this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
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Why did they start calling it "Doom scrolling?"
It's generally when you're stuck in a loop of reading negative posts/articles. I think the phenomenon comes from how when you read a negative article/piece of news you feel down, so you want to scroll further in the hopes of seeing something positive to lift your spirits. But then of course it's only more negativity, and so you keep going. And the algorithms of Twitter/Facebook knows this, so they don't tend to help you find something positive.
Nothing positive is needed. It's an outrage engine that keeps you involved by edging on the max level of disturbance you are comfortable to consume. Seeing, posting reactions, having likes enables you to keep it going.
That's fair, I don't partake in that side of the web myself but when I get stuck in it it's usually because I read something depressing and am scrolling desperately hoping for good news.
Meta could learn a lesson or two in edging 😉
I think alot of it relates to just scrolling through news and wanting more content/headlines. It's not that users are necessarily seeking out bad news or "doom", it's just that, given the state of the world today , that's what a lot of the news ends up being. I think I often engage in "doomscrolling", but I'm not doing it because I want to see bad news, I'm an information addict and I'm just trying to get as much content as I can. Reddit fed that habit well, but I've moved on from there. And it's not necessarily a bad thing if Lemmy can't feed that addiction, not seeing new content pushes me off and forces me back into the real world or on to other sites/apps. I'm fine with that, I hated my constant need to flip through Reddit whenever I was bored before.
It's been a thing for a while, basically just mindlessly scrolling for hours on end on a neverending feed
I prefer Doom Metal.
Covid era when many people had nothing to do, were more worried and anxious than usual, and the internet seemed full of concerning and bad news. The term has never meant that much to me personally. I’ve only regular scrolled.