Man who cut himself off from news and outside world after Trump election win divides opinion

The news of Donald Trump winning the election was the final straw for Erik Hagerman, who decided to retreat into a pig farm in Ohio to live a life of a hermit - and cut himself off totally from the news.

Hagerman, 53, a former Nike executive, was shaken badly over President Trump’s victory - so badly that he swore off news about anything happening in America after November 8 2016.

This means reading or consuming nothing at all from the outside world except the weather and sports games on mute - ignorance that has people divided.

But it was surprisingly easy to do for the former executive, who three years ago left the corporate world and moved to a secluded pig farm where he lives alone.

Requesting respect for what he calls the Blockade, Hagerman has had to ask his friends and family to purposely keep him out-of-the-loop. Some, multiple times - as they didn’t take his news ban seriously at first.

Now, more than a year into his complete news cut-off, Hagerman knows nothing, as he told The New York Times. And people have mixed opinions.

For some, the idea of shutting oneself off completely from the outside world sounds like a dream come true.

But for others, Hagerman’s conscious decision to ignore what is happening in the world around him is "offensive" and "selfish."

As implementing such a ban would require a significant amount of stability in America, and a complete lack of worries about how news could affect you, many people are criticising Hagerman’s response to Donald Trump’s election.

For writer Jamil Smith, Hagerman’s “willful ignorance” is not the answer.

Smith tweeted: “Erik Hagerman is doing exactly the wrong thing. I’m all for mental health breaks, especially with this @Potus - but willful ignorance helps no one.”

The editor of the daily newspaper in Hagerman’s Ohio town of Glouster, Tyler Buchanan, also tweeted his disapproval.

“I’m not offended when people choose not to read my newspaper. I’ve also learned to accept that people read the paper for different reasons -- some only for comics, some for the classifieds. That is totally fine,” he tweeted.

“But it does rattle me that someone CHOOSES to ignore the news. On purpose. Solely because the world around them is too harsh or the election results too unfavourable,” Buchanan wrote.

Either way, the tweets and articles criticising Hagerman likely won’t bother him - as he will never see them.