Approaching info with skepticism

I've been using artifact.news lately. It's Kevin Systrom 's ( Instagram co-founder) new reading app. Its mission is to take control of your information diet.

I'm reading on various topics there to see the quality of recommendations that I get from there.

So, yesterday, here I go reading, and read in the "health" section about Americans getting killed in Mexico, trying health tourism. Immediate rush of cortisol. Emotions felt: anger, injustice, sadness, etc. Not for what this article describes, but the journalist that had the boldness to put it's name behind the article.

As an intellectually defensible person, I investigate the sources of the article and find out it's bullshit.

Journalists nowadays are mostly sensationalists. This is what gets them their bonus. Most humans are slaves to the money, aka they sacrifice their internal values for money. I believe independent journalists publishing on Substack and getting paid with Patreon may save journalism.

Journalists use a specific model that I call "The Venn of Sensationalism", and today, my goal is to arm you mentally agaisnt this weapon of theirs.

The Venn of S can be summarized quite quickly, it's the intersection of 2 hot topics. These areas do not intersect in reality, but these create "trendy" articles.

In the example over, 2 topics intersect: healthcare, which is a sensitive/hot topic in the US, and Mexican NarcWars. The ladder is also related to The Wall, and will be a 10/10 fit for Trumpers, emotional/explosive folks. This = more views, more interactions.

There are countless other examples out there of this at play.

• AI/ChatGPT and evil human nature.
• Layoffs and Elon Musk
• Black lives matter and AI
• Inflation and Layoffs
• You get the point

Infuse the Venn strat with other sensationalist models, ie headlines depicting strong emotions "This mother of 7 made something so horrible you'll throw up", and Big Media gets mass money while population suffers.

Big Media sabotaging human brains eventually leads to breakouts: protests, shootings, and other extreme, non-productive societal reactions.

Your role as a citizen in this day and age is to protect your mind from this. Probably 5% of the pop is equipped with defense tools against these pervasive journalistic weapons. No protection = you'll get punched in the mouth 10-15 times per day. This hurts and wears down on your mental health.

I believe BigMedia to be the #1 threat to world stability, as a first and foremost educator.

Arm yourself with skepticism, not cynicism. Tim Urban latest book, What's Our Problem, talks in details about this. I highly recommend it.

"Journalistic" sources to avoid: BuzzFeed, Business Insider, Time, etc, etc. Make your own list. On artifact.news you can silence these news sources. The more ads on their website, the more you'll want to avoid, btw. The lesser the quality of these ads, the more you'll want to avoid.

What goes in your brain is your #1 priority. People often talk about food diets but information is what leads you to make food choices in the first place. Fix this and your life will start being more sunny.