Despite not subscribing to political communities and having a large number of content filters based on keywords, my feed here is still for a large part all negative articles and ragebait. Elon Musk this and Israel that. Microsoft ruining windows, AI ruining internet, right wingers and capitalism ruining the world, police being racist and shooting innocent people, companies demanding workers into offices, privacy being under constant attack from all sides… And all this despite the effort I go thru to block that from my view. I can only imagine what the unfiltered feed is like.
I get that this is all important stuff but holy shit it’s depressing when that’s all I read here every day. Sure, some of it is legitimately news worthy but lets be real here; much of it isn’t. It’s just to get you riled up and engaging with the post. It’s the exact same thing all major social media recommendation algorithms are doing; feeding you content that causes outrage to keep you on the platform for as long as possible. Do we really need to know about every stupid thing Elon says or every police shooting where the victim is black?
It’s no wonder so many people, especially younger ones feel absolutely miserable from day to day. It can’t be healthy to live like this. I feel like this kind of media diet is pretty much equivalent to eating fast food every single day.
That’s why I post pictures of opossums, bats, and raccoons…
I am tired of living in a world with all of these problems. Whether or not I have the luxury to ignore them is besides the point.
Nobody is making the world a better place by paying daily attention to every possible thing that’s wrong with it.
This sounds like the “don’t make everything political” rhetoric which is naively hilarious. If you’re encouraging moderation for the sake of mental well-being, sure - but that is just that, like many other things.
Information is a well; people will come and go. How much any one person consumes, like food and drink, is their choice regardless of consequence. You can argue diet, drugs, alcohol, entertainment, masturbation all the same.
Personally, I’d rather take on the mental burden of being informed over being as clueless as some. Ignorance leads to many problems, higher costs when you’re not much of a problem solver etc.
A counterpoint here, if people don’t talk about a problem, or in this case share, then the problem may go unresolved or intensify.
Multiply that by how many problems affect masses of people.
Imo the problem is that social media is one of the worst possible places to foment political change, yet is by far the most popular.
If people actually have a shit about this stuff, they’d be out campaigning for it, or helping people affected by it, instead of just clicking a button and patting themselves on the back.
Not to say social media can’t bring change of course, but I mean, the people posting the most are pretty much by definition doing the least.
Seriously. I wonder how many of those doomers actually volunteer in their community, or are active in their local politics. If the answer was any more than “basically none,” I don’t think we would have most of these issues.
It almost seems like people want to feel enraged. There’s a difference between activism and slacktivism. Complaining about things on social media has next to none effect on the real world. If one wants to make the world a better place, then choosing an issue and actually doings something concrete about it seems more productive.
Admittedly not much anymore. It’s hard organizing people in the face of systemic opposition under the best of circumstances, but I’m also incredibly unhealthy. Socially awkward and anxious is only the tip of the iceberg of the personal problems I have that make it hard for me to engage in real life activism anymore. I’ve tried, but it’s not really something I can do at the moment. I can barely do anything at the moment for that matter.
That said, there is some small value in trying to convince others to think about these problems and develop class consciousness. I’m not claiming it’s much and it’s stressful/depressing knowing I’m not doing more, but at least I’m not trying to get people to stick their heads in the sand. I’m not actively making things worse.
You don’t like ‘owe’ me an explanation of your personal ect ect I can empathize. We all literally have shit going on in our lives myself included so I get that shit is just fucking really tough sometimes. Life is not always the way we want it and we face challenges everyday.
But that is just the very reality though for the entire human race. No one is exempt from that. Challenges go hand in hand with life in general.
Don’t make excuses. Take ownership.
You don’t need to ‘gather’ a group of people to do x y and z. You don’t and can’t force/entice/convince/ whatever anyone to what you think needs to be done.
That’s up to you and you only. You start by setting an example not making excuses.
Doesn’t bother me. Down votes have zero affect on me and my life. Just upset passive aggressive internet people.
Even if you ditched the internet for a while, the real world is fucked and getting more so every day and the only way you still wouldn’t notice is if you live in a little bubble completely isolated from the rest of existence.
I live in a country with multiple problems right now, but I’ve grown to be aware that the more I actively look at negative commentary on the current situation (most are online given anonymity), the more I get into panic mode, which clouds my longterm thinking of trying to get into a better situation (whether it’s self-soothing, changing state policies by any measure, relocation, etc)
I disagree. On the internet it seems like the world is burning (and it kind of is) but outside in the real world sun is shining, birds are singing and people are being polite to eachother. Those two places are in no way equivalent.
The world is actually burning though, and there are fewer birds, and people are tired and stressed all the time, and money is tight, and this is all in the real world, no internet required to experience any of that. The internet may expose you to others struggles that don’t affect your real world, but it still affects theirs. The ability to commiserate is what helps a lot of people cope with their real world, and might even invite insight on how to end some of those struggles.
In the real world your bubble is super small and it tends to be pleasant that is because you intake a lot less information and data about what is going on.
The internet and global community has TONS of information that someone focused on their life won’t exactly notice. There is ways even on the internet to surround yourself with just positivity and fun. But the fact of the matter making people feel negative gets more clicks and drives more money.
Take a break enjoy your life. Check in on the internet occasionally.
The horrible things we see on the news, whether through traditional or Internet consumption, are being experienced by real people. The kids starving in Gaza aren’t ai generated.
