Thorny_Insight @ Thorny_Insight @lemm.ee

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1,874

Joined

2 yr. 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 blocking information. Only limiting the amount of it.

People were posting a ton of Kermit and Sailor Moon AI content a while back and I wasn't interested in seeing it. Same applies to the Heathcliff comic.

Lemmy has such a small user base that the niche communities I do sub to get almost no new content at all. Lemmy is literally the only platform I can browse on my phone when I'm bored. I don't have any other social media, games or anything. It takes about 3 minutes for me to scroll thru my subscribed feed after which I start browsing all where I'm blocking several uninteresting communities a day to make my feed even remotely interesting.

I have created a community on another account but it quiets down immediately when I stop posting. The equivalent one on reddit gets probably 30 new threads each day.

Many of the filters are outdated but I just don't remove them. Lemmy has these certain topics that start trending and then there's constant articles being posted about them because people notice it's a popular topic. If it's something I'm not interested in I'll just pre-emptively block it after seeing few similar threads in a row. Same as with the Kermit/Sailor moon AI content for example.

I think you're vastly underestimating how difficult it is to avoid the news to the point that you have no clue of what's going on in the world. If you knew the lenghts I go to to try and curate my news diet you'd think I'd be completely ignorant but I bet you couldn't name a single important current event I haven't heard of. If you spend any time on the internet and with other people you're going to hear about it and if not, then it wasn't important. Pretty much the only topic I've near perfectly managed to seclude myself from is celebrity gossip.

Only 45 here but adding more almost daily

You went thru all that effort and still failed to address the question being asked.

There's probably a healthy middle ground somewhere between the two extreme ends. "Sticking your head in the sand" is harder than you'd think. I go out of my way to try and avoid seeing these articles but I bet you couldn't name a single current event I haven't heard of.

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.

Lots of statements coming from the Kremlin but very little actions.

There's a ton of negativity on all news related communities including tech news. Even a lot of the memes are political.

I'm probably going to make a thread about this very topic some day. I find it curious how many people seem to be getting visibly angry when dealing with these topics and that's interesting because it's not how I feel at all. I'm not personally involved with most of these events. I can observe things from a distance, look at the available facts and then try and form an educated opinion on it. At no point do I feel any strong emotions about it and I don't see why I should. It just clouds our judgement. If one is primed to get angry every time they encounter a certain topic then I wouldn't put too much weight on their opinion about it because it comes from biased and emotionally loaded perspective. Doesn't mean they're wrong but I don't trust the reasoning of that kind of person.

A controversial character that shall remain unnamed once said:

Clean up your own room before you go out fixing the world.

What the “constant negativity” should be doing is galvanizing you into action to try to fucking fix shit!

Should. But is it? I don't think so. It's just paralyzing and making us all feel miserable.

Hold the door open for a granny. Pick up a trash from the street. Look the cashier into eyes, smile and say thank you. Now you've already had a bigger positive impact in the world than a year worth of complaining and doomscrolling online does.

Most things in the world are better than they ever have been and they are still constantly improving. Internet and social media just points a huge spotlight on the things we still need to work on and ironically social media itself is one of those things. We'll never run out of negative things to pay attention to. Never. Doomscrolling to the point of mental exhaustion and sense of helplessnes is only making things worse. We all need to touch grass. The real world is not like social media tries to convince us.

One other thing I just thought of, is that the somewhat positive news, are mostly about someone or something losing a case.

I've noticed this aswell. Good news is when reddit is losing users, Teslas are rusting, a company get sued, corrupt cop is convicted etc. To me that just seems awfully cynical way of looking at the world.

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

I'm not exactly asking for solutions. I'm wondering how people are dealing with that and why.

It almost seems like people want to feel enraged. There's a difference between activism and slacktivism. Complaining about things on social media has next to none effect on the real world. If one wants to make the world a better place, then choosing an issue and actually doings something concrete about it seems more productive.

This doesn't relate to my question though.

Nobody is making the world a better place by paying daily attention to every possible thing that's wrong with it.