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.
Fucking YES
Yes. This place is a dumpster fire. I actually started using Reddit again. I was super interested in moving from Reddit but the power mod issues combined with the extremist political folks here have absolutely scared away any average user.
That then creates a content problem. So now you just have bots posting news all day. And that news gets reposted to not only subs, but now subs within instances too, so you get 18 mentions of the save exact doomer news.
Edit: Jesus Christ, the answers in this thread…
The world isn’t burning unless you’re on a border with Russia.
I’ve had similar feelings about going back to reddit. The additional issue with the negativity and extremist political views is that I don’t feel like recommending this place to any of the people I know. I can’t imagine any normal person enjoying being here.
IMO the issue isn’t that there’s too much negative content, but that there isn’t enough of everything else. I’d encourage people to post, engage with and signal boost other kinds of content they’re interested in. May just be that politics and social issues are some of the most popular interests in the community.
Yes! I agree, and I just stated a similar point of view. I think we need more positive distractions during this US election cycle.
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.
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.
Believe it or not, I do try to think of this as a positive. Not the things that are happening obviously, but they’ve always been happening. It’s a positive thing that people are so much more aware and engaged with the world. It may be a huge hit for the individual’s mental health, but this awareness and engagement is the way such things will eventually be prevented. So, congrats to being more aware and engaged with global atrocities compared to previous generations?
In this sense, the issue in Ukraine has especially hit me. I thought imperialism was a thing of the past. All those deaths and injuries from both sides, disregard for lives, all caused by one person’s imperialist ambitions and his ego.
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)
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.
which I currently am. :(
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.
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
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.
That’s a risk of reading the news in general. For many people, it’s helpful to log in less frequently. Remember, people write about things important to them, and that includes bad situations, of which there were and will always be tons of.
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.
That’s why I post pictures of opossums, bats, and raccoons…
Ty for doing that
Your work is appreciated
And weed…
And suddenly I found several more communities to sub to.
Thank you sir…
Thank you for your posts. I love them in my feed.
Thank you for your service!
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.
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!
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.
Good post. Cheers.
Simple solution, start your own community with only positive news.
People don’t participate here with those. Most lemmy ppl only engage with politics
If you look at the most popular communities, 3/5 first ones are not politics.
Star wars memes, anime, and Linux don’t count. Come on man -_-
I think you are looking at your local community list.
Uh no. I’m not on Lemmy world as my main instance. Our instance doesn’t… like… have those communities. So…
huh, weird, my 5 top communities are: tech, news, lemmy shitpost, science memes, world news.
There’s a ton of negativity on all news related communities including tech news. Even a lot of the memes are political.
I’m not exactly asking for solutions. I’m wondering how people are dealing with that and why.
I’m wondering how people are dealing with that and why.
Few things.
The negativity here isn’t just coming from politics, is lemmy as a whole. That said, when it becomes insessent, I take a break from lemmy from a few days to maybe a week and a half.
I still check reports and dms to address important matters but no commenting or posting or scrolling
When I do come back, I’ve had a break enough to be able to ignore all the bs enough to participate. You can’t consume that toxic shit either.
I already know lemmy is toxic negative and highly political with little to no engagement in non political stuff. So stick to subscribed communities.
And only look at rage bait when I’m good enough and detached enough to ignore it and have no desire to engage with it. You can’t bc its never gunna stop.
Lemmy is mostly toxic. Little fun. Just stick to the ‘little fun’ and don’t deviate from it. If you do it’s time to step away and take a break
The ALL feed is never gunna be like reddit. Don’t trick yourself thinking it will be because it won’t.
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
Yeah I do, but I also seem to gravitate towards it so I guess that says something about us as a species.
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.
