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Seeing what White House Twitter account is posting is bizarre, and a bit scary. This is a government entity, a superpower, posting extreme and unserious content to the world. It's so ridiculous that I can't barely comprehend it. I don't understand how leaders in other countries can take the current US administration seriously.

Looking at the US from outside, I am starting to wonder how close they are to a societal collapse. Things seem to have gotten so extreme over there the last decade. Or maybe its not like that in reality, and its just the internet siphoning content that gets reactions.

10 comments

> Looking at the US from outside, I am starting to wonder how close they are to a societal collapse

We're fine, the trick is to remember to GET OFF THE INTERNET and remember that reality isn't the same as the Internet. Treat the Internet like a highlight reel channel on TV - if you don't like your current 'algorithm', then change 'channels'. Also, remember why tech has always pushed for Adblockers - then filter out the things demanding your attention. Once you realize a lot of news agencies (political, financial, tech, etc) is using the same dark patterns as ads, you start to filter them out of your attention.

I'm enjoying rewatching Supernatural on Amazon Prime right now.

Oh sure. The war isn't happening as long as you don't look at it. In fact, it's not technically a war so we shouldn't care about it.

You are correct in that we must be better about selecting our news sources. But the answer is not about drowning yourself in pleasant fiction on Amazon Prime or ignoring current events.

The answer is to pick non-clickbait / non-doomscrolling news sources that provide more actionable news and stronger analysis. I've picked The Atlantic for this, once a week magazine is fast enough and gives enough time for the writers to provide deep and through analysis on current events.

The fast moving clickbait media of Twitter and Facebook is trash. It's often incorrect, it's full of propaganda, and the people drawn into it seem like idiots (and arguing with them pulls your intelligence down). Find better media, find better people and leave the trash behind.

---------

Pick your news sources. Otherwise, the news sources will pick you. That's always been true since the early days of Yellow Journalism. The media landscape is harder to figure out today, but there continues to be well written independent media today, if only you went out to support them and reach out.

>ignoring current events

Sure it is important to be aware, but If being perpetually aware of the current events makes one feel anxious, helpless and fearful of the future then I think it is better to drown in pleasant fiction than read news.

Just being anxious and concerned in your home has not helped any cause except of that of the media that want your perpetual attention, eye balls and clicks.

> Sure it is important to be aware, but If being perpetually aware of the current events makes one feel anxious, helpless and fearful of the future then I think it is better to drown in pleasant fiction than read news.

There is a difference between the upthread claim that there is no significant real problem and the impression that there is is an illusion created by the internet which one should disconnect from to avoid being misled and your claim that it can be better for your mental health to cutoff from stressful news sources independently of whether those news sources accurately depict the real state of the world.

What you are saying may be broadly true, but it is orthogonal to the argument you were responding to.

100s or 1000s of families' lives are permanently shattered in Iran because the US started a questionable war and didn't do enough due diligence before dropping bombs. The only reason we have the luxury of ignoring current events is because they rarely come home to roost, no matter how much destruction our government causes elsewhere.

Aye comrade, those smarties at the Kremlin will take care of everything for us! Better to choose the path of blissful ignorance. Have another vodka it makes it easier to forget.

I second that. Consume every other click bait title and another useless analysis from someone is just nerve wrecking. Media thrive from your attention, but you do not.

I don't say to ignore everything bur being constantly in the loop gives you nothing. Your anxiety is someone else business model. I do not use media like X, watch tv or similiar. It's absolutely ok to not know what uterrly stupid some politician did with intent to get you mad.

I watch few independent analysts on youtube from time to time and I do not miss anything important. Really. It's the best and easiest thing you can do for your mental health now.

Good writing will not make you feel anxious.

That's just Twitter/Facebook doom scrolling and shitty writing style. They are selling clicks to advertisers and nothing sells clicks better than doom.

