It's not the stupidest timeline because in that one everyone's happy because everyone's stupid. The problem is that you're smart and too many people with power aren't. After so many decades of living alongside news media empires, who make money if we're all terrified, I take everything with a pinch of salt now.

I automatically ignore any headline, for example, that asks a question in the subject line and doesn't answer it unless you read the article. Also, any article that uses hyperbolic phrases like "This is the end of..." or " slams/eviscerates/destroys with tweet/article/report".

Also, any headline with ridiculous numbers in it like "Eighty million people will be homeless by winter" or "The average human is filled with 5 kilos of micro plastics!". I even ignore headlines that promise good news, if they use the same tricks, like "New, cheap, easily mass produced chemical discovered that can fix climate change!".

It's kind of a new brain muscle for me but now my first impulse when I read any headline is to assume it's not true and then see if anything else comes along to suggest otherwise. Take all that BS, for example, about the 2000 foot deep chambers apparently discovered under the pyramids that just appeared in everyone's newsfeed. Didn't take long for that to get debunked.

Basically, I just assume all this is fiction until it's corroborated by several dependable sources. The reality of the state of the world is almost certainly not what is being put in front of us. It might be worse or it might be better but it's almost certainly not what they say it is.