No Stupid Questions

That’s why I post pictures of opossums, bats, and raccoons…

I am tired of living in a world with all of these problems. Whether or not I have the luxury to ignore them is besides the point.

What do you expect? You're on lemmy. Half the userbase is doomers, dude.

You are so on point. I come here mainly for chuckles, some light hearted discussion and memes but what do is see most? Rage, rage and more rage.

Thank you for putting how I feel browsing Lemmy into words. I really hope that more wholesome communities can gain more traction soon.

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.

Politics are dumb but very, very important. I'm exhausted, but I can't let that stop me.

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.

The world is depressing, and if we just stick our heads in the sand and ignore it all because that feels better nothing's going to fucking change.

Sure, focus on positivity so you don't collapse into a depressive blob, but the idea that we should ignore the state of the world because it's unpleasant is terrible.

We talk about positive things.

Like Linux.

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.

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.

I don't have that problem, especially on lemmy. My feed here is mostly about taking action, not doomerism.

I don't mind when bad news is posted. It's important to know these things. What bothers me is how the top comment is always some low-effort defeatest bullshit like "and there will never be consequences."

In short: Yes. It's dragging me down, too.

I'd like to focus on positivity. I mean negativity comes with strong emotions and I don't want to get rid of it. But I'd like to see more positive things, too. People sharing side projects and nice things they've done and created. There needs to be a better balance. Because this doesn't depict life or the entire perspective.

• 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.

I've unsubscribed from worldnews and technology yesterday. I couldn't bare to read yet another scareporn article pretending to be tech news.

The posts and comments were making me feel worse faster than the interesting information were making me happier.

I'll probably take a short brake and try to sort the news from clickbate and propaganda later, possibly creating a new, properly moderated community.

I think it's because a lot of things are bad (and many are getting worse) yet the only power most people have to do anything about them is to raise awareness of the issues, which means engaging with negative news. Sometimes it can be hard to tell what's real news and what's rage bait; sometimes non-news can seem like news when it's part of an ongoing pattern (such as "Elon's dumb take of the day"). I think there's also some degree of trying to maintain one's sense of reality. To the previous example, despite being a massive fuckwit, Elon is still among the wealthiest people in the world, is incredibly influential, and has maintained some degree of fanboy army; posting/reading/discussing/upvoting an article about what dumb thing he said today is grounding for some folks because it reinforces reality by demonstrating that yes, he is still a fuckwit, even though somehow everything still hasn't come crashing down around him like it karmically should.

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?

Yes I get tired of constant negativity, even though I myself do what I can to not contribute to it.

It’s exhausting

Yes, it's tiring. A lot of people and communities on various platforms are cultivating negativity, focusing on bad things. Even a simple meme about a cat can produce a comment section dominated by replies about how dangerous cats are for wild animals. Okay? Can we have a laugh because the cat did something silly?

I read that our brains are more likely to react to negativity, as that was a defensive mechanism in the past. But today, the internet can mess up our stimulus very, very badly. I don't even open most of these posts you've mentioned, I ignore them like white noise. You can't constantly bathe in that information and be mentally fine.

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.

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.

When you are a pessimist, your entire world view is negative. So, it's not really possible to get tired of that.

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

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.