Why I want to quit following politics
In late 2023, it had been maybe around a decade since I had become addicted to social media apps. I had tried countless methods to "moderate" my usage to no avail. I'm good at moderating other aspects of my life, but not social media.
Feel free to call me weak-willed, but I admitted defeat. I saw no other way to wrestle control over my thoughts and feelings from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. I had to delete the accounts, forever.
Predictable, my quality of life significantly improved. I stopped feeling this peculiar, persistent, painful "pressure" in my head, and I suddenly had a lot more time on my hands which I promptly dedicated to writing... inevitably leading me to, early this year, finding Bear Blog.
Deleting my social media accounts was probably one of the best decisions that I have made in my life.
Of course, I'm talking about my life. Don't take my words as prescription. I am simply sharing my experience with you, but I digress.
I can't remember when it was that I became addicted to politics, but if I had to guess, I'd say that it was sometime in 2016, which probably also coincided with a sharp increase of my spending time on social media.
So, likewise, I have attempted to "moderate" my following of politics (political news, that is) many times and by employing a variety of methods.
All of them failed.
Then came September 10, 2025. It was the morning of the 11th when a friend alerted me about the incident over text.
Over the course of my short and fruitless life, I have observed how politics went from being a topic that friends and family would discuss, disagree on, but ultimately dismiss, to becoming hotly debated, to in recent years becoming increasingly deadly.
I felt depressed the whole of Thursday, and Friday, and was still sulking about it on Saturday.
In fact, on Friday I began asking myself: When did a "civilized society" return to the ways of the "Wild West"? Why did that happen to begin with?
It deeply disturbed me.
When I began to do the research for this post, I found the following:
...we are supposed to have the freedom of speech. This right, however, can only truly be in effect if not just the government provides for it, but the citizenry allows for well tempered debate in public settings. (...) While assassination for your opinion is not a new phenomenon, it is one that we, as enlightened members of modern society, should be ashamed of. (...) To win against ideas we dislike, we must have better ideas. (...) But - do we want to live in a country where the bold, the opinionated and those who think differently than us must risk their lives to do so? I think not. (...) Unless we lower the temperature, only violence and war will be the outcome.
After perusing Wikipedia, I don't agree with the last sentence in this blog post by Sam Schutte, but I do agree with his statements above.
I don't know why this exact event is the tipping point for me, especially because I knew almost nothing about the individual at the center of it until then, but also because I've been observing through the news nothing but war and bloodshed happening all over the world in the last few years, and that also has been painfully tugging at my heart (including a similar incident not too long ago). Yet somehow, this very public execution really got to me. What Sam wrote comes close to describing my feelings around the issue, and it's profoundly concerning to me. I feel that, in a cruel twist of dark irony, our society has crossed a "tipping point" at the end of that fateful bullet. There's no turning back from here, and I feel terrified of what's to come.
Consequently, much like I felt about social media, I have increasingly been feeling that following "the news", particularly in the political realm, has been sucking my soul out of my body. It's been causing me untold grief and anxiety. It's made me feel angry and fed violent desires that I didn't even know that I had. It has occasionally prompted me to get into pointless debates with friends and strangers on the Internet. More than that though, it's also made me waste my time obsessing about problems that I have no control over.
I think that the writing is on the wall. Like what I did with my social media accounts, I must make a resolution to erase politics from my life, or else I will never be able to live it to the fullest.
I then felt the need to seek out for some empathy for my decision, so I chatted about it with some friends, both IRL as well as online.
There was a mixed reception. One of them supported my decision (she has taken "breaks" from politics over the years herself). Others didn't. The majority, however, stood somewhere in the middle, urging me to seek better methods for "moderating" my addiction.
I was surprised that so few people seemed to agree with me, especially considering how almost everyone supported my decision to delete my social media accounts. It seems that politics (which, ironically, I find these days to be intimately interlinked with social media) is a different kind of beast.
The morality of being politically ignorant and uninvolved
The reactions to my decision gave me the impression that it might be an unethical action on my part to opt out of politics.
Before I move forward, I should clarify that I have been mostly apolitical for the majority of my life. There are reasons for that which I don't feel at liberty to get into here (I already feel uneasy enough about sharing this much). That being said, I still followed politics to "stay informed", nothing more. I do find the "political process" interesting (the "systems", that is). I am curious about the arguments for or against certain policies as well. I also loved studying political history, including all the wars that have taken place throughout it (though, honestly, these past few days even that has become distasteful to me). When elections came around though, I never voted. I've only done that maybe twice in my life, in my late teens/early 20s. I don't remember for sure anymore, but I vaguely remember that one of those times I voted not really knowing or understanding what I was voting for, and the other time I just left the ballot blank.
