View Full Version : Information overload
Tonight my dad was watching the 'traditional' 6pm news bulletin on BBC 1 rather than the BBC News channel, which is his usual 'go-to' choice of TV news, and I couldn't help thinking this is a bit more laid back, despite it still technically communicating the same articles to us as the main BBC News channel, and of course being part of the very same organisation.
For me, on the BBC 1 bulletins, it's the lack of detailed on-screen text that makes for more comfortable viewing. The only captions that tend to appear on-screen are really the names and roles of the interviewees, and sometimes the name of the place being reported from.
Unlike on the BBC News channel, which seems to have endless on-screen text, which I personally find distracting and too 'in-yer-face', especially when I am trying to make sense of each individual topic being communicated to us by the presenters, but having the text at the bottom of the screen reporting each headline forever changing every few seconds amounts to information overload as far as I am concerned. Sky News also does the same thing.
Does anyone else have difficulty with things like that?
MyNameIsTerry
13-10-20, 05:27
Stuff like this used to be triggering for me. My breakdown was all about overload at work.
It's like news sites and how they tempt you into reading other articles. Modern life wants us to race through it and out the other end.
Stuff like this used to be triggering for me. My breakdown was all about overload at work.
It's like news sites and how they tempt you into reading other articles. Modern life wants us to race through it and out the other end.
It does seem to be about 'pushing everything to the max' these days.
And it's not just TV news and on-screen text in general, it's also endless OTT background music, even on documentaries, with the overall soundtrack often compressed to hell, which can lead to auditory fatigue, which is a typical example of the so-called 'loudness war'.
Sadly, most producers (both music and TV) seem to assume it's what the vast majority of the population want nowadays, even if they don't necessarily agree with it themselves, which I personally regard as lazy production ethics and of course, the proverbial 'keeping up with the Joneses'.
Quite literally, less is often more.
Dexter James
13-10-20, 14:56
Dont watch the news period it wont change your life you can do that yourself , I used to all ways watch the news its very negative and does people with mental health issues no good at all.
Dont watch the news period it wont change your life you can do that yourself , I used to all ways watch the news its very negative and does people with mental health issues no good at all.
I do try not to watch, read or listen to the news whenever and wherever possible. It's just that in some instances it's virtually impossible to escape it, such as public places that have either the BBC or Sky News channels on large screens throughout, or if in someone else's car or house it comes on the radio or TV, which I have no right whatsoever to dictate.
It's not just the news, it's many other things like a lot of modern pop songs whose vocals are often autotuned to death and films/dramas that have to rely on excessive violence and bad language every other word which really does my head in.
For the record, I'm no prude in the grand scheme of things and I have heard endless F and C-bombs being dropped on numerous occasions throughout my lifetime and never even batted an eyelid at the time, but now it's got to the point where I just cannot stand those words anymore.
And not necessarily the actual meanings of both words, which I personally couldn't care less about, but more the aggressive and insulting nature of said words, and the fact that they have become so trite, hackneyed and overused over the past 30-odd years or so.
I know they often say 'art reflects reality', but for me, art and entertainment is some kind of escape from the stresses and strains of the real world, especially when in the comfort of our own homes. And that's why I think the 9 pm watershed on TV is still a fair and balanced arrangement for us all.
Dexter James
13-10-20, 21:00
I know they often say 'art reflects reality', but for me, art and entertainment is some kind of escape from the stresses and strains of the real world, especially when in the comfort of our own homes. And that's why I think the 9 pm watershed on TV is still a fair and balanced arrangement for us all.
Good to hear your getting fed up with the way things are sadly a lot of things are negative, Art nature and good entertainment is a very good way of relaxing your self i like being outside a lot as well walking by the river or in the forest its very good helps clear the mind :)
Information overload sums up life for me, from the 80s onwards.
Take me back to the 70s (power cuts 'n' all) where Ronco and Pong was as exciting as it got in our house!
ankietyjoe
14-10-20, 08:43
I don't watch the news, there's no point to it.
