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.
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?
No
I just block all the trolls and idiotic communities I see. Yes, it’s tiresome, but that’s the price of a federated platform.
Or just learn to ignore it, like advertising : when I see a troll I just think “allright this is bullshit” and move on
If you don’t block them, you might see their bullshit again.
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 worth 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.
There’s a genocide going on with what appears to be more or less the full support of the countries that make up the defence union my country is a part of.
There’s war in Europe.
I find those topics worthy of discussion, and any social media where this is not actively discussed seems to me to be a smokescreen more than anything.
Of course tragic realities like the genocide we are complacent in, climate change, war in Europe, Russian propaganda and the rise of the far right is going to be actively discussed. It concerns more or less everyone who uses this platform, and they are the most important issues of our time. It’s not about negativity, it’s about coming to terms with reality and seeking to understand it.
That said, the communities I follow are largely apolitical stuff that interests me. Woodworking, knitting, gardening, owls, art, and the Fediverse. With the exception of [email protected] and [email protected], I let the political stuff come through the cracks rather than actively following it.
I also have a Piefed account on which I follow news communities but actively filter out Trump and Musk. I can see how Amercians still feel the need to talk about these men, but at the end of the day they’re just fascist attention whores.
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I’ve discovered a way to overcome this: turn off the phone. It’s not the content that is bad, it’s our addiction to it.
Spending every day reading about all the different ways it sucks doesn’t help either
I know, we’re in the same boat.
I think I replied to a wrong comment
Yeah I do, but I also seem to gravitate towards it so I guess that says something about us as a species.
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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.
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It’s worse than eating fast food everyday lol
What do you expect? You’re on lemmy. Half the userbase is doomers, dude.
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.
I think the cgp grey video about thought germs gives a high level overview
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.
One of Lemmy’s most toxic communities are the Linux people. I’m actually a huge fan of Linux, but the simple fact I use Windows as well constantly earns me personal attacks and extremely negative responses.
My solution (to this and many other issues you describe) is honestly to not read the replies any longer… I just say my bit, and I leave.
I’ve also taken to watching comedy shows that touch upon numerous topics of all the crazy shit going on. The Daily show has been a great outlet for me, and I’m not even a Democrat (I’m independent). It’s just nice to see a popular form of media clearly states “yes, this is crazy. You’re not crazy, THIS is just f*king crazy.”
Edit: For example, Trump recently claimed he never said “lock her up” the other day to Hillary. I saw this on Lemmy first. John Stewart’s reaction a day or two later was perfect, and pointed out the gaslighting taking place.
I just feel like you have to find ways to laugh at all this crazy stuff… So comedy shows help. Just keep your guard up whenever consuming politically charged media, of course.
Hey you might not read this since it’s a reply, but John Oliver does a pretty good job also! Last Week Tonight on HBO but they also post all their main stories on youtube.
I just don’t see this toxic linux user thing at all.
Every second post is a meme about Linux users telling people they’re idiots for using Windows, but I’ve never seen Linux users abusing Windows users.
I’m sure that it happens to some extent, but it seems entirely possible to be active on lemmy without encountering a toxic Linux user.
