this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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No Stupid Questions

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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.

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[–] troglodytis@lemmy.world 4 points 6 months ago (5 children)

I love it! It's freaking awesome, peeps expressing themselves and all. More of that please

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[–] rimu@piefed.social 4 points 6 months ago (2 children)
  • You're using an app that has filtering
  • You know how to use the filtering feature
  • You have not installed an elon, trump, israel and a gaza filter
  • You see lots of elon, trump, israel and a gaza content
  • You wonder what to do next

I think I see a way out of this.

You can figure it out, I believe in you.

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[–] Ardyssian@sh.itjust.works 4 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Yes I've noticed this. For the sake of my mental health, I don't mull over such issues for too long. I used to be angry at injustices I saw, but now I can't be bothered (I stopped caring to be angry).

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[–] JATtho@lemmy.world 4 points 6 months ago

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.

[–] Alice@hilariouschaos.com 4 points 6 months ago

Fucking YES

[–] morphballganon@lemmy.world 4 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I just block all the trolls and idiotic communities I see. Yes, it's tiresome, but that's the price of a federated platform.

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[–] algorithmae@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 6 months ago

I don't follow any sort of news for this reason. No tech news, no car news, no nation news. Show me only cat pictures and stuff people with their hands, thank you very much.

[–] ssm@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 6 months ago

Yes, which is why I have every politics and politics-adjacent community, and entire instances blocked.

[–] Thekingoflorda@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago (10 children)

Simple solution, start your own community with only positive news.

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[–] DBT@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago

Good post. Cheers.

[–] cRazi_man@lemm.ee 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Find the communities you like. There will be communities based around wholesome memes and positivity if that's what you want.

The other thing is to use filter lists extensively. I use Lemmy in the Boost Android app. My filter list is constantly being added to (Elon, Biden, Trump, Superbowl, Covid, etc). You're in charge of making or finding the experience you want.

If the content is affecting you then find something else entirely. If detached from the live news cycle and watch science based YouTube channels, listen to podcasts of interest, read books and follow websites via RSS. If you don't like it here then you don't have to be here.

[–] whoisthedoktor@lemmy.wtf 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

The world is going to shit. The idea that you think all the "negativity" is bad and not the fact that the world is a horrible place and getting worse every single day is the reason the world is a horrible place and getting worse every single day. Denial of horrible practices, support for bad corporations, denial of science, logic, and reason, and all of this is what is making things bad, and every time I see someone try to inject some common sense into discussions about anything bad and how these people get downvoted and absolutely flamed is just another sign that there's really little to no hope left in the world.

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[–] lesteross@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago

I do. That's why I'm using lemmy and reddit at the same time, cause at least on reddit there are subreddits that I care about. Both c/all and r/all are depressing to me but I'm still scrolling through both of them. Btw I'm scrolling on lemmy for almost a year and I do follow some communities here but I always use all and I never switch to subscribed, also I'm rarely subscribing to the new ones. Am I the only one who does that?

[–] shadowspirit@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

When people are content what is there to say? People tend to post about topics that anger or frustrate them. The quality of the post varies on the sincerity of the user. Anything from shitposting to actually articulate arguments. You're unlikely to find the latter on any form of social media. Most constructive conversation happens face to face. It's just too easy to derail an online conversation and there are powers that be that are literally troll farms because it works.

There was a message yesterday about the game werewolf. An informed minority will generally control the uninformed majority. You get a small number of people to troll and that's all it takes to derail conversation around any topic they don't like.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago (20 children)

Of course we're fucking tired of the constant negativity! But that's because the reality is negative, so WTF is the alternative? Are you suggesting we should be delusional instead?

[–] Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee 4 points 6 months ago

Most things in the world are better than they ever have been and they are still constantly improving. Internet and social media just points a huge spotlight on the things we still need to work on and ironically social media itself is one of those things. We'll never run out of negative things to pay attention to. Never. Doomscrolling to the point of mental exhaustion and sense of helplessnes is only making things worse. We all need to touch grass. The real world is not like social media tries to convince us.

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[–] Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago

Hmm, I guess I must have already blocked a decent amount of the places the negative stuff is coming from. I still use /all and I have a pretty good mix of positive stuff and the other stuff.

[–] Pacattack57@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Unfortunately news hasn’t been news for 100 years. It’s entertainment now and the way to drive viewership is ragebait or bad news.

[–] it_depends_man@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Mastodon has very nice keyword based filter system.

For example, I have the filter "idiot did a thing", and the keywords are a number of names of... popular people that news don't get tired of talking about, even though the thing isn't actually newsworthy.

So if I'm in the mood, I can check out what they did that day, and if I'm not in the mood, I'm aware that they did something again, but I don't have to get angry over the specifics.

Same for other "ongoing" hot topics, that I already am informed about, where I don't need the 24/7 doomscroll effect shoving negativity into my face.

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