Stop Obsessing Over What You Can’t Control

The algorithm is doing exactly what it was designed to do. Social media runs on engagement, which means the content that gets the strongest emotional reaction is the content that gets pushed the hardest. Outrage, fear, drama — all overrepresented in your feed. Not because the world is that bad, but because those emotions drive clicks.
News works the same way. Headlines are written to make you react, not to inform you. They dramatize events and focus on whatever gets the snap judgment. That’s the business model.
The key is putting things into perspective. That’s where so many people fail. They take the feed at face value and assume it’s a one-to-one reflection of reality. It’s not. That’s why so many people feel nihilistic and hopeless — they’ve lost the ability to contextualize what they’re seeing.
People obsess an unhealthy amount over things they can’t control. The world has always had problems. What’s different now is you’re exposed to all of them, all at once, all day, curated to maximize your emotional response. Contextualize what you see. Understand the incentive structure. Focus on what’s within your control. That’s not ignoring reality — that’s engaging with it sustainably.