Yes. I'm a guy, and I would love to get a girl's take on this.
Do you think Fermi's "Great Filter" is not necessarily that a civilization destroys itself, but that it discovers a way to destroy the Universe?
Like, maybe the fabric of our reality is more fragile than we realize, and the reason we don't see "aliens" is that the universe doesn't get old enough for intelligent life to meet.
Of course, this assumes we are in a statistically "average" Universe, since presumably there could be a Universe in which intelligent life co-evolves within the same solar system.
I wonder how much of this is influenced by society's trends toward information consumerism. Things like short-form content and constant context-switching in media etc.
Not to say this is the whole picture, but for people predisposed to latch on to that sort of stuff I feel like there's an exacerbation factor there.
It's still a journey, but in my case, these are the things that have helped:
Volunteering - by far the thing that has helped the most. I volunteer as a teaching assistant helping refugees learn English, and it not only gets me out of the house, but I've met a lot of great people, and I feel like I'm really making a positive impact in the world. It's also really easy, as far as volunteering goes - as a native speaker, I know English pretty well after all.
Medication seems to be helping in my case, though this one is the most "your mileage may vary". I haven't been taking it long, but it's made a huge difference in my energy level and my bouts of executive dysfunction.
This one is going to sound weird, but (atheistic) spiritualism - in particular, Tarot. I've always been against spiritualism because it isn't "science", but lately I've been coming around to the idea that the way we think and feel about the world has just as much effect on our lives as anything else. I liked Tarot in particular because all it really is is a form of self-guided meditation. I don't believe in any "supernatural" stuff personally, but the ritual of shuffling and laying out the cards is very calming, and the randomness of the cards forces you to see your issues from a perspective you may not have considered before. Of course, any form of meditation would likely do the exact same thing.
I should also mention that I'm generally in a very privileged situation (especially now - I wasn't always quite so lucky), so I can't deny that plays a large factor as well.
I completely agree that "third places" have been all but eradicated in favor of revenue-generating spaces. This trend alone has lead to the death of a lot of things, including a sense of community and local engagement. (Edit: Worth noting that I also agree with your point about atomization)
I think it also has a lot to do with how abstracted we are from reality. We've built all these systems to replace actual face-to-face communities, and people would rather surround themselves in that than to expose themselves to the unpredictability of real life - for better and worse.
It's a hard sell to get people to reverse course because it's so much more painless/numbing to engage with these systems. (Not to even mention AI promising to give every person their own personal Yes-Man.)
I think one of Lemmy's issues is that everyone wants to create a community instead of contributing to what's here. People expect to have all the "niche hobby" communities like Reddit had right off the bat, but we don't have the mass of people to support that - especially when you can have multiple communities for one topic across instances. Everything dilutes to nothing.
So we end up with nearly a 1:1 user/community ratio and every community either gets abandoned or only has 1 power-user posting.
I think the solution is essentially what you're doing - to take existing communities and breathe life into them. Start out small and focused, and then branch out when it feels necessary.
I'm not necessarily looking for "wholesome" content, though. I'm looking for interesting content.
Also, there isn't enough content to browse just a few subs, and there are a lot of communities being created that i would miss out on,, and "opt-out" is generally my preferred way to browse.
I think the reason I've gotten to this point is that I've been angry at things before and I've very strongly expressed an opinion that I later on found I disagreed with.
This is probably just an age thing, but I could only do that so many times before I stopped to think maybe it's worth reevaluating how I look at things.
I've reached a point in my life where I can be against something without getting mad about it. Sure, sometimes you get a revolution (with all the problems that come with that), but in everyday life, people just aren't productive when they're angry. A person living a happy, fulfilled life is more likely to contribute to making the world a better place.
Same here. I don't know if I could in good conscience go back to Reddit, but the constant doomposting makes Lemmy seem more and more unattractive by the day - and that's after applying a hefty amount of post filters.
I keep telling myself that if I just stick it out, we'll eventually get enough users to drown out the negativity, but some days I wonder if we'll ever get there when that's like 95% of the feed.
Imo the problem is that social media is one of the worst possible places to foment political change, yet is by far the most popular.
If people actually have a shit about this stuff, they'd be out campaigning for it, or helping people affected by it, instead of just clicking a button and patting themselves on the back.
Not to say social media can't bring change of course, but I mean, the people posting the most are pretty much by definition doing the least.
Seriously. I wonder how many of those doomers actually volunteer in their community, or are active in their local politics. If the answer was any more than "basically none," I don't think we would have most of these issues.
Yeah, the sociological side of "quantified" intelligence has a whole host of issues.