Don't you all get tired of the constant negativity?

Submitted ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

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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Thekingoflorda@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Simple solution, start your own community with only positive news.

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- Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I’m not exactly asking for solutions. I’m wondering how people are dealing with that and why.
  
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  - Alice@hilariouschaos.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    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 insensit, 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.
    
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- Alice@hilariouschaos.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  People don’t participate here with those. Most lemmy ppl only engage with politics
  
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  - Thekingoflorda@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    If you look at the most popular communities, 3/5 first ones are not politics.
    
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algorithmae@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨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.

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DBT@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Good post. Cheers.

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shadowspirit@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨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.

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cRazi_man@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨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.

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OlPatchy2Eyes@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
All and probably most Local feeds are negative. If you’re looking for a more positive experience, you should change the way you interact with Lemmy and the Fediverse.

First, you should investigate different instances (or consider hosting your own) and find one that sounds like it has a better vibe. Then use the Local feeds instead of All.

Second, look for better communities. Many people complain about there being different iterations of communities but this is where that’s a strength of Lemmy’s structure. If the news community you’re frequenting is too full of downers, then look into different news communities. Or- again- if you’re feeling up to it, make your own and advertise it as a light-hearted community, then moderate it as such.

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it_depends_man@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨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, even though the thing isn’t actually newsworthy.

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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AgentOrangesicle@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It might feel pretty dire, but all of this information is critical to understanding and empathizing with the people you might meet in your own society. You can opt out of forums (and should if it’s causing you distress). I wouldn’t suffer a buffer from the negative information if it meant a lack of information in general.

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- Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  all of this information is critical to understanding and empathizing with the people you might meet in your own society
  
  No it’s not. I already know about the issue with police violence in the USA. I don’t need to be reminded about it with daily articles of such individual events. I also know what Elon Musk is like and I don’t need to read a new hit piece on him every time he says something stupid again and then go to the comment section to circle-jerk with all the other haters.
  
  This is recreational outrage. Nobody gets more informed because of this masochism. They just get more angry and cynical. It’s objectively making the world a worse place. Some old granny without an internet access who goes to pick trash from the side of the road is having a bigger positive impact on the world than the vast majority of people posting and reacting to these rage-bait articles.
  
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  - AgentOrangesicle@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Then where do I come from? I hope you’re misinterpreting my sentiment, because I feel like we’re on the same page.
    
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- Drewelite@lemmynsfw.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Most social spaces on the Internet pull people’s focus to issues they have very little control over. This has been shown to cause a degradation in mental health. Since these places have become a mainstay in society, we’ve seen a plummet in mental health. Things can’t get better if everyone is suffering from depression and anxiety.
  
  Being informed enough to support a few (2-3) issues with real intention, can be helpful. But letting corporations and politicians leverage the idea that being informed about everything is good, just leads to them pointing to everything that can be spun as a problem. Then nobody does anything meaningful to affect change. They just feel defeated.
  
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  - AgentOrangesicle@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I mean… maybe we’re depressed because of the crushing weight of the real world impacts of what’s being reported on. I absolutely believe that consuming dour media can affect your mood. Plenty of evidence. I’ve also had two friends die of poverty due to their incapability to afford medical expenses.
    
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lesteross@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨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?

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Pacattack57@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Unfortunately news hasn’t been news for 100 years. It’s entertainment now and the way to drive viewership is ragebait or bad news.

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- WorldwideCommunity@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  18 April 1930
  
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BackOnMyBS@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I don’t know how to on desktop, but on the Voyager app, I can block posts that include whatever words I want. My experience on here has noticeably improved since blocking certain words, like Musk, Trump, and Israel.

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franklin@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
There’s always going to be important issues that are going to be difficult to debate without some level of emotion, especially when talking about politics or the environment you have to remember that this personally affects people’s lives.

It is part of everyday life and probably the most important challenge. However you’re corrected can get overwhelming and it’s important that you have the self-awareness to know when you need to step away.

I know it’s easy to judge the Internet by its worst actors but you have to remember that everyone needs to learn and be part of the discourse it’s not just the internet, that’s humanity.

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nifty@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
My suggestion? Don’t filter out anything because you need to know how other people think and what’s going on.

Yes, there’s lots and lots of disinformation and shilling, but exercise critical thinking (a part of which is knowing when to believe in something and when not to), and become almost stoic (mostly observe and analyze).

Besides all that, exercise and/or volunteer in your local community. You will feel less shit about things you cannot control.

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- Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I filter out a ton of stuff and I still know how other people think and what’s going on. You quite literally need to live in a forest alone without internet if you want not to know. I’m not limiting information, only the amount of it.
  