Yes. Stop going to internet algorithmic feeds. However, do not ignore the news. Simply choose better, less angst and less clickbaity news. Do you think the Civil Rights protests of the 1960s were informed by angsty clickbait articles? Or were they filled with ignorant dufuses who ignored the news?

Ditto with the Vietnam war. You know, the one with an actual draft and far worse situation than we have right now in Iran. You have to stay informed of events, but that doesn't mean you have to accept the shitty, angst inducing writing style of these clickbait magnets.

No. Back then, they chose better sources of news that inspired action and provided plans. Same is required for today. Stay informed, but ignore the crap, clickbait and idiots.

> The Atlantic

I open this site and the first thing I see is,

>This Is Not How Presidents Typically Communicate. (About trump)

And it screams to me that this is a biased site.

So I think it is not possible for a layman to know the ground truth. Not even close. Have you seen the movie "Wag the dog?" It is a 1997 movie. Things have only gotten real worse since..

So given that, what is the point? Either put your life on line and go to these places and understand the truth and do something about it, or just zone out and enjoy the what ever little fragile peace that you have right now.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120885

Strange, are you familiar with the story or did you miss the news this weekend?

I think it's pretty factual to point out that US Presidents don't normally send the message "Praise Allah" on Easter Sunday. A blasphemy like that is certainly news and warrants the Atlantic's headline.

Or do you consider the message of "Praise Allah" to be a normal thing for sitting US Presidents to say? It's a straightforward situation, there's no reason to beat around the bush on this news item.

[Responding to all the comments, so you may need to read through the thread again if I miss context here]

> The war isn't happening as long as you don't look at it.

I'm not ignorant of the war, and yes I follow it; however my mentality stems from the sheer number of months of bad news happening somewhere. I can only give so much of my attention to The World when there's things at the local level to worry about. So I don't engage in "all of it" on the Internet. I have those conversations in person.

> But the answer is not about drowning yourself in pleasant fiction on Amazon Prime or ignoring current events.

I disagree, but also not drowning. Rather engaging online in the manner pre-COVID. You know, like Walking Dead "How would I survive a zombie apocalypse" or Game of Thrones "who's next to die". The 24/7 Internet chatroom known as "the comments section" just wants to deviate the conversation back to politics. I also disagree with the sentiment that we're in "Idiocracy", but I still enjoy the film.

> The fast moving clickbait media of Twitter and Facebook is trash. It's often incorrect, it's full of propaganda

So is every aggregator site. Agenda-Setting Theory [1] dictates what information you're receiving on any given day, and smaller scale Discords with self-promotion know how to gamify Trending algorithms (since most rely on some degree of 'velocity' based on time since post). Couple that with how we've over engineered attention by A/B testing thumbnails [2] and how the mind reads TEXT LIKE THIS [3] (which was also A/B tested for email campaign clickthroughs), I'm left with a curiosity of "what headline text is emotionally anchoring a sentiment"?

Heck, GET OFF THE INTERNET isn't even yelling [4], it's just me abusing that all caps does thing in brain.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda-setting_theory

[2] https://netflixtechblog.com/selecting-the-best-artwork-for-v...

[3] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....

[4] Reddit Version: https://v.redd.it/hlo2z6a6rctg1, Twitter Version: https://x.com/amgaweda/status/2040744192020717592; Gotta work on encoding cause something made my audio out of sync with the video

We are nowhere near fine. The country is being run by incompetent sycophants in thrall to a criminal who is musing about committing crimes against humanity on social media. He's using his own private paramilitary to terrorize anyone he dislikes all while gutting any institutions that may constrain him, working to subvert voting, destroying the economy for anyone that isn't already obscenely rich, destroying the climate at an accelerated rate, gutting international relations, destroying alliances. Congress enables him instead of checking him, as does the Supreme Court.

I think this is normalising the situation a bit too much. You might 'get of the internet' and stop caring about politics, but the politics still cares about you and does in fact affect the real world.

The "realpolitik" is in fact, and almost by definition, not online.

