No Stupid Questions

I'm not focusing on the things that don't affect me in some way, and I'm still miserable.

I agree that staying informed is extremely depressing. But what would you have me do, stick my head in the sand and ignore what my government it's doing? Ignore the growing control and power the rich capitalist ruling class have over us all year by year? Or ignore what the growing fascist powers within my nation and other important places like the USA are doing? Or how the global climate for humans is collapsing and what's causing it?

Most of these things directly impact me right now, and will continue to have an even greater impact as time goes on.

I'm not focusing on news stories that have no impact on me. I don't care what Elon Musk had for breakfast, what the latest hot celebrity is doing, or what the Royal family is up to. Even so, only focusing on what affects me and my family is a huge, deeply depressing weight that is ever growing.

I agree, it's awful. But the world, for all the beauty it also contains, is growing ever more awful day by day. I just can't find it in me to bury my head in the sand and hope it'll all turn out fine, so instead I stay informed and stay miserable :-(

We can't fight back if we don't understand our enemy and what they're doing to us. We can't make informed decisions about who to vote for, for example, if we don't follow those political parties and politicians track records, their history of decisions and statements and so on.

People who ignore the day to day stuff and then show up to do 10 minutes of bullet point blurb research to figure out who to vote for are not likely to gain a clear understanding of the parties or candidates true beliefs and intentions. The same is true for companies, we need to stay informed on what they say, what they actually do, so we can be informed on whether we want to work for them, or use their products and services, etc etc.

We must stay informed. They want us uninformed so they can manipulate us with ease. Ignorance is bliss, but at what price?

Anyway, it's a quandary, and a sad one, I agree for sure 🫂

I didn't design it, but it's the face of reality.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Check out the Uplifting News community :)

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

"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.

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.

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

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

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?

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 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... 😅😢

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

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.