Believe it or not, I do try to think of this as a positive. Not the things that are happening obviously, but they’ve always been happening. It’s a positive thing that people are so much more aware and engaged with the world. It may be a huge hit for the individual’s mental health, but this awareness and engagement is the way such things will eventually be prevented. So, congrats to being more aware and engaged with global atrocities compared to previous generations?
In this sense, the issue in Ukraine has especially hit me. I thought imperialism was a thing of the past. All those deaths and injuries from both sides, disregard for lives, all caused by one person’s imperialist ambitions and his ego.
Do you live in the country far from a city. In the UK where I live there’s been a rise in homelessness, roads are packed full of cars, the water treatment companies are poisoning our rivers and beaches, I saw the environmental agency destroying a habitat that was home to several birds, old victory buildings getting knocked down in anticipation of student accommodation, high street in my city has betting shops and casinos, local shops can’t compete with the corporations. Its grim
I like Bubbles.
Here’s your moment of zen ……
Sometime during the last school year, my state enacted a new financial aid program for instate college tuition. On April 29, we got a big surprise refund of most of the tuition we paid for the last school year for my son! College costs are finally getting attention!
the real world is fucked and getting more so every day
Okay I know we have climate change and that is seriously bad.
But the world today is vastly, vastly better than the world 50 years ago. I agree that the world is still fucked but it was more fucked yesterday. Let’s not let the doom newsfeed turn us blind to the fact that the world has in fact gotten better over the last many decades.
Agree. Lemmy seems to have like… Some sort of progressive LGBTQ friendly black pill folks or something. Completely resigned to doom posting, always negative. Always looking to kneecap. Always bringing up macro scale issues on micro scale events. Calling for violence, saying society is guaranteed toast.
Same here. I don’t know if I could in good conscience go back to Reddit, but the constant doomposting makes Lemmy seem more and more unattractive by the day - and that’s after applying a hefty amount of post filters.
I keep telling myself that if I just stick it out, we’ll eventually get enough users to drown out the negativity, but some days I wonder if we’ll ever get there when that’s like 95% of the feed.
I think you are doing something wrong if you still see this things.
- Make an account.
- subscribe to wholesome subs.
- browse by subscriptions.
- just see wholesome content.
Bonus points if you create the account on a wholesome instance so you can browse local too.
I’m not necessarily looking for “wholesome” content, though. I’m looking for interesting content.
Also, there isn’t enough content to browse just a few subs, and there are a lot of communities being created that i would miss out on, and “opt-out” is generally my preferred way to browse.
At the risk of burying my reply I was about to post at the top level ….
Is it just me that this is a technical problem? Is it just iOS? I get logged out multiple times per session, such that one of the reasons I browse all is so I don’t need to login yet again until I want to post something. (And I use an older iPad with a fingerprint reader that is neither fast nor reliable). Of course the other reason is lack of content, but I’m trying to do my part there. But laziness is a big deal.
For those people recommending finding a project: can I recommend “with a side goal of bringing a Lemmy Community to life”? I recently adopted a new community for a new hobby of mine. I found it existing but empty, so can only speculate it was created during Rexxit. I’ve been trying to post twice a week to see if I can draw people in, and it has gotten up to double digit subscribers, but definitely a work in progress. Anyhow, now my focal point in Lemmy is to eagerly check whether anyone posted, and to see if there is a response I can take to encourage more. All the doom and gloom takes a bit of a back seat
Can we not create the communities we wish to see on Lemmy ourselves? I know it might not be full of people at first, but if it at least exists, people who want to interact about said topic in said community can find it eventually and do so, and it can grow over time. Or is this not how it works? Is my logic flawed in any way?
Is the audience for it not here or does the audience not find smaller communities? I for one just browse whatever loads up on Jerboa, and created an account mainly to have some control over what I see (i.e., blocking stuff I’m not interested in). I don’t know that I’d find smaller communities if they don’t get more popular or popular communities get less active to the point of these smaller communities showing up. I don’t know that I can search for anything but communities (on Jerboa, at least). Is there even a search for general, idk, posts and stuff? Not denying maybe the audience isn’t here. Just think maybe finding smaller communities isn’t as easy (or maybe it’s just me, idk. I’m not even looking for specific communities, tbh. Lemmy is my “eh, I’m not doing nothing right now. Imma just check this app on my phone”)
I find this to be an interesting take.
I feel like Reddit had significantly more negativity if you compare now to the 2016 election cycle.
There is a major difference, though… Reddit also had stronger niche communities (at the time). Those communities are largely marginalized now, but I guess they are likely still larger than here.
So you’d see the political stuff, but then you’d see your favorite game got an update. Those distractions are admittedly less numerous here.
This said, the astro-turfing on Reddit was insane. Way, way worse than anything I’ve seen here. The worse thing we have here is Lemmy.ml. They are far worse than astro-turfers, since they just straight up delete comments and ban people that dissent from their propaganda.
But if you block them, or join an insurance that has defederated them, then you’re alright. Fair warning, my instance has not done this… yet.
What do you expect? You’re on lemmy. Half the userbase is doomers, dude.
There’s something about social networks and doom-porn. I have no idea which causes the other, but those tend to walk together.
At least lemmy isn’t heavy editorialized into increased doomerism.
I think the cgp grey video about thought germs gives a high level overview