So, I went on Bear to search for some opinions, and this statement by Lou Plummer, was the first one that I found:
I know that as angry as I am, I also have to practice empathy, understanding, and forgiveness, or I'll just be a shitty excuse for a person. I also have to resist the urge to just get along with people and take the easier and softer way of ignoring things that need to be dealt with. It's a balancing act and a hard one. Just do the best you can and act from a loving place as much as possible...
Emphasis mine.
Lou feels the urge to just get along with people and ignore things that need to be dealt with. It seems that we have that in common, but he wants to resist that urge, and I want to lean into it. Which one of us is wrong?
I think that neither is. I think that political activism is very much needed, and there are people called to engage in it (and thank goodness for them), but I also think that not everyone is, especially not at highly public level. I certainly don't feel called to participate in activism of any kind, not actively anyway. I do my part to be conscientious about the environment and my community, and that, I feel, is as much as I can (and want to) realistically do.
Does that make me... "a bad person"?
Exequiel Rodriguez (who is a most excellent writer), had this to say in the third section (entitled The mandate of constant visibility and opinion) of his post, where he described the current state of our society:
Failing to speak up is already suspicious. Not having an opinion, not taking a stand, not showing up, not declaring something in real time amounts to betrayal. Visibility becomes a moral duty. Every subject (celebrity or anonymous; politician, athlete, or artist) must expose themselves, must mean something. Even absence must be interpretable.
In other words, you're damned if you do, and you're damned if you don't. Having the wrong opinion can get you killed, but having no opinion can raise enough eyebrows that the guns may end up pointed in your direction anyway. Sure, I'm not suggesting that the individual at the center of the event merely had "wrong opinions". He had many exceedingly violent opinions (all thoroughly cited on that Wikipedia article), and he became the victim of the policies that he promoted. However, there are very many people who have absolutely harmless opinions and meet with the same fate. I'm afraid of becoming another victim of a culture that pressures me to become politically informed and involved.
So I tremble. I tremble as I type this out. I am afraid of the consequences of expressing my opinion in this post, that it is acceptable for a civilian to opt out of politics, be it the news or the vote, and more so, for asserting that, in a nation in which leaders are elected, political differences should be civilly discussed and then expressed on the ballot, rather than hotly debated and then ended with a bullet.
I think that many other people are afraid too, so their opinions, which might have been good and useful, end up muffled as well. Violence can silence anyone: the humble who have something good to say, as well as the haughty to have nothing good to say.
Arguments for and against
This was everything that I was able to find on Bear though. Surprisingly, I didn't find much overt "political" content. There are not many users actively writing about politics or news related to politics. Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe Bear can be more of a "safe space" from that. The social media platforms that I turned my back from already promote enough political debate as it is.
I took to the rest of the Internet to find other people, hopefully even someone prominent, who quit following politics.
I came out empty.
I don't have a Reddit account (which I also deleted, in 2024), but it was my last resort to getting a pulse on the matter. So after a quick hop onto Google and punching "site:reddit.com" into the search field, I finally came up with some results:
Mental health
This person got told by their psychiatrist to stop paying attention to politics for the sake of their mental health:
I had my normal psych med check-in, and she asked me how I'm feeling and I told her that I feel despairing, anxious, legitimately worried about how to view the future, because of everything that's happened in the past week. My PSYCHIATRIST advised me to stop paying attention, for my mental health. Something is very wrong about that, right?
Here are some comments:
I understand that it is incredibly naive to ignore what is happening in the US right now and the world at large. That philosophy created tens of millions of low information voters that got us to where we are now. ↗️
Of course this is true, but in my mind, it doesn't address the problem that, no matter how the people vote, those who they elevate to power will become corrupted (they had to in order to become eligible anyway) and work against their interests.
Be informed sure, but be detached from that which you have no control over. ↗️
I would become very concerned for my mental state if I remained "informed and detached". I do not want to become emotionally indifferent towards (or worse, like what I see with some, elated by) violence. I don't want to become numb towards human suffering, no matter who is being victimized.
You can try to stop following politics, but politics is going to follow you. I think in this day and age, one has to stay vigilant and know whats going on. ↗️
I used to think the same, but I've been increasingly thinking that I will live a more useful, joyous life if cut out all the noise, and invite death in when it inevitably comes knocking at my door. In fact, I am convinced that on my deathbed, I will not regret not having followed politics.
