" but I need to know a bit about whats going on to be social. "

I've found that I don't, nearly as much as I would have thought.

If people really want to talk about a current event, you can usually get a lot of mileage out of asking them to explain what's going on.

"oh yeah? I didn't hear about that, what happened?"

people like getting to be the expert, they usually don't care about our hot take nearly as much as we like to imagine them caring

Exactly. I just let other people obsess over news. They’ll filter through the 99% garbage and I’ll pick up whatever is actually important through them.

I know people in my family whose eyes are glued to news all the time and it’s kind of sad. Blowing all that attention on stuff that ultimately does not affect you.

For the most part why does it matter?

98% of news is of no import. The tiny fraction that will impact our lives to significant degree or have global effect will be almost impossible to miss.

You didn't need to watch the nightly bulletin or check a news site to hear of climate change, the US presidential election, Brexit and so on. You'd get to hear of those almost regardless of where you hang out on the internet.

The rest probably makes no difference to your life.

You could check out Wikipedia's "Current events" page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

I didn't know about that page. That looks quite like I want. Thank you.

The internet changed from an informational "push" method to making it possible and easy to "pull" "just" the information a person is interested in.

Similar to others, I stopped watching the news 10 years ago. Yes, fatal car accidents and scary robberies are unfortunate and tragic but also fairly rare. The worry the news causes is irrational. The news would just stir up FUD and stress, because under FUD people are less likely to think and more likely to follow commands, even "benign" ones and subtle hints like "buy this toothpaste to have a 'socially' acceptable white smile". It's not a social standard, it's a company forcing their standard on the public to make it a social and peer force because the company stands to benefit from it. I feel less compelled to go to a store and buy new electronics and gadgets and a plethora of other things. I spend less time chasing the things TV and media attempts to tell us all to obtain.

Being aloof to the gossip, rumors, and controversies of the "news" seems pro-social to me because it allows you to discuss these issues with people in a more civil manner simply because you are not so emotionally charged over the issues as those who obssesively ruminate on them.

I had a newsletter that went out once a week and summarized the 10 most "important" news happenings of the previous week. Not gossip or politics or entertainment but "this happened and here is why it matters."

Granted I could have marketed it better but there was very little interest.

Ah,

I would have been very interested in that. Too bad there was not enough interest for you to continue.