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.
Unfortunately news hasn’t been news for 100 years. It’s entertainment now and the way to drive viewership is ragebait or bad news.
I think it reflects the point where we are as a society. Everything is crappy and we all come here to vent.
No
It’s worse than eating fast food everyday lol
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.
All and probably most Local feeds are negative. If you’re looking for a more positive experience, you should change the way you interact with Lemmy and the Fediverse.
First, you should investigate different instances (or consider hosting your own) and find one that sounds like it has a better vibe. Then use the Local feeds instead of All.
Second, look for better communities. Many people complain about there being different iterations of communities but this is where that’s a strength of Lemmy’s structure. If the news community you’re frequenting is too full of downers, then look into different news communities. Or- again- if you’re feeling up to it, make your own and advertise it as a light-hearted community, then moderate it as such.
I try to filter out most of this negative stuff, but it has a downside. You become disconnected from the raw information feed if you don’t occasionally just look at it. For short periods, it’s tolerable, but then I just re-enable all filtering to reduce my cognitive load.
If I need to be cheered up, I prefer to look for science articles or news since these are generally about unbiased progress.
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.
This is a great way to contribute. It’s so heartening to me to see so many other people feeling the same way I am about the negativity.
But I’ll take your suggestion and start posting my own content.
When you are a pessimist, your entire world view is negative. So, it’s not really possible to get tired of that.
Yeah I feel that way about the Internet as a whole kinda one of the reasons why I’ve been trying to make my accounts interact with j pop and Japanese studying recently so there’s what I’ve been trying and here specifically im finding a lot of communists and trans people trying to get people to be on their side and like bro I just want to get suggestions on how to make my car faster I suppose at least the atheists on here are pretty jokey and the fuck cars community is pretty chill actually one of the reasons why dispute being a car guy I strongly support infrastructure that doesn’t focus on cars over all the star trec meme community here has been pretty good non political community
Except
Elon Musk this
Yep.
and Israel that.
Definitely that.
Microsoft ruining windows,
alwayshasbeen.jpg
AI ruining internet,
Nah. Stupid just has a new source.
right wingers and capitalism ruining the world,
Just for the 99%
police being racist and shooting innocent people,
A painfully bad generalization based on sensationalized news and really badly-trained american muni cops.
companies demanding workers into offices,
See: ‘capitalism ruining the world’, above.
privacy being under constant attack from all sides…
We need to aggressively shun the worst companies and keep doing it until they evolve.
And all this despite the effort I go thru to block that from my view
I see people writing ‘thru’ like it’s a whatsapp chat with their school-chums. It’s okay to dislike what you see, and it’s okay to feel overwhelmed at times. Remind people - like people who think ‘thru’ is appropriate - that they’re smarter, they know better, and they can be better, but that it’s also okay to be working toward that goal without having achieved it yet.
This will all be fixed, but it feels like a lot, right now. We CAN work on more than one thing at once, too: people can learn the difference between ‘the person that I saw’ and ‘the person whom I saw’ (one of them is an insulting objectification) while they also improve how they sort recyclables. Like how your mom would tell you not to shuffle your feet while she reminded you not to slouch while you walk, there will be many cases where we can be improving one thing and it won’t impact improvement in another avenue.
Just do your best. That’s all anyone can ask, now as it always has been.
You went thru all that effort and still failed to address the question being asked.
“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.
I think while some of this may be people being people (i.e. tendency to only discuss issues/problems vs accomplishments/solutions), I think there’s also a technical element to it as well in Lemmy’s case.
Up to the latest release of Lemmy (as of writing this is v0.19.4), admins couldn’t adjust the default sort setting, which was Active. Read the docs on the sort setting and Active does what it says, surfaces those posts with recent commenting activity (taking into account score as well).
So you get this unfortunate mix of: people gravitate to discussing negative stuff, people tend not to change default settings (since despite defaults being Active, we can change these if so inclined), and the default sort settings surface whatever is being most discussed/commented on, resulting in this sort of negativity feedback loop you’ve observed.
I noticed and posted about this a few months ago, have tried to upvote and comment on less negatively-focused posts occasionally, but I think this may be an interesting example of a small scale systemic issue as it takes more of us doing similar to address what’s being encountered. However, as more instances update to v0.19.4, I’ll be interested in seeing if admins decide to switch away from the Active sort setting to try to address this in their own way.
I don’t know what sort setting may be better for instances to run with instead, but I’m glad they now have the option. In the meantime I think it’s worth reminding people that they currently have the option to change their default sort settings to something different to try to see different kinds of posts. Personally I switch between New and Scaled to see a variety of posts beyond many of the regular doom and gloom posts.
Politics are dumb but very, very important. I’m exhausted, but I can’t let that stop me.
Politics are dumb but very, very important
I know that saying well.
And I agree. You are not learning to understand politics because you think you’re going to run for office and change the world, you learn so you understand what’s actually going on and so you can help educate others.
Seriously, everyone out there who rather just block out anything to do with politics and society and are overwhelmed by the idea of finding the path to least harm, you are only going to make your insecurity and anxiety around politics worse by ignoring it or condemning it when you see it. Forming strong values around your axioms is politics, and when you find a confident stance like “Do good things, don’t do bad things” and learn what consequences are of different attitudes and actions, you become a LOT more complete and confident and less likely to be absolutely railroaded by the very real forces out there who will exploit your apathy. It doesn’t mean you have to preach or lecture anyone, just know how things work.
Sitting it out, ignoring it, hiding from it… that feels like you’re escaping, but you are just playing into the plans of those who need you to be apathetic. You don’t get out of taking a side here, so start learning.
What is consuming everything actually doing for you? Like, how is it benefiting? What positive actions does it inspire that lead you to creating a better world?
If you aren’t informed, your choices are more likely to cause harm
Personal insecurity comes from lack of understanding of systems that impact you.
Everyone has different needs and wants out of their society, but we all have the same axioms. Learning how to connect your axioms to your political identity is a very strong way to feel more connected to your community and the people you care about. Learning how the world works can help guide choices and support others who may also be struggling. Understanding how politics and sociology work gives you a window into how people are motivated and you will make better decisions.
And more than anything, the MOST important part of learning how the world functions and how science, politics, religion, emotion and relationships are all tied to each other, is that it defends you against bullshit and lies.
You and I are very vulnerable to the way others can trigger emotional responses and then use those feelings to explain an agenda. People do this all day long, every day, on every side of the political spectrum, and it’s VERY easy to get pulled into these clubs and communities, most of which are either scams or grifts trying to sell you something or trying to get you to become a walking advertisement for what they’re selling.
The problem with politics on lemmy is that it isn’t a discussion at all, but a one-sided circle jerk. Almost every post is some flavor of Right Wing Bad, and any attempt at nuance or calling out hypocrisy results in a sea of downvotes and what appears to be shadow bans. There are no dissenting opinions allowed. If you spend your time consuming heavily moderated and filters content, it’s going to produce anxiety. But more importantly, it isn’t even reality.
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…
