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…
Thank you for your posts. I love them in my feed.
Ty for doing that
Your work is appreciated
And suddenly I found several more communities to sub to.
Thank you sir…
And weed…
Tenth person to say it… but thank you :)
Hey! We talked on your scarf post the other day, but I didn’t notice that you’re the one posting all those opossums and raccoons. Thank you!
This is the way. I personally don’t really resonate with OPs problem but the solution is definitely to become the poster you want to see on Lemmy. Most of us are here for scrolling and maybe dropping a comment here or there, theres tonnnnns of space for more link posting.
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.
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.
Part of the problem is the atomization of society. We’ve have vanishingly few truly public spaces to build the kind of connections with people necessary to form shared political causes. People spend most of their lives either:
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In their private homes, suspicious of anyone who tries to interact with them there.
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In private workplaces where management surveils employees and tries to stop organized activity.
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In private businesses where you are only welcome as individual consumers.
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Online on platforms that are privately owned and designed to manipulate behavior and social interactions towards interacting with more advertising. Controversy is only allowed to the extent that it gets more eyeballs on ads and doesn’t upset advertisers.
Back when I was more involved in electoral politics, I found it extraordinarily difficult to reach out to people to organize them, either because they were in spaces where political campaigning wasn’t allowed or because they have become distrustful of strangers.
It’s suffocating any kind of broader public consciousness and I don’t really know what to do about it.
I completely agree that “third places” have been all but eradicated in favor of revenue-generating spaces. This trend alone has lead to the death of a lot of things, including a sense of community and local engagement. (Edit: Worth noting that I also agree with your point about atomization)
I think it also has a lot to do with how abstracted we are from reality. We’ve built all these systems to replace actual face-to-face communities, and people would rather surround themselves in that than to expose themselves to the unpredictability of real life - for better and worse.
It’s a hard sell to get people to reverse course because it’s so much more painless/numbing to engage with these systems. (Not to even mention AI promising to give every person their own personal Yes-Man.)
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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.
👌💯👏
You doing anything to change those problems ?
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.
Agreed that it’s something I need to overcome. But I still think collective action is the only way forward. Half our problems stem from everyone acting as individuals divorced from community.
It’s a valid question, yet you get downvoted…
Doesn’t align with the hive mind.
Doesn’t bother me. Down votes have zero affect on me and my life. Just upset passive aggressive internet people.
I can tell
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 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.
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
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.
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!
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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.
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?
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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”)
Honestly reddit has gotten less negativity because a lot of it moved here. I still use reddit I use both reddit and lemmy.
Got back from a lemmy break recently because I couldn’t stand the negativity and needed a while away from it
I’ve checked it out again recently. It has gone way downhill. Once vibrant communities are now full of themed variations of Ask Reddit questions. The posts are such obvious trivialities created for nothing more than to drive meaningless engagement.
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.
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I just want to say, thank you for still being here and trying to change it in a good direction.
You are so on point. I come here mainly for chuckles, some light hearted discussion and memes but what do is see most? Rage, rage and more rage.
To be fair, I wasn’t seeing mostly rage until this US election cycle spun up.
What do you expect? You’re on lemmy. Half the userbase is doomers, dude.
let’s look at this in a positive way: “half of them are not!”
The world is depressing, and if we just stick our heads in the sand and ignore it all because that feels better nothing’s going to fucking change.
Sure, focus on positivity so you don’t collapse into a depressive blob, but the idea that we should ignore the state of the world because it’s unpleasant is terrible.
There’s probably a healthy middle ground somewhere between the two extreme ends. “Sticking your head in the sand” is harder than you’d think. I go out of my way to try and avoid seeing these articles but I bet you couldn’t name a single current event I haven’t heard of.
I think it’s fair to say that the world was on a steady course of getting better for decades since WWII, but then had quite a strong dip after 2016. I think things have been picking up again lately, but the reason we see so much negativity is kust because there is more of it.
Don’t forget though, the “best” news is negative news that is what people always talk about. Good things are simply expected and so not really talked about.
It’ll all be fine, try to indeed focus on the more positive elements for now
i get this way sometimes. the answer is easy; dont read it. its just that simple. if its only the headline in a list giving you angst, it feels like you might have other issues.
you said it yourself… its a diet you feed yourself. its all in your own hands. dont read it.
I agree with this 100%
I used to love wallowing in bad news, but it just got to the point it was having more of a negative impact than it’s worth. I still pay attention to what’s going on, it just doesn’t need to be via an IV bag all day so I filter most of it out now.
I like your last sentence alot lol very true
In short: Yes. It’s dragging me down, too.
I’d like to focus on positivity. I mean negativity comes with strong emotions and I don’t want to get rid of it. But I’d like to see more positive things, too. People sharing side projects and nice things they’ve done and created. There needs to be a better balance. Because this doesn’t depict life or the entire perspective.
I don’t have that problem, especially on lemmy. My feed here is mostly about taking action, not doomerism.
One of Lemmy’s most toxic communities are the Linux people. I’m actually a huge fan of Linux, but the simple fact I use Windows as well constantly earns me personal attacks and extremely negative responses.
My solution (to this and many other issues you describe) is honestly to not read the replies any longer… I just say my bit, and I leave.
I’ve also taken to watching comedy shows that touch upon numerous topics of all the crazy shit going on. The Daily show has been a great outlet for me, and I’m not even a Democrat (I’m independent). It’s just nice to see a popular form of media clearly states “yes, this is crazy. You’re not crazy, THIS is just f*king crazy.”
