No News Is Good

vinyl_sticker I've griped about this before, and tried to give up the News. As if on some four year cycle, and after this last election fraud revealed the rampant misogyny and racism of the great unwashed, and it's almost opposite of what the local news was slinging, it helped convince me to give it up completely! In 2024, the 'News' has become the STD of America:

  1. It's infected almost every public broadcast channel (NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, FOX) from two to five times a day.
  2. There are cable channels devoted to 24-hour broadcasting of it (CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg, MSNBC).
  3. Entire industries are balanced on the spread and celebration of the birth of new news.
  4. You can subdivide the product into categories and focus on a single one with great success. e.g. Entertainment Tonight, ESPN
  5. The public trust the good-looking actors reading scripted lines fully as 'newscasters' or 'reporters' and not 'shills working for big media'.
  6. Habitual users often act as free promoters of it by repeating the lies script they heard verbatim in daily conversations.
  7. Our mobile phones are filtered reality-bubble gardens of like minded 'news' sources, ignoring the rest that don't sit well with us, thanks to the algorithms designed by others.

No News Is Good

Let's pretend you want your new(s) business of attention addiction to succeed. How are you gonna get as many people hooked quickly as possible?

  • Give it away for free!
  • Make it easy to access (TV, Mobile, App, Radio, Print!)
  • Remove shame of participating in it (Sit and listen, don't think for yourself!)
  • Don't set limits on how many times a day you do it (5am, 7am, 9am, 12pm, 5pm, 6pm, 9pm, 10pm, 11pm, 1am).
  • End every meetup with a reminder about the next one, in just a few short hours, right back here, you lazy fuck.
  • Use buzzwords about yourself like "trust" and "local" to convince skeptics of otherwise. (BTW, they're neither!)
  • Get a trustworthy spokesperson (or two! Make them different races and sexes to appeal to the widest audience!) and put them in front of your clients regularly, make them part of the audience's 'extended' family. Now you own a local celebrity puppet!
  • Might as well hire attractive employees to help drive repeat business. Works for strip clubs, and News!
  • Stimulate those dopamine receptors with traditional story arc delivery (Bad News, Bad News, Good News cycles)

Humans are naturally addicted to things. We long for shortcuts and regular routines. As you know with all addictions, there's no going back to the magical first time you tried it. So, how would you grab someone's attention day after day? Wouldn't they eventually tire of the constant alarm bells you're ringing? Take a lesson from the Felon In Chief: Raise The Stakes! Pick a child rapist for Attorney General to distract from the other hand giving the nuclear launch codes to Russian Oligarch Fuckbuddy Putin? Repeat ad nauseam, until you have achieved nail-biting addiction.

No News Is Good

"But I'm staying informed! I'm supposed to know what's going on in the world!" you cry. Are you really? When was the last time anything on the news actually affected you? And I don't mean they covered the neighborhood house fire on your block (reporting after the fact for what reason? Fire is not a communicable incurable disease...), but when did you hear of a thing on the news that actually affected your life?

Tornado warning? It's an audible siren, or an alert on your mobile device. Amber Alert? Highway sign or mobile alert as well. Some Government Policy? With the glacial pace that the Government operates, it'll be months before you actually experience any effects of it, and even then, it'll probably have no affect on you at all (white? non-immigrant? non-voter?; You'll be fine!) The simple fact is the News reports what happened in the past, to forewarn you of the possibility of it happening again in your own future; simple scare-mongering tactics. The race is who can deliver the news first to the audience, as you know that old news is tomorrows trash. What an odd compulsion they've sold you...

No News Is Good

It's designed to infuriate or stimulate you, not 'inform' you. It's scripted very specifically to do this - the talking heads aren't having a conversation with you, they're reading the teleprompter script! I've noted I can control my anxiety by removing the very things that rile it up, and the source is usually consumed under the guise of 'News gathering': Trolling social media to be pissed by another literal anonymous retard spouting some offensive garbage? Extending the wrinkly old orange one's fifteen minutes of fame far beyond what he deserves? Threatening my peaceful lifestyle with a monkey wrench suggestion of ominous news right after this commercial? I can immediately recognize the manipulation, and I hate them for it.

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No News Is Good

They're all profit-making businesses, generating trillions of dollars in income by way of selling advertising around their core products: devoted repeat attention (Yes, even you PBS!). You want to complain about the billionaire's running the world? This is them! The billions of dollars in Political fundraising is mostly spent on Advertisements running on those same networks, not on staffing. Volunteers do the heavy lifting and shoe-scuffing work of door knocking to promote their Cult leaders, while broadcast executives are raking in millions of dollars a minute for a unending stream of marketing lies and bullshit with absolutely no guilt of being the messenger of someone else's lie.

