No Stupid Questions

I think you can also see something fundamentally positive in the critical attitude of many Lemmy users: namely the fact that criticism of undesirable developments in politics, society, the economy and so on is practiced here at all. In my opinion, this is important and should not be taken for granted. If only because it is impossible for so many people in numerous countries around the world to express their opinions freely and criticize their governments or powerful people in their society.

In any case, I think that a certain fundamental skepticism towards the existing power structures in politics, media and business is something of a unifying element that motivates many people to participate in Fediverse, after all, this platform is an alternative to the centrally managed social media providers and their functional logics.

Nevertheless, I think your post is important because it shows that all the negativity that goes hand in hand with a critical examination of the numerous problems in the real world is extremely off-putting for many users. This is of course problematic both for the mass appeal of the Fediverse and to a certain degree probably also for the mental health of the user base.

Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer as to how to deal with this in a meaningful way. However, I try to stay positive and hope for the best.

That’s the problem. Everyone’s like "THIS IS BAAAD! THAT IS GETTING WORSE!! HURR DURR!“ - but no one is actually reflecting multiple sources. No info, just rage.

I try to remind myself that social media, and yes, that includes Lemmy, does not reflect the rest of the aspects of my life - which is overall positive.

Subscribe to the communities you like, and stick to your subscriptions' newsfeed. Much, much better experience.

Of course.

I just turn off my socials for a bit and it's all good.

Yes you can, and should, ignore how crummy the world is sometimes. Outside of the good you can do with your own two hands, there's nothing you can do to change it unless you're a billionaire and a legislator will actually take your phone calls.

Check out the Uplifting News community :)

I've never had any other social media (aside from reddit and now lemmy) and I don't spend hours a day doomscrolling here. I'm thinking if I did that, I'd go crazy.

Everything in moderation. This definitely includes doomscrolling. Not good for your mental health.

We need to be informed, and unfortunately a lot of things like orange man and Gaza are depressing. But I try to just get the important details and not dwell on things that I can't change.

There are a lot of people writing articles and a whole lot more people commenting, but that doesn't mean I need to read even 1% of it.

Yes, the problem to me is manly the feeling (or fact) that we are running into an existential crisis that can and probably will decimate large amounts of the global population and instead of pulling together, people are running into the arms of demagogues and extremists that tell them we are great it's the others that are bad and we don't have to change anything about our way of life. Plus every other nation claims little islands or other countries areas... we won't get anywhere if this won't change

It's exhausting. Lemmy isn't so bad. Threads is absolutely terrible. It's like the MIL subs on Reddit, only for every negative topic imaginable. I just stopped opening the app because all it shows me is content on sexual assaults and rapes and people being victimized and having all sorts of troubles.

"Welcome to the desert of the real" --Morpheus, "The Matrix"

But I agree, it would be nice if Lemmy could be a haven of intelligence, logic, and reason. But the cockroaches simply move from one infestation site to another, impossible to eradicate.

The only way you will get what you want is to unplug. Stop browsing the internet, get outside, and enjoy the sunshine.

Many of us long for the internet of the 90s -- even with its slow dialup speeds and loud modem sounds. It was fresh, exciting, fun, and unencumbered by the weight of millions of trolls who either hadn't yet discovered it, or hadn't yet been born. Now, it is littered with such trolls who have what they perceive as their intelligence spoon-fed to them by the very few major news outlets -- and mistakenly think that their confirmation bias found in their search results is somehow proof of their intelligence. Critical thought is all but gone, replaced by a terrible version of the telephone game, where facts get lost, or worse, purposefully outright removed.

Yeah I do, but I also seem to gravitate towards it so I guess that says something about us as a species.

Yes, very tired of this and I've noticed the fediverse in particular is especially terrible at it. Mastodon or Lemmy, doesn't matter, I see much less optimism and good news compared to twitter or hackernews. I don't remember Reddit because it's been a year since I deleted my account there.

I think I might start scaling back my fediverse usage a little because as much as everyone says I have to build my own feed, it doesn't matter because there's like 15 total users on here that keep postings the same bad news from the same 2 accounts that get related by the remaining 12 users. And if you mute the bad accounts then your feed is the void.

I can't believe we are at a point where twitter which has an incentive to enrage their users and especially now that they encourage people to post engagement bait (by paying users), I see less bad news and negativity there than on here.

I noticed the fediverse tends to be extremely left-biased, with things like on mastodon you get blocked because you didn't put a content warning on a post showing a recipe because someone could be offended by chopped apples or something like that. I think generally the way the left tends to work is by showing the evils of the right (and the right by outright lying of course) to push for change. This can work but the downside is that you just only see this shit all the time and it is very heavy to take in every day.

It honestly feels like the good news never get relayed on here, and when they do, they are rarely popular. France has put the right to abortion in their constitution, but on here everything we hear about is how one clinic refused an abortion some time 2 years ago for some reason and they are getting sued for it.

One other thing I just thought of, is that the somewhat positive news, are mostly about someone or something losing a case. Just now I saw an article posted about how a big Russian company is having trouble because of the war, and that's considered good news. Even the positivity on here is based on negativity (or at the detriment of someone else). And to get the records straight, I think it is somewhat good that big companies are not doing so well, I just don't give a shit and I would prefer to see what next technology will make my life easier or what law got passed that will make other people's lives better.

I dont want to read or see negative news, but it feels i have to be aware of them so things dont hit me blindsided. I'm so tired of this world

I mean I remember doing this as far as I can remember even before the World Wide Web. Funnily I got little healthier when I discovered Reddit.

My real life teenage company was definitely this of depressed rebellion sinking in litres of vodka and drugs every other day.

Reddit made me see better people than the shit company of assholes and total cunts from this eastern block post soviet brutalist architecture neighbourhood.

This is how my primary and middle school looked like

Does that look like a fucking happy place?

People simply like to complain, and here, they can get validation for those complaints.

Part of the purpose of any media is to illicit a reaction. In print media especially news, the "art" of writing has been distilled down to this because it is a easy way to garner views which in turn drives advertising/product sales. It's been shown that even negative publicity drives engagement without long-term consequences.

With content-engagement algorithms our monkey-brain doesn't stand much of a chance. Multiple of your favourite interests dispensing serotonin shots minute after minute. With the scroll confirmation giving basic feedback, let's not even get into the camera. I'll put money on pro versions not needing scrolling soon enough. Then doom scrolling will just become....

Contribute positively... By the way, this is not it.

The thing is if you want content, people feeding you it are a small minority doing most of the work.

Help them and maybe they'll post happier stuff.

I block tons of subs and I have a lot of words on my ban list as well.

I was going to say subscribe to more creative or hobbiest communities, but then there's still news about Adobe or something fucking shit up in those spaces too... 😅😢

Fucking YES