I don't think anybody really needs to be 'informed'. What did people do before radio and TV (really not that long ago)? They reacted to situations as they happened, and didn't worry about stuff that was happening hundreds or thousands of miles away. Even if something on the news may eventually impact your life, knowing about it is still highly unlikely to really matter until it happens.
Combine this with the way news is delivered these days, which started in the late 80s I think, and it's even more reason to avoid it altogether.
Information overload sums up life for me, from the 80s onwards.
Take me back to the 70s (power cuts 'n' all) where Ronco and Pong was as exciting as it got in our house!
Ronco was a record label whose foremost products were cheap compilation LPs, but I have learned that the same brand also offered other, often quirky, non-music-related household items.
Wasn't Pong some kind of tennis-based video game?
Some of the Argos catalogues from back then make for interesting viewing.
There's a site that's part of issuu.com that shows all the Argos catalogues from the very first in 73 or 74 up until (I think) the late 90s.
I don't watch the news, there's no point to it.
I don't think anybody really needs to be 'informed'. What did people do before radio and TV (really not that long ago)? They reacted to situations as they happened, and didn't worry about stuff that was happening hundreds or thousands of miles away. Even if something on the news may eventually impact your life, knowing about it is still highly unlikely to really matter until it happens.
Combine this with the way news is delivered these days, which started in the late 80s I think, and it's even more reason to avoid it altogether.
I agree with you wholeheartedly AJ, especially your last paragraph.
Back in 1989 the BBC Breakfast News, BBC 6 o' clock News, Midlands Today, BBC 9 o' clock News, ITN News at Ten, were all the stuff of auditory and visual torture for me. Not just the headlines they were communicating to us during each bulletin, but the on-screen captions, especially the BBC 6 o' clock News, that was stylised 'SIX' in its logo,
and Midlands Today having a weird- looking logo and having a cringeworthy looking italic font for the general text.
The theme tunes for all of them back then, especially the orchestral fanfare on BBC Breakfast News and ITN News at Ten were the stuff of intense misophonia for me. I used to leg it upstairs to bed whenever the latter came on, which was just as well if I was meant to be at school the following morning (I was 12 on my birthday in 89 BTW).
I wonder if before the 90s there were other 'pandemics' we were blissfully unaware of at the time?
MyNameIsTerry
14-10-20, 21:33
You can live without it but I think with anxiety you always have to be mindful of whether you are avoiding it out of fear or using an adaptive strategy. The latter is part of recovery strategy. The former is discouraged since it just leaves irrational fear in your subconscious.
I dealt with it reading plenty of articles in the newspapers every time I went into a supermarket. That, along with other work on my anxiety, meant I no longer found myself triggered.
But the challenges differ if you are on the spectrum, which I seem to recall you are, so the above may be less relevant to you.
Ronco was a record label whose foremost products were cheap compilation LPs, but I have learned that the same brand also offered other, often quirky, non-music-related household items.
Yeah, but it only music related stuff we had - like the record cleaning machine lol
Wasn't Pong some kind of tennis-based video game?
Yes, and it's the ONLY video game I've ever been able to play without making myself look a div.:whistles:
There was also my brother's Scalextric where the cars spent more time off the track than on. Fun though. :yesyes:
They've recently done away with the Argos catalogue haven't they? End of an era.:weep:
Yeah, but it only music related stuff we had - like the record cleaning machine lol
Yes, and it's the ONLY video game I've ever been able to play without making myself look a div.:whistles:
There was also my brother's Scalextric where the cars spent more time off the track than on. Fun though. :yesyes:
They've recently done away with the Argos catalogue haven't they? End of an era.:weep:
I have the Spring-Summer 2020 Argos catalogue in my possession. Not sure if it's the penultimate edition or the absolute final edition though.
Whatever the case, it will be a valuable collector's item from now on!
ankietyjoe
15-10-20, 11:18
You can live without it but I think with anxiety you always have to be mindful of whether you are avoiding it out of fear or using an adaptive strategy. The latter is part of recovery strategy. The former is discouraged since it just leaves irrational fear in your subconscious.
I dealt with it reading plenty of articles in the newspapers every time I went into a supermarket. That, along with other work on my anxiety, meant I no longer found myself triggered.