The real beneficiaries of those massive ad spends is the media: Rupert Murdoch owns Fox News. Some Trump diaper bought CNN, and I noted the shift in tone nearly instantly. The major three broadcasters are all run by Boards of Directors who are paid handsomely in stock options to dictate tone and quell the masses from uprising and rightfully killing the 600 or so 1%ers who are dictating the Kool-Aid recipe.

No News Is Good

The shrinkflation and price gouging you've experienced in the last few years is not some government conspiracy, but a private corporate conspiracy. The government doesn't set retail rates for anything, including Gas prices. Private Corporations do. Those retarded Biden 'I Did This' stickers strategically placed on gas pumps only benefit the original Chinese manufacturer of them who sold them to you on Etsy. Saying that a political party has anything to do with the price of Eggs is a sham. Egg prices are dictated by distribution costs, not numbers of chickens.

The News failed us in even basic fact-checking of the Ads they run continuously. Crime is down, but somehow it's the highest issue for voters? Clearly they watched the Ads and believed the lies in them vs. reading the actual statistics of crime plummeting. I mean, you hired a Convicted Felon over an Attorney General to solve the crime problem, you big fucking dummies! Trump voters fear for prisoners getting free sex change surgery; like we shouldn't provide health care to the incarcerated? What's next? No food for them either? (Agreed, but only when Dolt 45 serves his prison term!)

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.Plato

No News Is Good

Convinced yet? I am. Read my post from 2020 for a whole host of links to others who agree with me and their own logical reasoning behind their decisions. Now what have I done to solve this issue? That is the fucking hard part!

  1. First rule of accountability: tell everyone you know about your new thing, and they'll remind / tease you about it forever. I state in all conversations that I no longer follow the News, and have told my loved ones the same (hey, you're reading my manifesto!) I have yet to stop someone from passing on bad news secondhand (although Taylor Tomlinson dimed out the child rapists Attorney General assignment news last night!), but will deal with that when the time comes. I am freed from all political conversations forever! Best stay silent and mysterious over loud and obviously stupid. This may bite me in the ass when it comes to my conversation skills when I can't contribute, but I'll see.
  2. I had developed a routine of watching what I considered as centrist or international focused News on weekdays - PBS and BBC. It's obvious that every News organization has a political tilt based on ownership, and hearing it only cultivates the bubble in which I don't want to be included. Therefore, I've cold-turkey removed watching TV News from my routine, and now struggle what to do with myself from 6-7:30pm daily (It's weird getting over an addiction!) In its place, I watch Hollywood garbage, which doesn't try and convince me it is reality. (I also wrote about how I avoid commercials earlier...) I also think this blog might see many more entries as I try and fill lost time. At least new posts won't be reactionary pieces about recent news!
  3. I designed this free 'No News Is Good' PDF poster download that I placed next to my Television(s). It's a constant reminder that I dislike and don't want to get 'News' anymore. I'm out! It helps me avoid tuning into channels that carry it. If I can avoid hearing any news for the rest of my life, I think I'll lead a better, less anxious life. You can join the movement too, and download and print your own poster (fits on Letter-sized (8.5" x 11") paper! BTW, that subtle QR code only links you back to this page, so others may join in the fun rebellion.
    color_print_thumb Download Full Color Version (13kb PDF File)
    bw_print_thumb Download Black/White Version (15kb PDF File)
  4. I'd given up many of the attention shitholes on the internet years ago: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit. However, I did install a wide variety of browser plug-ins to block them from possible future visits, and added news-adjacent collectors to the list. Now when I accidentally follow a link to a restricted site, I have to wait 30 seconds, or simply close the tab knowing it's probably useless News anyway. Now I can focus on the topics I want to explore (from internet dweebs like me), and not stay informed about other's achievements.
  5. I filtered my RSS feeds on all devices I (used to) consume News. No more scrolling news feeds from BBC World News on my beloved Tidbyt! My Google home devices have long been taught not to bother me with news headlines, and my mobile is undergoing extensive retraining. For now, I avoid or ignore the newsfeeds built into Android.
  6. I'm working on a javascript/CSS browser plug-in that would automatically remove any element on a web page with the name of our next dictator, so I can avoid the constant attention-mongering by that old fat orange fuck. It's not an impossible task, but it's taking all of my skills to patch together a solution that doesn't break security protocols. I thought I could achieve it with CSS only, but it's unable to sift content easily, and I need to whip out my poor Javascript skills. I'll post about it here if it comes to fruition. This will hopefully strip any wayward mention of him from my eyeholes from here on out! I'll make it a free Chrome Plug-in, promise!

Thanks to my old friend Shrink PDF who fulfilled their namesake and shaved over 90% of the weight of those free PDF downloads! Thanks guys!