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- deafboy@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Interesting approach. Let me try a thing…
  
  WE SHOULD ALL SWITCH TO NOSTR, USING UNMODERATED RELAY!
  
  ducks
  
  But seriously, though, sometimes less you know about how other people think, the better for your health. During the pandemic, when the IQ was literally visible on everybody’s faces, never before was I so disgusted and shocked by people around me.
  
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corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Except

Elon Musk this

Yep.

and Israel that.

Definitely that.

Microsoft ruining windows,

alwayshasbeen.jpg

AI ruining internet,

Nah. Stupid just has a new source.

right wingers and capitalism ruining the world,

Just for the 99%

police being racist and shooting innocent people,

A painfully bad generalization based on sensationalized news and really badly-trained american muni cops.

companies demanding workers into offices,

See: ‘capitalism ruining the world’, above.

privacy being under constant attack from all sides…

We need to aggressively shun the worst companies and keep doing it until they evolve.

And all this despite the effort I go thru to block that from my view

I see people writing ‘thru’ like it’s a whatsapp chat with their school-chums. It’s okay to dislike what you see, and it’s okay to feel overwhelmed at times. Remind people - like people who think ‘thru’ is appropriate - that they’re smarter, they know better, and they can be better, but that it’s also okay to be working toward that goal without having achieved it yet.

This will all be fixed, but it feels like a lot, right now. We CAN work on more than one thing at once, too: people can learn the difference between ‘the person that I saw’ and ‘the person whom I saw’ (one of them is an insulting objectification) while they also improve how they sort recyclables. Like how your mom would tell you not to shuffle your feet while she reminded you not to slouch while you walk, there will be many cases where we can be improving one thing and it won’t impact improvement in another avenue.

Just do your best. That’s all anyone can ask, now as it always has been.

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- Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  You went thru all that effort and still failed to address the question being asked.
  
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Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨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.

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orcrist@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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ElectroVagrant@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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Bruhh@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
No

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aesthelete@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
No

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Zink@programming.dev ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Yeah, but in life in general, not on here. I’ve been pushing unnecessary negativity out of my life. Even in my own family, I’ve learned how people that love me and are nice to me can still be a total fucking downer and miserable to be around.

If I’m hopping on Lemmy or reading/watching some news, I know I’m going to see negative stuff. But that’s fine. You can’t learn to deal with negative shit by sheltering yourself from it completely. Think of it like your mental health immune system.

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AgentGrimstone@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Absolutely. One thing I miss about Reddit is having an active personalized feed of positive/neutral content.

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MacNCheezus@lemmy.today ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’ve been alive long enough to tell you this has been going on since long before Lemmy and it also never stops. Newspapers were a thing before social media existed, and they also tended to draw a much more sordid and depressing picture of the world by focusing most of their reporting on negative things instead of positive ones.

I believe this is basically an evolutionary trait in humans – we tend to give far more attention to negative stimuli than positive ones because it used to be necessary for our survival. Those people who missed the sabretooth tiger sneaking up on them while they were having fun simply did not make it long enough. However, in the modern era, this has become somewhat of a problem because it can be exploited to sell newspapers and clicks, and while paying attention to all that negative input probably won’t kill you, it’ll at least make you extremely depressed.

The only remedy I have is to make it a habit to pay more attention to positive things in life – at least enough to create a solid counterweight to all the negative stuff. Either turn off the computer from time to time and go outside to chill, or do other things that relax you like listening to music or making art. Or you could take a page out of Mr. Roger’s book and “look for the helpers” when consuming doom and gloom stories on the web – i.e. make it a habit to look for the good in the bad to avoid losing hope.

HTH

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azurekevin@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It’s worse than eating fast food everyday lol

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creditCrazy@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Yeah I feel that way about the Internet as a whole kinda one of the reasons why I’ve been trying to make my accounts interact with j pop and Japanese studying recently so there’s what I’ve been trying and here specifically im finding a lot of communists and trans people trying to get people to be on their side and like bro I just want to get suggestions on how to make my car faster I suppose at least the atheists on here are pretty jokey and the fuck cars community is pretty chill actually one of the reasons why dispute being a car guy I strongly support infrastructure that doesn’t focus on cars over all the star trec meme community here has been pretty good non political community

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visnae@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Subscribe on goodnews.eu/en/ Get a weekly uplifting email.

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Cosmicomical@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I think it reflects the point where we are as a society. Everything is crappy and we all come here to vent.

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Shyfer@ttrpg.network ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I have multiple accounts and feeds. I have one account with basically everything on my home feed and I either browse that account or Everything when I want to be informed doe just mindlessly doom scroll.

On the other hand, this account’s subscribed home feed I put absolutely no news or political stuff on at all, so I just scroll subscribed for this or another account I have when I want to just tune out for a bit lol.

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