I think a ton of people didn't get the memo during the first Trump term, and are still baffled by it during his second one.

Republicans have never used the media like the Democrats. Conservative values change very slowly and are disseminated through institutions like the military, religion, etc. Trump has taken it to the next level by only ever using the internet to troll the chronically online and anyone else out of the loop. That's radio discipline.

Nah, this is giving him far too much credit. I've read many a theory about how this or that thing that has been said is just a ruse or a troll and the real plan makes so much more sense and his actions have done nothing to demonstrate that.

Given that religions are losing members, especially the youth, and that the most people do not join the military, what will keep disseminating the ideas in the future?

> We're fine, the trick is to remember to GET OFF THE INTERNET and remember that reality isn't the same as the Internet.

That works fine, except in the cases where the bad news reflects reality, or understates how bad the reality is. In that case it's like saying cancer isn't the problem, the problem is that you visited the doctor and listened as he told you bad news.

> That works fine, except in the cases where the bad news reflects reality

The issue is that the 24/7 Internet chatroom/forums shift the "bad news" target on a daily basis. Sometimes its war, others its natural disaster, others its a horrific crime, etc. If you've been only seeing bad news since Covid, then it makes you (read, made me) think the world's in a terrible place. I stopped spending allll my time in the 24/7 chatroom and when I say this IN the chatroom everyone thinks I'm completely unaware. I'm not. I just engage on other matters, like cheering on my buddies when they release something.

The world is (and the US is) a measurably more terrible place than only a few years ago, and a big part of the reason is that, whether or not they remain online, people are helplessly detached from events; being blissfully ignorant is not substantively different in societal impact than being in a state of paralysis from oversaturation of a mix of real, mis- and dis-informaton, even if it is more enjoyable in the near term.

Shutting off the feeds (especially those that are becoming more extremely manipulated to produce ineffective rage, which is part of how the world is worse) may be an effective way to manage the near-term stress of the present combination of media and material conditions, but it doesn't do anything to actually address the material conditions. Heck, detachment and demobilization to reduce resistance to arbitrary exercise of power is a big part of what you are being manipulated for. It's not an accident that that works as stress relief; that's part of the design of the manipulation.

You can still read print media like WAPO, NYT, or WSJ. Stay away from opinion and editorial sections and you'll still be informed about what matters but not manipulated so much that it gives you anxiety.

This might be possible outside the US, but in the US the internet has become reality. Trump tweets and it effects financial markets. People post on X, go viral, get hired by OpenAI. Filtering out news about institutional instability doesn't make institutions more stable, it just makes you less informed about it. And maybe one day you'll find yourself actually facing the consequences of that without knowing how you could have prevented it.

Hell, his tweets affect real world violence in the US. You have to keep an eye on his posts to figure out if there's going to be Nazi marches tomorrow.

Mate, you are far from fine

>We're fine, the trick is to remember to GET OFF THE INTERNET and remember that reality isn't the same as the Internet.

I can understand how somebody could hold onto this comfort: it used to be (mostly) true. Political "scandals" were usually either truly bad but localized (e.g. a politician caught and kicked out for bribery) or performative furor (e.g. a lapel pin).

It's different now. Those times were our "pro wrestling" era: earnest professionals who put in the work but also put on a show to keep the fans. No matter how dirty the script got, everyone made sure the lights stayed on. Now we're in the "teenage street gang" era. The "show" is actually how they see the world, participants literally delight in physical pain, and citizens on the sidelines are only terrorized.

How anyone could think things would be fine after what the childhood vaccine panel tried to do is beyond me. Or Noem withholding relief funds. Or blanket tariffs without any further plan for improving our industries. Those acts have huge negative effects across the population. The vast majority of citizens have been needlessly harmed by those choices.

