No Stupid Questions

I love it! It's freaking awesome, peeps expressing themselves and all. More of that please

• 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.

Yes I've noticed this. For the sake of my mental health, I don't mull over such issues for too long. I used to be angry at injustices I saw, but now I can't be bothered (I stopped caring to be angry).

I try to filter out most of this negative stuff, but it has a downside. You become disconnected from the raw information feed if you don't occasionally just look at it. For short periods, it's tolerable, but then I just re-enable all filtering to reduce my cognitive load.

If I need to be cheered up, I prefer to look for science articles or news since these are generally about unbiased progress.

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 about, even though the thing isn't actually newsworthy.

So if I'm in the mood, I can check out what they did that day, and if I'm not in the mood, I'm aware that they did something again, but I don't have to get angry over the specifics.

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.

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.

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.

If the content is affecting you then find something else entirely. If detached from the live news cycle and watch science based YouTube channels, listen to podcasts of interest, read books and follow websites via RSS. If you don't like it here then you don't have to be here.

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?

Unfortunately news hasn’t been news for 100 years. It’s entertainment now and the way to drive viewership is ragebait or bad news.

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.

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?

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.

However it 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.

Simple solution, start your own community with only positive news.

Good post. Cheers.

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.

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. You get a small number of people to troll and that's all it takes to derail conversation around any topic they don't like.

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.

No