Politics follow you: into your bedroom, into your uterus, into the hospital room, and into the streets when they sabotage your finances, your housing and your already threadbare safety net. ↗️
This is also true, but again, those tragedies would have followed me regardless of my following politics or not. I must to live with those problems whether I like it or not, so should I also live with the one (following politics) that I can actually get rid of?
I think this is why so many people don't have a good grasp of what's actually happening and what the implications are. It's easy to say the solution to the stress is to ignore all the noise, but ignoring the noise just means later you're going to have no idea why you're in such a bad situation. I think it's almost shameful for that professional to say that. ↗️
That last statement is a pretty hot take. Should a mental healthcare professional not do what it takes to help the patient improve their mental health? If that requires the patient to opt out of politics, are they still morally required to sacrifice their mental health that way? This is an important question for me to ask, because I am 100% in this boat. Following politics is worsening my mental health.
Moral and civic duty
This person went as far as to argue that not caring about politics is a red flag:
...but when it comes to guys who don’t care about politics, people don’t think it as that bad. “Maybe they are just busy.” Trust me, they are not that busy. They just opt-out.
I am that busy though. My work and my responsibilities take up so much of my time during the day away, that I have very little left over for my family, my friends, my community, and me personally. I have been feeling so depressed after these recent events that it has even sapped my energy and made me waste some of that precious time, which I will never be able to recover.
Here are some comments:
Being apolitic needs the cigarette treatment. Like how it was cool to smoke 20 years ago and its not anymore. ↗️
So, by being apolitical myself, I guess I'm not cool anymore (I never was). Did I get that right? Does that make my stance on quitting politics a counter-cultural one then? Am I an "anti-political punk"?
Like not caring about politics or having relationships with people who have different political beliefs than you was possible before 2016. But the past 10 years has been a wake-up call to really pay attention and to cut people out of your life who are aligned with certain beliefs. ↗️
I am all for setting boundaries, including cutting people out of one's life if necessary (which I have done maybe a handful of times in my life). However, I have also very intentionally sought to surround myself with people who widely disagree with me: the kinds who won't crucify me for disagreeing with them (I hope). When I was younger, I did the opposite. I surrounded myself with only the people who affirmed me, and the consequence of that was that I became so narrow-minded, that I ended up making decisions that deeply hurt me. I still feel hurt when people who disagree with me express their disagreement with disdain or insults, but something that often makes up for it is that I'm made aware of valuable ideas and information that I would otherwise never have been exposed to.
It's easy to say apathy or detachment is the wrong answer, which I don't necessarily disagree with, but the problem is, you can always be doing more, and with that mentality, someone else would undoubtedly look at you and think you're just "opting out" ↗️
This is also true, and important to be pointed out. You'll always be told that you're not "informed enough". I mean, the list of "hot topics" and issues is endless. I could choose one of them, spend my life researching it, and still not learn everything that there is to learn about it. In fact, no matter how much I learned, I would still not be able to convince certain people that my opinion is the correct one. If I cared about "being informed enough", I would drive myself insane, because I would always end up debating someone who would assume that I'm either misinformed or uninformed.
I only have a finite amount of energy. I have a right to care for my own mental health. Not being “informed” on every single thing is not a crime or a red flag, it’s basic self care and maintenance. ↗️
Nothing to comment here. I agree.
In social situations, many people will say they aren't interested, or don't care because they want to avoid an argument. It's a long-standing social norm, and conversations like this never actually solve anything. By all means educate yourself, and choose to be around the kinds of people who you want to. But, if someone says they don't care about politics, I think it's good manners to take the hint and leave them be. ↗️
Emphasis mine. I agree. Live and let live.
Neither side advocates for freedom. They just want to control the machine and force their way of life on everyone. I want to be left alone. The current political system isn't for me. To me, both sides are the same. They hate freedom. They just wear different colors and use different words when they enslave you. I say I don't care because my view isn't accepted. Your either in one side or the other. I am glad to watch a monster and a demon tear each other apart. ↗️
I disagree with that last sentence. Part of the reason why I want to stop following politics is exactly because it deeply disturbs me to see the "monster and the demon tear each other apart", because we're not talking about monsters and demons, but about human beings, misguided in their thirst for power and revenge as they may be.
As I have said before, I have, for years, thought that there truly is no "good" side. All "sides", all parties, all political leaders, when in power, invest their time, energy, and resources in enriching themselves and consolidating their hold on their position. In fact, none of them ever rise to power without playing the political game to some extent, and without violating some of the principles that they publicly profess to stand for. This has been the reality of politics since humans first formed organized societies. Human nature makes it impossible to attain power over others without asserting it through violence and/or corruption. Power corrupts. No matter which representatives we elect, we will always get a stick along with the carrot. What's funny about this is that, one side will enjoy eating the carrot while the other won't, but both sides will always hate the stick. The stick is that we will always be led by selfish and corrupt politicians who will enact policies that will hurt us, if not in the short term, then certainly in the long term. The carrot is just meant to numb our senses while we're being hit with the stick.
