You’re banned too You’re welcome
-Looks out window. Lawn’s engulfed in flames. Closes window shades.-
“All better.”
I mean, if there’s not anything I can do beyond dumping a thimble of water on the fire six months from now I’d rather just die happy.
Two things
- Politics is for Power provides a pretty good model for thinking about this https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Politics-Is-for-Power/Eitan-Hersh/9781982116798
There’s a lot of political hobbyism on social media in general and Lemmy is really bad for it. Take for example the constant Elon Musk rage bait. No one is doing anything productive with that information. They’re just getting mad
- Social media, in general, isn’t a good way to get informed. It makes you feel really in touch but when a lot of the time you’re getting biased and polarizing that is often as enraging as it is unproductive
We treat politics like entertainment and it’s making our politics worse. Personally I try to limit my exposure to politics that I don’t think will be productive. It might feel like the most important thing in the moment but it’s often a huge waste of time
You make some great points. I’ve seen this in action locally - it’s a tiny minority who actually make the effort to change things and they have an amazing success rate, in part because they are often unopposed. The barrier to entry is deceptively low. I think I’m going to read that book.
Perhaps I’m old and tired, but I think that the chances of finding out what’s actually going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say, “Hang the sense of it,” and keep yourself busy. I’d much rather be happy than right any day.
- Douglas Adams
Tbf, Lemmy is a place to unwind for many people, we have enough boring exhausting shit going on irl.
It’s a link aggregator, if you don’t like politics you’re in the wrong format of social media.
Better post about how doomed you are, that’ll fix it.
But for real, some of the communities I’m in have a rule about not posting about negative stories without adding a way to take action, a way to contribute, etc so that it’s not just doom scrolling negativity. Bad news is everywhere and it’s easy to find, anyone can do that.
Taking those bad feelings and channeling them towards something other than wallowing in how bad things are is the important part, not posting and reading. Someone who reads one bad news story a week and calls their representative about it is doing infinitely more than someone who reads every negative story out there to stay “informed”.
There is a global authoritarian campaign to undermine democracies across the globe, the US is not the only country having serious trouble right now.
I post to Lemmy a lot and generally try my best to not contribute to the doom and gloom for this reason. I think there’s a difference between wanting to stay informed and getting addicted to the outrage/doom posts.
I’m mostly here to joke around with people and nerd out in a handful of niche interest communities.
Bless you for it. All this place seems to to be is Musk rage bait, jerking off Linux, and Star Trek memes, and only one of those things is acceptable.
Same, I ban all US politic subs as well
Yeah, the doomposting is intense on Lemmy. I’ve taken up a policy of just downvoting any negative posts I see, even if I like the post otherwise, just to tamp down the negativity a bit around here.
The best and worst thing about Lemmy is how niche we are. It keeps out the “mainstream”, but unfortunately we’re easily inundated by perpetually-online doomers.
Also, I would recommend blocking users moreso than communities. Once you start looking for it, you realize that like 90% of these posts are made by just a few people/bots.
Tell ya what, you up vote it and I’ll down vote it and all should be right in the world.
Good question, I suppose I’m being negative about negativity.
Honestly, feel free to downvote, you have my blessing lol.
If you make a decent negative argument, in a perfect world it should be an upvote.
“If”, tho’…
Yeah. I just take a quick peek at their comment history to see if I should just block them. Works great.
I plead with you to check mine just a wee bit longer,
i paid someone a compliment back in the day.
Plus, your writing style is adorable!
Yes.
Downvoting isn’t “negativity”, it’s a method for users to define what does and does not contribute to the content of the platform. By downvoting this content, I’m voicing my opinion that negativity is overrepresented on Lemmy, and encouraging (however slightly) more positive content to be posted.
Also, I would recommend blocking users moreso than communities. Once you start looking for it, you realize that like 90% of these posts are made by just a few people/bots.
I wish there was an easy way to block everyone from an instance, like *@shittylemmyinstance.poop or something. Yeah, I do have one instance blocked to avoid the content, but the posters seem fine, but there are a few where blocking users one at a time is like whack-a-mole.
I find that switching to my ‘subscribed’ feed and sorting by newest weeds out 95% of the doom and outrage. Most single-topic communities are really positive. You very occasionally get a itinerant doomer or naysayer coming out of the woodwork and being rabidly cynical, but in something like a gardening or saxophone community their comment always just looks silly and out of place and is usually easy to ignore.
