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 service!
Ty for doing that
Thank you for your posts. I love them in my feed.
And suddenly I found several more communities to sub to.
Thank you sir…
And weed…
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!
Tenth person to say it… but 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.
Your work is appreciated
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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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.
#VirtueSignaling REEEEEEEEEEE
Removed by mod
Lame ass ‘comeback’
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE !
lol 🍼🤣
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.
The idea is that you spread the knowledge to others and occasionally do something about some of them, even if it’s only a small contribution.
👌💯👏
You doing anything to change those problems ?
It’s a valid question, yet you get downvoted…
Doesn’t bother me. Down votes have zero affect on me and my life. Just upset passive aggressive internet people.
I can tell
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 Do 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.
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.
And what are we meant to do about that?
If you’re in a country that is providing the bombs. You can try to stop that from happening.
Worth noting I agree with the general point of this thread. I just disagree with people saying problems like Israel’s genocide are none of our business and that nothing we do can have an impact (again assuming you’re in somewhere like the US or UK that provides bombs and diplomatic cover)
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
which I currently am. :(
I like Bubbles.
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.
Thank you for putting how I feel browsing Lemmy into words. I really hope that more wholesome communities can gain more traction soon.
One thing I’ve tried to take to heart on lemmy: On reddit I nearly never posted articles. But here, I try to post any article I find interesting. I think with such a small space we’ve gotta be the change we see. Every time you read something worthwhile, try to remember to find somewhere to post it here.
I’ve noticed this to especially be a problem on Lemmy when I first migrated from Reddit. I know everyone here is a Reddit hater but I’ve been highly considering creating a new Reddit account again just because I am so tired of the constant negative news on Lemmy. 80% of Lemmy is world news about everything that you just stated. There are practically no active communities here for any hobbies outside of Linux, which is the only place you can find neutral and/or positive things. Reddit you had thousands of active communities from all sorts of hobbies whether its a specific niche game, or playing a musical instrument, theres a community for it there.
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
I think one of Lemmy’s issues is that everyone wants to create a community instead of contributing to what’s here. People expect to have all the “niche hobby” communities like Reddit had right off the bat, but we don’t have the mass of people to support that - especially when you can have multiple communities for one topic across instances. Everything dilutes to nothing.
So we end up with nearly a 1:1 user/community ratio and every community either gets abandoned or only has 1 power-user posting.
I think the solution is essentially what you’re doing - to take existing communities and breathe life into them. Start out small and focused, and then branch out when it feels necessary.
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.
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?
There is not enough activity to sustain niche communities.
Is there nothing that can be done about it? Maybe have some sort of community to find smaller communities. Maybe people just don’t know (and maybe don’t look for or find) there’s a community they might like
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 just want to say, thank you for still being here and trying to change it in a good direction.
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!”
So you’re a “glass half empty” kind of person, which now means you’re a positive thinker.
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.
We talk about positive things.
Like Linux.
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
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.”
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.
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?
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.
I think it’s because a lot of things are bad (and many are getting worse) yet the only power most people have to do anything about them is to raise awareness of the issues, which means engaging with negative news. Sometimes it can be hard to tell what’s real news and what’s rage bait; sometimes non-news can seem like news when it’s part of an ongoing pattern (such as “Elon’s dumb take of the day”). I think there’s also some degree of trying to maintain one’s sense of reality. To the previous example, despite being a massive fuckwit, Elon is still among the wealthiest people in the world, is incredibly influential, and has maintained some degree of fanboy army; posting/reading/discussing/upvoting an article about what dumb thing he said today is grounding for some folks because it reinforces reality by demonstrating that yes, he is still a fuckwit, even though somehow everything still hasn’t come crashing down around him like it karmically should.
Yes. There’s a widespread mental health crisis featuring anxiety, depression, narcissism, and more. Make good use of the ability to block, avoid, unsubscribe, etc. You just can’t help everybody and you need to help yourself.
Yes I get tired of constant negativity, even though I myself do what I can to not contribute to it.
It’s exhausting
I’ve discovered a way to overcome this: turn off the phone. It’s not the content that is bad, it’s our addiction to it.
Spending every day reading about all the different ways it sucks doesn’t help either
I know, we’re in the same boat.
I think I replied to a wrong comment
I didn’t design it, but it’s the face of reality.
If you take out the L in your username, is spells over_cox
STRAP ON spelled backwards is NO PARTS
My mind… it’s been blown…