Also, I often feel as though the "us versus them" nature of the political discourse is a feature, not a bug. Politicians pit us against each other to distract us from what they are doing behind the curtains to grab more and more power. It's "divide and conquer", in other words. Were we all united, (military included), then we could depose them today. I think that there was a short period of time towards the end of the last century, where most people accepted their differences, lived their principles out in private, and just let others live their private lives as they saw fit. Politicians have discovered, however, that by threatening to take away the liberties of one side, they can rile up both and keep them fighting each other, rather than them.
People don't have to share your unhealthy obsession with politics to be good people. ↗️
I don't condone the language, but I agree with the idea.
How to quit following politics
I want to finish this long essay (if you made it all the way to the end, then you're a trooper) with addressing the practical implications of opting out of the political discourse.
This person found a solution that worked for them:
Recently I've watched some friendships between people in my circle fall apart because of political disagreements. Watching from the sidelines and hearing about these disputes after the fact, it was clear to me how silly both sides of debate were--not because of the content of their arguments, but because they were never going to convince their opponents to change their opinions. I realized after giving it some thought that every political discussion I ever have is either 1) preaching to the choir, talking to friends who wholeheartedly agree with me, or 2) talking to someone who will NEVER be persuaded that my perspective is the right one, just as they will never convince me that theirs is the right opinion. So, I'm trying something new. When people bring up politics, I just say, "I don't talk about politics. Could we talk about something else?" Sometimes I have to explain my reasons, and sometimes I don't, but all-in-all, people have been respectful of my decision not to talk politics. After a few weeks, It's going great! I'm absolutely confident that this new policy is improving friendships, and it's already making it easier to deal with my parents, who love to forward me weird political emails. One respectful reply explaining that I'm formally removing political discourse from the table, and we're already getting along better! And I don't lose anything along the way. I still get to watch political TV shows, read the newspaper, and seek out dissenting opinions on Reddit and elsewhere. And, of course, I still get to vote however I want. The only thing that's been taken off the table is a bunch of heated and mostly unpleasant talks.
On Friday, I took the first step in my new resolution: I unsubscribed from all political news channels on YouTube. There weren't that many, but there were some. That was the last source that I voluntarily held onto.
The real issue is, what do I do about my social circle?
Maybe I'll have to start telling my IRL friends that "I don't talk about politics". I can only hope that they'll respect my wish.
What about my online friends though?
Everything is political now, somehow, so no matter how careful I walk around the eggshells (and trust me, I tip-toe like pro) I will inevitably express some opinion that seems completely harmless and apolitical to me, but will offend someone else's political sensibilities.
This may be a cop-out, but I have multiple times been able to instantly diffuse the bomb by simply acknowledging some part of the argument that I agree with, and thanking the person for bringing it to my attention, then not commenting any further, and just letting them "win the argument". I'm not out to win "Internet points" anyway, so losing a debate or coming across as ignorant (which I'm fully aware that I am) won't hurt me.
After all the research that I did, I was surprised to find that so few people want to completely opt out of politics. I see a lot of "political burnout" on the Internet, but the idea that being informed about politics is a moral and civic duty, seems to be a cultural norm now. I don't think that it will ever go away, and even if it does, it will take a long time for us to get there.
So, it seems to me that I need to choose between (1) being hated by many for following politics and then deriving the "wrong" political conclusions, and (2) being looked down upon by a few for not following any politics nor having a political opinion. Do you see how I framed those options? When I think of it this way, I can't but conclude that the latter of those will carry less risk and cause me less anxiety. I think that, in the worst case, I'll get yelled at for being ignorant and indifferent. I think that I can live with that. I certainly can't live with a hole in my neck though.
So, because political identity is a part of our culture now, I don't expect this post to resonate with very many of you. That's alright. Again, don't think of this as prescription. I'm simply explaining to you why I choose to quit following politics. However, if you relate to my experience, then please do reach out to me and share yours. I'd be happy to know that I'm not alone.
Also, if you have been contemplating breaking up with politics, but need someone to encourage you, then know that from my side, you have nothing but my fullest support. Stop following the news. Stop participating in politics. Live your life to the fullest. Spread goodwill and love. Do the small but meaningful acts that "clean up your corner of the world". We can do very much to improve the lives of each other that way, so a life of peaceful, political ignorance, is still very much a life worth living.