The News is killing your happiness... don't let it!

Video Transcript

A few years ago, I stopped consuming and seeking out news of basically any kind. And you'll never guess what happened next. Nothing. The world didn't change.

Nothing stopped except for me. I became less anxious. I became less doomy and gloomy. I became less angry all the time.

But the world continued. The people moaning about the news kept moaning about the news. The bad [music] things happening kept happening. Really nothing changed because I stopped consuming the news.

And in this video, I want to explain to you why I stopped reading the news as somebody who studied journalism. And what Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds taught me about community. So, let's get into it. Chapter one.

No news. So, at university and yes, that was a long time ago for me. I studied journalism and politics. And I began to understand that news wasn't good.

That good news doesn't sell. That if it bleeds, it leads. And when I was 20 and in my second or third year of university, I don't remember exactly, I was watching so Bob Geldof on CNN. And he was getting increasingly angrier and more effusive and louder.

And looking at the camera and he started swearing. And he basically put out a global call for people go to Edinburgh. And tell the G8 summit what they thought about the politicians. >> July the 2nd is the isn't the end of our 20-year trek.

It's the beginning of the final leg. And after the concert, we will ask people to begin getting to Edinburgh. Don't care how you get there. Don't care.

You got to get up there. You've got to get to Edinburgh. >> And I was so moved and motivated by this that I decided not to have a 21st birthday and instead flew myself to Edinburgh with my photojournalism uh intact, my camera on my back, and headed off. Uh that trip proved to be an extremely interesting one.

Uh for the first time, I was out in the world acting as a journalist on my own, but I took myself to the G8 summit. And then I got out into the fields with the protesters and the riot police, and I tried to engage in the world around me. I tried to pick up that call to arms. And I'd like to argue that that is the problem that we're facing today.

I'd like to argue that we don't pick up arms. I'd like to argue that we don't get into our communities and we don't enact [music] change. All we do all day is consume, and it is slowly driving us angry and insane. So, let me ask you this.

When was the last time you got out into the community after reading a piece of news? And I mean that. When did you read something or watch something or scroll past something on X or Instagram or TikTok or whatever and think you were so motivated by this thing that you had read that you got out into the streets and you decided to do something? I'll wait.

When was the last time you did that? I bet you you probably never have, and mostly because the news that you consume isn't about your community. The things that you read on TikTok and Instagram and Facebook probably aren't real, they're AI. But secondarily, they're probably not about your neighborhood, probably not about your street outside.

They're about a war happening far, far away or an atrocity that you didn't really know about yesterday that you care so deeply about today. It's exhausting. And guess what? Whether you get up and fly to Edinburgh in the G8 summit or not, those things are still happening.

The bad news goes on. There is always another story to tell. There is still famine across the world. There is still bad stuff going on everywhere.

All of those bad things happen all the time, and you know what? I choose not to consume it. I choose not to read it. I choose not to know about every [music] bad thing that happens everywhere in the world.

And some people might call me ignorant, and some people might call me stupid, and some people might say that I've got my head in my head in the sand. And to be honest, I don't really care. Chapter two, learned helplessness. I don't really care about what people think about me today because I like to think back on people back in the day.

They didn't consume news at the speed of light, literally fiber optics traveling and information hitting you in the face. Sometimes, they would get news days, weeks, or even months later. So, a war would happen in one country, and by the time it was over, another country was only finding out that the war had just started. So, they weren't really emotionally attached to the outcomes of those things.

They weren't really applying their physical emotion and fight or flight responses to that piece of news because it was distant from them. They were more concerned and consumed by their day-to-day lives, about the news happening around them, not the global context that affected them. And sure, the global context matters, but back then, local mattered more. Back in 1975, a psychologist named Martin Seligman came up with the phrase or coined the term learned helplessness.

The idea that repeated exposure to negative things teaches people that they have no control over those things. So, let's bring that to today. You open your phone, you scroll, and you see something terrible. You can't do anything about that.

So, you scroll on. And then, you see another terrible thing, and you can't do anything about that, either. So, you scroll on. And now, your anxiety levels keep ratcheting up and up and up, and there's no way to really dissipate that energy.

You just keep doom scrolling and you just keep feeling more anxious and you just keep spiraling down into the algorithm. Because good news doesn't sell. And if it bleeds, it leads. That's a cliche because it's true.

There is always another global catastrophe because humans like to human man. Chapter 3. Be like Rob and Ryan, my Wrexham theory. I'm not really into football uh at all, to be honest, but I have watched every single episode of the Wrexham story >> [music] >> and I can't seem to get enough of it.

