You don’t have to watch the news, or go on social media or Reddit. You don’t even have to participate in conversations about the Event with people whose opinion or understanding of the Event differs from yours.

This might be difficult, because a lot of the modern media ecosystem has been microöptimised to encourage you to watch the news and go on social media and stay there. It's very difficult to go from doomscrolling for 4+ hrs/day directly to nearly no doomscrolling at all.

I’ve found that it helps to set specific times of day to catch up on things: first thing in the morning (while I’m on the john) and last thing at night (also on the john).

Remember: nothing so important will happen that you won’t hear about it one way or another.

The stronger the emotion that someone on the news is using to communicate, the likelier it is that they have an agenda. Those crying for blood are almost certainly agents of foreign powers (probably Russia, maybe North Korea) trying to whip folks up into doing something dumb. Pundits and politicians will say gratuitous and incendiary things because in those occupations, name recognition is directly translatable into power. And smallfry on Facebook will post thoughtless stuff right next to a picture of their own face because pushback makes them feel important or victimised.

Full disclosure my agenda is to try and help people I care about not catastrophise too much, because I don't want those people to be unhappy. Also full disclosure I do include myself on that list, I'm pretty sure I'm the only person reading this.

By the time you’re powerful enough to be on TV during an Event, you’re nearly totally insulated from consequences, which makes incendiary speech basically all upside.