But the challenges differ if you are on the spectrum, which I seem to recall you are, so the above may be less relevant to you.
I avoided the news a decade before my anxiety kicked it. Not because it made me anxious (in any way), it was just transparently sensationalised so I might as well have been watching a cartoon.
The only 'news' I keep an eye on now is the covid news, but only so I know when I need to pull my kids out of school. This IS here, now, so worth keeping an eye on. I don't feel anxious about it though. I'm sure if any of my family actually caught covid my anxiety would skyrocket to new, uncharted heights :yesyes:
The main stream news media is by and large directly tied to the left wing/globalist agenda. They operate on fear and apathy. I point to the hysterical unwarranted off the rails fear they have promulgated on the masses as exhibit A. I must say I was struck by how easily a large swath of the populous was cowed into submission. So yes we need to take a news break now and again but don't forget the communist/globalists are counting on your apathy as well. So don't totally check out. Because they bear watching.
The main stream news media is by and large directly tied to the left wing/globalist agenda. They operate on fear and apathy. I point to the hysterical unwarranted off the rails fear they have promulgated on the masses as exhibit A. I must say I was struck by how easily a large swath of the populous was cowed into submission. So yes we need to take a news break now and again but don't forget the communist/globalists are counting on your apathy as well. So don't totally check out. Because they bear watching.
I thought it was the opposite; those on the right doing a lot of the scare-
mongering and indeed pandering to many of the 'populist' fears and prejudices.
I bet that clown Nigel Farage is having a field day over the situation in Merseyside right now, and putting on a 'fake' socialist persona in order to appease those there who are indignant about the tier 3 restrictions imposed on said area.
He is now basically just another 'has-been' who keeps starting up new whimsical 'hard-right' parties every other year in order to appeal to the thick and gullible in our society.
MyNameIsTerry
16-10-20, 05:51
I thought it was the opposite; those on the right doing a lot of the scare-
mongering and indeed pandering to many of the 'populist' fears and prejudices.
I bet that clown Nigel Farage is having a field day over the situation in Merseyside right now, and putting on a 'fake' socialist persona in order to appease those there who are indignant about the tier 3 restrictions imposed on said area.
He is now basically just another 'has-been' who keeps starting up new whimsical 'hard-right' parties every other year in order to appeal to the thick and gullible in our society.
It's both but N being in the US likely means over there. Certainly here we have scaremongering right wing media and, yes, they too are globalists. Right wing conservatism in the UK was pulling us further into what has led to Brexit when it was the left who disagreed with it (for instance, Neil Kinnock who disagreed with the EU until he left Labour to become one of the EU bureaucrats and instantly changed his mind). The further to the right with the Tories and they oppose things like the EU as do the far left. Many unions support the very thing that has caused working class jobs to disappear.
Basically the media know that fear makes them money. They are businesses, not 'truth seekers' and you'll notice they change their bias as their owners change. A left wing bloke buys up a right wing mag sees it's supporters disappear and vice versa.
I have the Spring-Summer 2020 Argos catalogue in my possession. Not sure if it's the penultimate edition or the absolute final edition though.
Whatever the case, it will be a valuable collector's item from now on!
I never thought of that!
Scrolling through the app just doesn't have the same appeal for me - kind of like Kindles don't spark joy in me either. :unsure: (I'm such a dinosaur lol)
MyNameIsTerry
16-10-20, 06:36
Damn, not long ago I threw out some old ones I found going back years! :doh:
Damn, not long ago I threw out some old ones I found going back years! :doh:
You could have been on Antiques Roadshow Terry! :D
I wonder what price Terry would fetch :D
I thought it was the opposite; those on the right doing a lot of the scare-
mongering and indeed pandering to many of the 'populist' fears and prejudices.
I bet that clown Nigel Farage is having a field day over the situation in Merseyside right now, and putting on a 'fake' socialist persona in order to appease those there who are indignant about the tier 3 restrictions imposed on said area.
He is now basically just another 'has-been' who keeps starting up new whimsical 'hard-right' parties every other year in order to appeal to the thick and gullible in our society.
Give me a couple populist fears and prejudices, Lenco.
