My leftist friends have suddenly stopped reading the news…

[FingerRod]

Over the past few weeks, really going back to Christmas, I started noticing a trend. All of the same people who parroted Don Lemon or ABC News have suddenly announced that they no longer read the news.

Someone brings up inflation? Don’t read the news. Canadian protests? Don’t read the news. Russia and China preparing to invade? Have heard about it, but don’t read the news. It is too depressing they say, so they avoid it.

So what have they turned to? Gossip. Rumors that the new school board member, elected because he is conservative, is a pedo. Teachers they have talked to in the next state can be sued by parents for 10k for teaching about slavery because of anti-CRT laws.

Word of mouth and duck and cover appears to be the new strategy. Please tell me this is only in my relatively small, midwestern US bubble.

[oggsmash]

  Well, when the news features things like gangbusters inflation, potential WW3, DoE hires who loves to talk non stop about their puppy play and various kinks, and now a very inconvenient conclusion to that Durham report....why read it?   

    They might be a little tired of reading about Trump too, since he seems to remain the number one topic of many news agencies.   The bringing everyone together spiel Biden shat out is not really happening, and those shithead far right, ultraconservative crazy people are starting to get super involved in local politics.  So it is likely depressing as hell for left of center (though I do not know where the center is, since the center is waaaay left of center 30 years ago) people.

[3catcircus]

Over the past few weeks, really going back to Christmas, I started noticing a trend. All of the same people who parroted Don Lemon or ABC News have suddenly announced that they no longer read the news.

Someone brings up inflation? Don’t read the news. Canadian protests? Don’t read the news. Russia and China preparing to invade? Have heard about it, but don’t read the news. It is too depressing they say, so they avoid it.

So what have they turned to? Gossip. Rumors that the new school board member, elected because he is conservative, is a pedo. Teachers they have talked to in the next state can be sued by parents for 10k for teaching about slavery because of anti-CRT laws.

Word of mouth and duck and cover appears to be the new strategy. Please tell me this is only in my relatively small, midwestern US bubble.

I'd suggest breaking out the eyeclamps a la A Clockwork Orange and make them read the news...

[Ghostmaker]

Insert infamous scene from Boondocks here, heh.

In any case, no, I haven't noticed it, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I will note the tenor in the news seems to be getting a bit more... frantic.

Honk honk.

[KingCheops]

Tell them to come to the libertarian or reactionary right wing and they'll probably actually love it.  Plus our trad wives are all awesome bakers so they'll have unlimited tasty cakes and cookies.  I seriously think my wife is trying to kill me through cooking.

[Banjo Destructo]

From my experience, people who are true believers will stop paying attention to things that contradict their vision of the communist revolution, so they are ignoring the news because it doesn't match their constructed reality because they don't want to be confronted with the fact that they may have been supporting the bad guys all along.

I was never a lefty so I have no useful advice for getting them to come back from the ledge of leftism.

[jhkim]

Over the past few weeks, really going back to Christmas, I started noticing a trend. All of the same people who parroted Don Lemon or ABC News have suddenly announced that they no longer read the news.

Word of mouth and duck and cover appears to be the new strategy. Please tell me this is only in my relatively small, midwestern US bubble.

For what it's worth, I haven't noticed it as a new trend in my leftist circles. There have always been people who don't read the news, but I haven't noticed it growing. In my experience, only reading alternative media rather than mainstream news is slightly more common among conservatives, but it happens among people of different politics. (Obviously, different sides turn to different alternative sources.)

I think the news in general has been getting increasingly partisan and click-baity. Because they have to compete with social media for attention, they are following similar strategy of slanting the narratives. I read the news mostly to keep up with discussions like these, but I don't consider it a good or necessary source of information for life in general.

[Pat]

Ratings for mainstream propaganda is in the sewer. The outrage machine hanging on Trump's every tweet withered in 2021, and drumbeat of panic surrounding the pandemic has faded into background noise for a lot of people. People care about the economy, but it's not sensational enough to drive ratings. There's also the rejection of MSM in general: Joe Rogan gets 11 million listeners to CNN's 820,000, and even Tucker Carlson or the Five only hover around 3 million.

https://nypost.com/2022/01/12/cnn-sees-ratings-dive-by-90-from-2021-coverage/
https://americasbestpics.com/picture/chief-2021-media-ratings-nerd-average-viewers-per-show-millions-7mTrjnKD9

[Trond]

That could explain a thing or two. Some of my wife's friends still think that there is a strong case that Trump colluded with Russia