And I couldn't really figure out why until the end of season 3. And for those of you who don't know about the series, I'm going to give you a brief history. Rob McElhenney, who is a famous TV star, and Ryan Reynolds, who is his friend and a famous movie star, >> Wrexham co-owners Ryan Reynolds, Rob McEl >> Both of them have a lot of money. They decided to buy a Welsh football team named Wrexham.

Wrexham is a struggling team that hadn't been promoted for a long time, wasn't generating a lot of revenue, and the stadium was falling apart, and everything was just bad for them. So, these two guys got together and they decided to spend their hard-earned famous dollars on a random Welsh football team. And the following three seasons of TV just completely warmed my heart because Ryan and Rob helped that team get promoted three seasons in a row, which is a entirely unheard of event in the history of English Premier League football. This was a monumental move.

Let's take a look at the numbers, and then we can get back to the main story. They bought the club for $2 million in 2021. And it now generates $40 million in revenue. It's also apparently valued at $450 give or take a few.

Then in 2021, the revenue was 19 million dollars. In 2022, the revenue was revenue was 7.8 million dollars. Then the following year was 13.8 million. The year after that was a shocking 35.1 million.

The year after that was an unbelievable 43.9 million dollars. That is a 23 23 times 23 times increase in revenue. That is an absolutely astonishing achievement. Let's not misunderstand this is purely altruistic, but this isn't about that.

This video is not about the money. If you want to go find about about the money, I'm sure that there are lots of YouTube videos you can find. What Ryan and Rob saw was a local community that had potential. I would like to argue that we are all getting lost in our global doom scrolling at the cost of our local communities improving.

Ryan and Rob saw the potential to make a real and lasting impact in a community that needed some kind of change. Money and community change can live together. I don't think the two things are separate. Chapter four.

Think global, act local. So look, I'm obviously not Ryan and Rob, and I obviously can't buy a massive football team and change the world in that way. But I choose to focus my attention locally and stop doom scrolling. I haven't been on Twitter for 7 months.

I don't really doom scroll Instagram, although I do post. I post a TikTok, but I never open the app. I don't really have a Facebook account that I use very often. Social media is the thing that drags me down and then beats me with experience.

Bad news is the thing that drags me down and then beats me with experience. I believe that when news is important enough, it bubbles to the top regardless of whether I am looking for it or not. How much external trauma and guilt can I carry? Can anybody carry for the world?

I don't think that that is the sane way to exist in your communities. So, I have chosen to focus my attention locally and I do things that I think make sense, that I think you should consider doing. I read local news. I buy local newspapers and when I can, I find local magazines and mostly I browse local news sites in Dutch about Amsterdam because that's where I live.

I don't really read much news about my home country, South Africa. I don't really read a lot of news about London where I used to live. I live here now and I can impact this community, so I choose to do so. And I do so in small [music] ways that affect my immediate proximity.

I walk down the street and pick up trash so that my neighbors can see that I'm contributing even though I don't speak their language properly. When my neighbors need help, I help them. When I have extra banana bread, I contribute and give it to my neighbors and they reciprocate. It's an incredibly rewarding experience to live with your neighborhood as opposed to doom scroll [music] while living in your neighborhood.

And I want you to start considering about the potential of your neighborhood, the potential of your local impact. Like Rob and Ryan did, they saw financial upside, but they also wanted to change a community. And the research shows that they actually did if you can believe it. Not only did they build a better football team and help the communities stabilize and preserve the local communities culture, a University of Michigan study over the same period found that not only did they improve the football team, but Wrexham went from one of the lowest to one of the highest employment rates in Wales.

As a result, this also attracted 16% more funding to local initiatives than would have previously been allocated to this area. This is real impact and real change from people who didn't live in this city or country or continent. They just saw a local community that needed help. And you don't have to do that.

You You don't have to buy a football team to make a change. The researchers own conclusion is quotable. Sports storytelling can genuinely transform communities. And I think that this is what a sane future looks like.

This is what my future looks like. Thinking globally, building things that help people all over the world, but acting locally, too. Because I don't want to just live in my little apartment and ignore everybody else around me. I want to feel edified and contributing to a community that grows as I do.

And I also don't want to doomscroll anymore. I also don't want to constantly worry that the world is doomed. But I do want to make an impact, and I think that this is how. So, I urge you to get off your phones, stop doomscrolling, read local news, and go outside and talk to your neighbors.