it is possible to simply win this one?
Or even that great of an idea? Because unless you pulled all the dems with you, you’re just leaving a dominant repub party by helping them divide and conquer. This is very frustrating, no question, but so is life sometimes.
I think some have forgotten it. But I think more people either weren’t paying attention back then, or were so young that they didn’t even know what was happening. I’d hazard a guess the younger the voters, the more they think the democrats are always terrible and never get anything done and primaries don’t do anything.
Not to say there aren’t older people who think the same, just my guess about why we get so many people insisting the democrats are just as awful and not fixable so they stupidly think a third party would be better despite that just removing their power as people.
This is why America is the way it is, Americans will never admit that their country is garbage. It’s ALWAYS Russias fault. lmfao
the entire point of misinformation campaigns is not to misinform citizens but to wear down the electorate into preferring ignorance
This comment should be highlighted.
As if the American electorate was ever really informed at large to begin with. I’ve been hopeful that we’re seeing the start of a new age of enlightenment like the one that preceded the French revolution. But if the source of knowledge becomes detestable (enshitification of the internet) it may be slowed or stopped all together.
Yup.
I’m done.
There’s no room left for doubt. Americans are braindead stupid and our media is an international joke. After the election I stopped watching anything political. Made the jump from Reddit to Lemmy. And I’m only seeing this post because I was browsing ALL.
On inauguration day I plan on only browsing my local subs going forward. I don’t need to be more ashamed of being American or know what clown car bullshit Donald Trump and his enablers have done that day to embarrass us on the world stage.
We’ve committed as a society to a degradation of our nation and that’s what we’re going to get. I don’t need to watch that process under a microscope.
I’m in this camp as well. I followed the news closely the entire Trump administration and through the Biden administration, and despite knowing everything this prick had done the American electorate either shrugged it all off or didn’t follow any of it and reelected his ass.
Nothing positive came of me knowing about Trump’s every bowel movement via crappy media posts. Many voters didn’t even know Biden had dropped out of the race.
I don’t think the “Trump is good for ratings” media outlets anticipated this reaction of ours, but the nightmare scenario of a second Trump term has already arrived and the media – if they had any effect – aided him in his return to power. I’m through with clicking on the bait and pretending that “democracy dies in darkness” and subscribing to the same newspapers that help push right-wing narratives in an effort to appear unbiased.
Edit: I am, however, subscribed to a number of things via RSS to stay informed without being part of their clickbait games. I cannot recommend enough people going back to RSS.
Sounds like you are fed up of the poor quality circus coverage that passes for mainstream media news.
Perhaps you can find some better quality news and consume it at a time and place of your choosing? Maybe limit it to 10 minutes a day or a week?
It is understandable that you might turn to apathy having the news equivalent of highly processed, poor quality fast food shovelled into your face all the time; especially given how powerless to change these things we can feel. But you may be able to take back some control of your media diet.
It’s not the quality of the content. I’m responsible when it comes to my sources. It’s the sheer volume of legitimate depressing news making it crystal clear that our society is amoral and uneducated and that I’m probably not going to see too much progress in my lifetime and will probably struggle as much, or more, than I currently am until I’m dead. I could be getting my news from the absolute best, most unbiased sources and still be getting overwhelmed by utterly depressing developments that add up to a really grim outlook for the future.
Same here, I was already using Lemmy but I deleted the Reddit app the day of the election, and I actively avoid political news on any social media. I’m super done with it all and just focusing on myself.
Focusing on yourself is pretty much all you can do. If a society chooses to enter a downward spiral, then there’s not much an individual can do to change that. We’re just gonna have to spiral until we hit rock bottom and then hope Americans have what it takes to piece it all back together. Probably gonna be a lot of suffering and death before that happens though.
The next four years are in part going to be about Trump and his assortment of grifters, nut jobs, and ass kissers doing all they can to troll anyone not in their club. Damn straight I’m not tuning in for that.