> Those times were our "pro wrestling" era

I disagree, but sadly I don't think text will provide my full reasoning. But it stems from "modern WWE" (AEW is a different 'culture' right now with Brodie King), but comparing it to Ole Anderson [1] getting stabbed by a fan compared to these day when most wrestlers are just getting swarmed by people wanting them to autograph their ebay resells. Again, more about how fans (not IWC) treat wrestlers IRL, not politics. (Aside, looks like the was an attempted stabbing too so may be a moot point [2])

I think politics has just now entered its "pro wrestling" era. And yes, its largely due to a certain President that's appeared on WWE in the past.

[1] https://www.midatlanticwrestling.net/resourcecenter/gateway_...

[2] https://www.fightful.com/wrestling/krule-says-he-is-fine-aft...

There's a stark difference between being Extremely Online and sticking your head in the sand. The US is not fine. The US is waging an illegal war of aggression abroad, committing war crimes and threatening more. The US has invaded its own cities, mine included, with untrained goons who have shot and killed multiple US citizens.

If you're not aware of what's happening, how will that impact your political views? Your spending? Your habits? Your vote?

Edit - A few more:

- The war in Iran is triggering an energy and economic crisis globally. Fuel prices are skyrocketing globally as a result, with some countries mandating that people cannot work (thus, cannot get paid) more than a few days a week to preserve fuel. This is pushing up prices on groceries, materials and other goods that will disproportionately impact the global poor. Many will not be able to survive.

- The US has been intentionally and illegally embargoing oil and gas shipments to Cuba plunging the country into blackouts and instability, also against international law. People can't work, or cook, or refrigerate food, or turn on their lights.

You sure we're fine?

Edit 2: Downvotes already! Amazing. Good to see the right wing slant in Silicon Valley is alive and well. Looking forward to the day the market crashes and all of your RSUs and stock holdings are worth fuck all. You can't eat stocks, but you can eat the rich.

Enough voters thinking like this how we got to where we are now. Nothing much matters, might as well vote for the troll candidate for the lulz.

Not trying to troll, I outline things more in this response [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47668439

Keeping your head in the sand isn't much better. The Hyperreality ceeated by the lies on the internet affect American real lives.

> We're fine, the trick is to remember to GET OFF THE INTERNET and remember that reality isn't the same as the Internet.

"reality isn't the same as the internet" was already starting to be a dangerously out-of-touch delusion when Boomers and Silents were saying it in the 1990s.

While I think American society definitely has problems, the idea that it's close to collapse is no better than any other online propaganda opinion, and in fact it's a common refrain pushed by foreign state actors.

A better way to think of this nonsensical online content: it's just the form that has been shown to win in the modern democratic political arena. Unfortunately, being a serious professional doesn't connect with voters anymore. Posting lots of goofy memes seems to, or at least it did a few years ago – IMO the media tactics used by current politicians are a few years out of date, culturally.

> the idea that it's close to collapse is no better than any other online propaganda opinion

Not just that: how do you even define "the collapse of American society"?

What, exactly, do people think that would look like?

The Purge?

Complete anarchy? Riots in the streets?

The classic image of a burning metal garbage can in the street?

To the extent that a modern society like that of the US can "collapse", it's going to be a very, very slow and uneven thing. Most likely what it would look like is a Balkanization of the country—either de-facto, or full legal (or illegal) secession of groups of states, over the course of a number of years.

I think the likely scenario is Trump digging in post-mid terms. This is very likely, given the amount of flagrantly illegal stuff he's got floating around him and his crew.

Then two paths: he's either successful, forming the sort of "managed democracy" you see in Russia etc.

Or he's unsuccessful, and we see what happens. ICE are a militia beholden to the regime. Could get spicy.

Constitutionally, I think the framework that's supposed to check executive power is already shredded, or at least revealed for what it's been all along: pretty much norms.

Good luck.

> Looking at the US from outside, I am starting to wonder how close they are to a societal collapse.

The US is not particularly close (at least, not highly probable) to a societal collapse; that's, in a sense, an overly optimistic position. Government, order, and structured society are not in imminent danger of collapse.

