2012-03-05, 03:31 AM
I didn't say useless, I said inferior. With the options we have now, they are an obsolete method of data acquisition except on topics that simply are not recorded yet on the internet. And, no, not all music is boring, fair enough.
And yes, being ignorant of all but the most important things going on in the world is the only way I can stay sane these days. If I had to listen to the news babble on 24 hours a day about how thousands of people got raped last week or a new deadly virus that will wipe out humanity is discovered every month or the utterly stupid pomegranate politicians/businessmen/rednecks/liberals/conservatives/everyone pulls, I would either become suicidal or homicidal. Probably both. The veil of ignorance is my only method of protecting myself from these things; when I see something I don't agree with, it's very hard for me to just "let it go". Here on this site (which is one of the only things I use web browsers for nowadays), where I can't use that ignorance, I have to separate myself by either spending a long time composing a post or flat out waiting until I calm down, else I would seem like a raving lunatic. What it boils down to is, all I really care about in the news are the things that directly affect me, and I'm talking, directly as in, my home is burning to the ground on live broadcast. Everything else is superfluous and just adds to the stress of daily life; I don't handle stress well at ALL, and stacking that on top of everything else wrong with me, that creates a very precarious house of cards. If it builds up to a certain extent I have to leave the room when the TV is on even if it means missing a meal, or tell people to turn off their talk radio in the car, particularly my dad, who listens to Rush, one of the biggest doomsayers on the planet. The last time I put a ton of effort into overcoming this, I ended up in a mandatory intensive inpatient ward for a few weeks, and I'm very lucky I didn't have a permanent schizophrenic break.
The news is fine for some people, if you can handle it and you honestly want to know about all the horrible things going on in the world that may or may not ever affect you and you absolutely will not ever be able to do anything about regardless of how bad it is, then by all means. The only thing the general public can change is things like SOPA/PIPA, and I have a feeling that due to that backlash their next real pushes are going to be entirely kept under wraps until it is passed so we can't do that again.
And yes, being ignorant of all but the most important things going on in the world is the only way I can stay sane these days. If I had to listen to the news babble on 24 hours a day about how thousands of people got raped last week or a new deadly virus that will wipe out humanity is discovered every month or the utterly stupid pomegranate politicians/businessmen/rednecks/liberals/conservatives/everyone pulls, I would either become suicidal or homicidal. Probably both. The veil of ignorance is my only method of protecting myself from these things; when I see something I don't agree with, it's very hard for me to just "let it go". Here on this site (which is one of the only things I use web browsers for nowadays), where I can't use that ignorance, I have to separate myself by either spending a long time composing a post or flat out waiting until I calm down, else I would seem like a raving lunatic. What it boils down to is, all I really care about in the news are the things that directly affect me, and I'm talking, directly as in, my home is burning to the ground on live broadcast. Everything else is superfluous and just adds to the stress of daily life; I don't handle stress well at ALL, and stacking that on top of everything else wrong with me, that creates a very precarious house of cards. If it builds up to a certain extent I have to leave the room when the TV is on even if it means missing a meal, or tell people to turn off their talk radio in the car, particularly my dad, who listens to Rush, one of the biggest doomsayers on the planet. The last time I put a ton of effort into overcoming this, I ended up in a mandatory intensive inpatient ward for a few weeks, and I'm very lucky I didn't have a permanent schizophrenic break.
The news is fine for some people, if you can handle it and you honestly want to know about all the horrible things going on in the world that may or may not ever affect you and you absolutely will not ever be able to do anything about regardless of how bad it is, then by all means. The only thing the general public can change is things like SOPA/PIPA, and I have a feeling that due to that backlash their next real pushes are going to be entirely kept under wraps until it is passed so we can't do that again.