Edit: For example, Trump recently claimed he never said “lock her up” the other day to Hillary. I saw this on Lemmy first. John Stewart’s reaction a day or two later was perfect, and pointed out the gaslighting taking place.
I just feel like you have to find ways to laugh at all this crazy stuff… So comedy shows help. Just keep your guard up whenever consuming politically charged media, of course.
Hey you might not read this since it’s a reply, but John Oliver does a pretty good job also! Last Week Tonight on HBO but they also post all their main stories on youtube.
I just don’t see this toxic linux user thing at all.
Every second post is a meme about Linux users telling people they’re idiots for using Windows, but I’ve never seen Linux users abusing Windows users.
I’m sure that it happens to some extent, but it seems entirely possible to be active on lemmy without encountering a toxic Linux user.
There’s a genocide going on with what appears to be more or less the full support of the countries that make up the defence union my country is a part of.
There’s war in Europe.
I find those topics worthy of discussion, and any social media where this is not actively discussed seems to me to be a smokescreen more than anything.
Of course tragic realities like the genocide we are complacent in, climate change, war in Europe, Russian propaganda and the rise of the far right is going to be actively discussed. It concerns more or less everyone who uses this platform, and they are the most important issues of our time. It’s not about negativity, it’s about coming to terms with reality and seeking to understand it.
That said, the communities I follow are largely apolitical stuff that interests me. Woodworking, knitting, gardening, owls, art, and the Fediverse. With the exception of !europe@feddit.de and !energy@slrpnk.net, I let the political stuff come through the cracks rather than actively following it.
I also have a Piefed account on which I follow news communities but actively filter out Trump and Musk. I can see how Amercians still feel the need to talk about these men, but at the end of the day they’re just fascist attention whores.
I’ve unsubscribed from worldnews and technology yesterday. I couldn’t bare to read yet another scareporn article pretending to be tech news.
The posts and comments were making me feel worse faster than the interesting information were making me happier.
I’ll probably take a short brake and try to sort the news from clickbate and propaganda later, possibly creating a new, properly moderated community.
I would argue that doom scrolling is self harm with no productive value.
My household pays for a subscription to a journal we like, which dives deep into topics of interest to us. We learn a LOT more than doom scrollers here know about. For example, doom scrollers will tell you that South Korea’s birthrate is so low because cost of living is so high, which is wrong. What else are they wrong about? I think, probably most things.
But of course doom scrollers are less informed. How would they be informed? They don’t pay for the news with money, they pay for it by consuming exploitative rage bait. And exploitative rage bait’s purpose isn’t to inform you, it’s to convince you to consume more. So the truth isn’t an objective of this content at all. How can you be confident that a person is treating you well by giving you the truth, when they are explicitly relying on a model meant to harm you for more money? It’s like trusting Coca Cola to give you nutrition advice.
And what are the long term effects of trusting rage bait sources? Well, you’ve probably seen it. They lose all faith in humanity, institutions, everything that once gave their lives structure. They become depressed and give up because if the world is so bad, why bother trying to fix it? They become overwhelmed by the long term effects of hopeless media.
If I consumed only rage bait media for a full month, I am confident I would become meaner, less informed, and more combative. And that’s what we all associate with doom scrollers, right? It’s not a coincidence. I totally agree with your point, by the way. It’s like consuming fast food every day. You feel like you’re learning something, but you aren’t.
I get my news intermittently from what I believe to be a reliable source, and then I stop. I block all ragebait on this platform, and I block users who I can tell want me to get angry.
Some will argue I am being irresponsible, but they’re wrong. Blocking toxic people is the responsible thing to do. They aren’t trying to inform me.
I’ve got a blocklist over 600 users long here and it’s growing every day. If I see a person make even one mean comment I block them immediately. Same applies to the people commenting stuff like “acab” or “fuck x” and similar. Doesn’t matter wether I agree with them or not. That single comment is all I need to know about how they behave online. I’m not interested in hearing more from them. I know they’re being perfectly nice on another thread, but I don’t care. There’s a near-infinite number of content available online. If I’m in a room with 100 people, I don’t want to talk with all of them. The few percent of intellectually honest and not-mean people are all I need for an interesting and enjoyable conversation.
Yeah, I think that’s the move. I’m the same way. I learned at some point that what we do on the internet doesn’t really matter, and I’m just here for things that make me smile, and I try to keep it neutral or positive if I can.
Sane approach, good suggestion
I don’t mind when bad news is posted. It’s important to know these things. What bothers me is how the top comment is always some low-effort defeatest bullshit like “and there will never be consequences.”
I’m finding that some really bizarre ideas around persecution are embraced on lemmy.
In some other thread someone is trying to convince me that wealthy people hate e-bikes because they don’t want poor people to be free.
There is some evidence for the bizarre ideas: Social dominance theory - Wikipedia
People who score high in hierarchical world belief see the world as full of differences that matter because they usually reflect something real, inherent and significant. Such individuals often separate things of greater value from things of lesser value.
Holy shit why have I not been reading sociology all these years?
Does anyone know of a good intro to sociology textbook I can read to get started?
YES good point. This is truly where I feel the most disgust.
Honestly if you wanted to demoralize a nation and had either some GPT bots or rooms full of foreign operatives, this kind of defeatist top comment would be a pretty effective way of doing it.
You can just influence the culture of their people. Make them think through social proof that the right way to act is to be defeatist and pessimistic and negative.
