Most people will probably disagree and say that I shouldn’t be here if I don’t like it, but yeah, like the title said. I switched over from Reddit for various reasons, and at first it was nice, but now it’s making me depressed just casually browsing Lemmy. Everything here is so drab and negative, sometimes even downright hateful. Everything sucks, here’s a list of companies you should never use, here’s people that do horrible things, here’s a bunch of complaints about stuff. This is why the world sucks, this is why your favourite thing is actually stupid, this is why you shouldn’t enjoy xyz anymore.
At least half of the content on Lemmy is about American politics or how they affect the rest of the world, even on meme and shitpost subs you can’t escape from the constant barrage of politically charged content. And when it’s not American politics it’s American lifestyle, like I get that america dominates the internet but I sincerely do not give a shit about your egg prices or your celebrities when I’m browsing memes to wind down.
And on top of that there’s a distinct arrogance that permeates the fediverse, where people act like they’re better than others for being conscious, and you’re stupid for not boycotting 99 percent of brands and eating vegan and ditching cars and using european FOSS applications on refurbished Linux devices, etc.
Honestly I’m baffled when people ask stuff like “why don’t more people join Lemmy?” Because I honestly would not recommend it to my friends. While it’s nice in some ways, it is also so very exhausting, and for me personally, worse for my mental health than Reddit ever was.
Rant over and obligatory disclaimer: I did not mean to insult anyone, I don’t have anything against the ideologies and lifestyles mentioned in my post, I simply wanted to share my personal opinions.
We’re in a profoundly fucked up timeline right now.
Silence is complicity.
The bad needs to be brought to the surface all day, every day, so we can address it. People MUST be made aware of who the bad actors are so they can be countered.
Because if we don’t, and you think what you’re experiencing right now is depressing…well, just you wait and see.
I get depressed sometimes too about Lemmy and the state of it. I love questions, for example. And I feel there aren’t a lot of interesting or good questions being asked for people to answer. It’s always about personal problem suggestions, some political baiting or whatever. And they’d go quiet for a while until more of those are posted again. AskReddit, while repetitious at times, had a lot of questions asked by the hour. Lemmy doesn’t have that.
On paper, Lemmy has a lot of users of its own, but you can’t say the same for activity. In practice, you will see the same old users basically try to carry instances on their backs when they’re the only ones posting.
And the reality of it is, is that Lemmy has absorbed Reddit’s rejects. I’m talking, reddit users who were a problem over in Reddit, probably got banned enough times to be IP/shadow-ban on sight, now they come here. And it is obvious how badly they shit up the place unapologetically.
I know the Fediverse has a long way to go to be an established platform and alternative for people to escape from the other platforms, but if this is the kind of direction it is going, it’s going to take twice as long or might not have a future.
Amen. Lemmy is completely unusable without heavy content filtering, and even then, it’s only barely worth visiting. I pick the communities I follow very carefully, yet sometimes I only see four posts on my front page because everything else gets filtered out by keywords. The unfiltered feed of popular Lemmy communities is utter poison for anyone’s mind. And before the “sticking your head in the sand” argument comes up again - it’s impossible to avoid this stuff even if you try. If, by some miracle, you actually manage to completely avoid something, you can be absolutely certain it wasn’t even slightly important. The only way to consume anything even remotely resembling a healthy media diet is to actively avoid the firehose of news.
What I did and still do to keep it updated is:
block users, subscripe to what I am interested and use word filters for the rest.
Even when browsing all the word filters take away the majority of what I don’t like.
Everytime someone talks about being from Reddit but then says Lemmy is arrogant I just have to roll my eyes. Like Reddit isn’t the home of the “AcHtUaLlY” contrarian type poster with a big ego?
Processing reality is making a lot of people depressed
It’s healthier than the alternatives
I hear you.
My least favourite thing is how often the first comment on a post is a contrarian “well aksurly…” As if contrianism is engagement.
It hardly makes for a welcoming environment.
The worst thing, the longer I stay here the more often I catch myself doing it too.
“well aksurly…” As if contrianism
You spell ‘correction’ strangely.
I’m taking it that you were making a joke, and a pretty funny one too. Doesn’t deserve to be down voted.
Yeah you’re absolutely right. The solution is to develop a comprehensive approach to blocking all the crap. Initially this can feel a lot like a game of whack-a-mole but it does get a lot better quite quickly.
Where the platform tools fall short you can use other tools to fill in the gaps. I use uBlock Origin for a whole host of stuff but specifically here for blocking posts containing certain keywords. It’s not perfect because it also blocks humorous British fart jokes, some card games, and a certain snooker player (Judd) but those might be rectified by extending the syntax somewhat.
Uh no. Be involved or sign off. Sorry about your safe space, but we need people to do more than be a checked out online zombie.
If the world is just too tough, go touch grass and see that it helps you. Then help the rest of us DO SOMETHING about it.
Follow communites you like and put the communites that annoy or make you depressed on the block list.
I wanted to try starting over here. But, the vastly smaller user base means specific communities are harder to find, and those that do exist seem to be straggling along.
I think the most recent post in the science fiction one I found was eight days ago.
I get it, remove oneself from corporates that defend Nazis. But man is it hard to find something to keep out the bad thoughts when the alternatives are either throwing tumbleweeds or just amplifying the bad thoughts.
My biggest issue with Lemmy is how anything with negative annotations can’t be praised for any positive contributions.
Right now with Musk for example. The guy is a snake ruining everything he touches. So therefore you are not allowed to be optimistic about development in space travel or having any good experiences with Tesla.
The outrage culture here is insane, and it’s clouding every topic. The latest Mark Rober video was heavily edited and gave viewers a reason to question the method of testing. But Lemmy doesn’t care because the process isn’t important when the results are appealing.
On Lemmy your are for or you are against. There is no room for contrary opinions. Trying to find a forum for your favourite hobby or game is not easy because everything everyone care about is being stuck up about something.
On Reddit every comment on any popular post are just unfunny one liners. On Lemmy you find more though out long form comments on popular post. But they all confirm the current popular opinion, so it’s doesn’t really matter.
Sounds like you want an echo chamber where reality is different. Check out Beehaw and enjoy the view of the walls.
ive had the complete opposite experience honestly, my mental has improved drastically since getting banned from reddit and using lemmy instead.
far less snooty assholes, far less bots, far less corporate cenorship, ads, etc.
Heavy blocking of communities makes this place more tolerable, but I share your pain.
As an older guy who was until recently a landlord on Lemmy I recommend not taking anything here here too seriously. The media in general can be heavy, we’re not designed to know about everything that happens everywhere. We can only influence so much, usually what’s around us within arms reach. It’s good to be informed of course but don’t let it get to you.
Go seek your validation elsewhere
