Why You Shouldn’t Follow the News

The media makes more money the more viewers they attract. How do they get more viewers? By sensationalizing the absolute shit out of everything.

One of the best, most proven ways to get people to keep coming back for more is to scare them. The economy is collapsing! No one is safe! You’re about to be jobless and your family will starve! Be sure to check back with us tomorrow on the progress of the collapsing economy, the end of the world, and the probability that a murderer is lurking in your neighborhood.

If they said everything is dandy and things are going well, then you would feel comfortable going out and happily living your life without being glued to the tv/internet/newspaper…but they don’t want that. If that happened, they’d be jobless.

They want to rope you in. They want to scare you, then they want to be the mommy you run to when things get scary. The mommy who tells you everything is gonna be okay, mommy loves you. Except instead of comforting you they make a scary face and growl at you and laugh as you run away because they know you’ll be back soon. You’re addicted to the drama. Drama from ya mama.

The truth is that things aren’t as bad as they say. Sure, things have been better. Throughout the entirety of human history, things always could have been better, just like things always could have been worse. Things just are.

You wanna know the kicker to it all? It’s funny, even ironic. Even if everything they said were true, there would be nothing you could do about it.

Nothing. There’s literally nothing you can do to fix a supposedly failing economy. There’s nothing you can do to prevent terrorist attacks. There’s nothing you can do to prevent the next psycho killer from wiping out a bunch of innocent kids. Nothing.

That means you’re glued to the news, which is all negative, and there’s nothing you can do about the negative. Why are you doing this to yourself? Are you a masochist? Why are you needlessly filling your mind with negativity and manufactured drama?

“But I need to know what’s going on!”

No, you don’t. What’s that? You’ll feel stupid if people are talking about some sh*tty current event and you have nothing to add? They should feel stupid for complaining about sh*t they can’t change.

If someone asks you what you think about some such event, all you have to say is, “I don’t really follow the news. It’s all negative and we can’t change any of it anyway so I try to avoid it.” In my experience, the person will usually agree with you and respect the message.

Completely cutting the news out of your life is impossible if you don’t live alone in the woods. You’re going to hear about the major things, like if an asteroid is due to obliterate Earth, if a killer is on the loose in your neighborhood, or if Justin Bieber is rumored to have mentioned in passing a slight dissatisfaction with his current hairstyle, meaning he may be getting a haircut soon. O-M-G

As for everything else, stop watching and reading the news for a week (preferably a month), and use that time instead to read fiction, watch a documentary, or have a conversation with a loved one. Then step back and honestly consider whether or not your life has been better in that week or month than it was before. I guarantee it will have been better, because you’re cutting out a huge chunk of needless negativity, and replacing it with something positive. Then turn that week or month into forever.

If you’re not 100% satisfied, I will refund 100% of your money, no questions asked.