Give me a couple populist fears and prejudices, Lenco.
To be as transatlantic-neutral as possible;
Islamophobia/Negrophobia
Fear and loathing of teenagers
Xenophobia
Paedogeddon (Justifiable, but often disproportionate to the actual threat)
There's a few to name.
Changing the subject slightly, but still on a similar note, someone on Digital Spy created a thread a couple of years back, titled 'Nostalgia has stolen the future', which resonated with me in quite a big way.
Despite all the present-day troubles, I don't think I would really want to physically return to any past decade, even though I have been prone to the odd pangs of nostalgia myself on various occasions over the years. I remember back in 2002-03 somehow wishing we were back in 1985 all over again, which I think was related more to a lot of my favourite musical artists who were popular around 85 and a few years onwards were no longer charting high by the early-mid 2000s, and being overlooked in favour of many of the cruddy artists of that era, coupled with the fact that I was only 8 on my birthday back in 85, so I was probably also nostalgic about a lot of my childhood innocence of that period, but in the real adult world things were far from innocent back then. A lot of news bulletins on YouTube and archive issues of our local rag in our town library from that year prove it wasn't really the fabled golden year I retrospectively perceived it to be!
I'm probably what you would classify as a populist and I fear none of those...nor prejudge any either.
I'm probably what you would classify as a populist and I fear none of those...nor prejudge any either.
OK.
MyNameIsTerry
17-10-20, 05:20
To be as transatlantic-neutral as possible;
Islamophobia/Negrophobia
Fear and loathing of teenagers
Xenophobia
Paedogeddon (Justifiable, but often disproportionate to the actual threat)
Agreed. But I think we need to remember this isn't the right, it's the farther to the right. Point 1 & 3 is the racist end of the right so we are talking hard, ultra, etc. The kind of people most on the right, like N, want nothing to do with.
Same on the left. How many left wing people identify with the far left? Not many considering Labour lurched that way and lost a great deal of their traditional voters.
Just like the far right the far left have anti Semitism, misogyny, politics of envy, tear it all down types, etc. They both have their hard done bys blaming society.
The farther you go either way the more unpleasantness you encounter. The horseshoe brings them closer in more ways than one.
Popularity is termed for the right but you can see the same tactics used across the spectrum. I wonder whether it's just another label of shame used to shut people down?
MyNameIsTerry
17-10-20, 06:16
You could have been on Antiques Roadshow Terry! :D
Yes, Fiona Bruce could comment on how the length had decreased but the thickness had increased over the years :winks:
MyNameIsTerry
17-10-20, 06:25
I wonder what price Terry would fetch :D
Mum says she's not setting a reserve price :ohmy:
Yes, Fiona Bruce could comment on how the length had decreased but the thickness had increased over the years :winks:
Would she label you as basic, better or best? :winks:
Agreed. But I think we need to remember this isn't the right, it's the farther to the right. Point 1 & 3 is the racist end of the right so we are talking hard, ultra, etc. The kind of people most on the right, like N, want nothing to do with.
Same on the left. How many left wing people identify with the far left? Not many considering Labour lurched that way and lost a great deal of their traditional voters.
Just like the far right the far left have anti Semitism, misogyny, politics of envy, tear it all down types, etc. They both have their hard done bys blaming society.
The farther you go either way the more unpleasantness you encounter. The horseshoe brings them closer in more ways than one.
Popularity is termed for the right but you can see the same tactics used across the spectrum. I wonder whether it's just another label of shame used to shut people down?
I agree with you in many ways there Terry, there are unpleasant extremists across the entire political and social spectra.
Although I'm talking politics once again, I have now come to the conclusion that I personally believe the Labour party should change their name, in order to make themselves more identifiable with the average 21st Century electorate. Especially as many of Labour's traditional ideals (for better or worse) are now considered outmoded by many sectors of contemporary society, such as much of what said party stood for in say, the 60s and 70s probably wouldn't wash with many of today's voters. Hence why Corbyn was repeatedly shunned.
With the more centre-left Keir Starmer now at the helm, only time will tell as to how the party fare in the future.
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