It is very close to a transition away from liberal democratic government in favor of something very different. [0]

[0] Arguably, past that point, but close to the point where it becomes widely accepted that the it wasn't a temporary aberration where the basic cultural and institutional supports were still intact and capable of snapping things back.

I also find the content distasteful, but it kinda tracks with US history as a country run mostly by cavalier bruisers with antipathy to the have-nots both domestic and abroad. They're just not trying to hide it anymore now that corporate "news" media and social media algorithms have found legal ways to profit by encouraging hatred.

The scarier thing is that it resonates with people. It might be an over reaction but im concerned americans have gotten dumb enough that subtlety isnt even necessary. People might not be thinking critically enough to be put off by blatant propaganda, so states can just do this and it works

US government does not have a good record. I feel like anyone that thinks it’s particularly bad now needs to read some history books. Obviously I wish it were better but this is the same group that brought you a dozen wars in the 20th century, Japanese internment, forced segregation, price controls, nuclear weapons used on civilians, and so on.

My guess is that it has more to do with reading news sources particularly aligned with one political viewpoint than the actual facts of what the government is doing.

This kind of opinion seems logical only if you don't look at history. I'm struggling to think of a government which is effective today but didn't have some horrible actions in the near past. At best I think you'll get functionally "minor" states like Switzerland or Denmark that weren't really in the powerful position the US was/is in.

And so it's much better to compare the US government's record with the record of other states, and in that comparison I think the US comes out reasonably well. Not the best, but certainly not the worst.

"Past performance is not indicative of future results"

The best way to figure out what someone's going to do in the future is looking at what they are doing now.

even then the swiss don't exactly have the cleanest record. There's a reason they're neutral and it isn't because they're morally superior

The good news is that the Trump regime is unpopular, and doing crazy things is making them more unpopular.

The bad news is they keep doing crazy things.

> The good news is that the Trump regime is unpopular, and doing crazy things is making them more unpopular.

Actually, that's bad news too. It's the cope that's convincing Democrats to stick their head in the sand and avoid dealing with their problems, which are what created the opening for Trump. They're more concerned with their own orthodoxies than actually becoming a popular party that could win a real majority and end this nonsense.

So our present course is: Democrats remain unpopular and eek out a win in the midterms in 2026, probably do some nutty things of their own, and then in 2028 we'll likely get new MAGA nutjobs.

The collapse is actually bipartisan, with different dysfunctions in each major party.

The US is going to collapse because of the memes on its twitter page?

More than one million of young people have been sent to the front line and Russia and Ukraine haven't collapse. But somehow Trump posting memes will collapse the US.

Nowhere near it. There's parts I don't like but it's not like Homesteading, slavery, Chinese exclusion, redlining, Japanese internment, the klan, and Jim Crow were great.

This is American behavior: crude, cruel, hostile, arrogant, and proudly ignorant.

Richard Hofstadter wrote about Americans acting this way in the 1960s.

Look at the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, stood for decades. It's not like those sentiments went away...

And there's no "good states" either - the California Constitution in 1879 set up a racial apartheid system against Chinese people. Even had a second called "The Chinese".

Oregon was admitted to the Union explicitly with a "whites only" clause.

The Declaration of Independence even has wild conspiracy theories about "merciless Indian savages"

No amount of empirical evidence will make Americans realize this because it gives them a frowny face.

So anyways no. This is all business as usual

Technically Jim Crow was mostly state laws.

The point is there's this false narrative about a dichotomy of bad and good America where people like to claim they're from the good part...

The history doesn't really bare that out and the peculator American prejudice seems to simply retarget more often than recede.

The largest mass lynching, for instance, was against Italians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1891_New_Orleans_lynchings

Anti Irish riots? Sure what about Philadelphia : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_nativist_riots

This history is everywhere in the USA.

Or look at the Bronx in the 1970s or Tulsa in 1921. We didn't need bombs to drop on our cities from an adversary - we did it to ourselves

So when people say "is this American society breaking down?"

I say "no. This is simply American society"