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.
I would argue that doom scrolling is self harm with no productive value.
My household pays for a subscription to a journal we like, which dives deep into topics of interest to us. We learn a LOT more than doom scrollers here know about. For example, doom scrollers will tell you that South Korea’s birthrate is so low because cost of living is so high, which is wrong. What else are they wrong about? I think, probably most things.
But of course doom scrollers are less informed. How would they be informed? They don’t pay for the news with money, they pay for it by consuming exploitative rage bait. And exploitative rage bait’s purpose isn’t to inform you, it’s to convince you to consume more. So the truth isn’t an objective of this content at all. How can you be confident that a person is treating you well by giving you the truth, when they are explicitly relying on a model meant to harm you for more money? It’s like trusting Coca Cola to give you nutrition advice.
And what are the long term effects of trusting rage bait sources? Well, you’ve probably seen it. They lose all faith in humanity, institutions, everything that once gave their lives structure. They become depressed and give up because if the world is so bad, why bother trying to fix it? They become overwhelmed by the long term effects of hopeless media.
If I consumed only rage bait media for a full month, I am confident I would become meaner, less informed, and more combative. And that’s what we all associate with doom scrollers, right? It’s not a coincidence. I totally agree with your point, by the way. It’s like consuming fast food every day. You feel like you’re learning something, but you aren’t.
I get my news intermittently from what I believe to be a reliable source, and then I stop. I block all ragebait on this platform, and I block users who I can tell want me to get angry.
Some will argue I am being irresponsible, but they’re wrong. Blocking toxic people is the responsible thing to do. They aren’t trying to inform me.
I’ve got a blocklist over 600 users long here and it’s growing every day. If I see a person make even one mean comment I block them immediately. Same applies to the people commenting stuff like “acab” or “fuck x” and similar. Doesn’t matter wether I agree with them or not. That single comment is all I need to know about how they behave online. I’m not interested in hearing more from them. I know they’re being perfectly nice on another thread, but I don’t care. There’s a near-infinite number of content available online. If I’m in a room with 100 people, I don’t want to talk with all of them. The few percent of intellectually honest and not-mean people are all I need for an interesting and enjoyable conversation.
Sane approach, good suggestion
I think you can also see something fundamentally positive in the critical attitude of many Lemmy users: namely the fact that criticism of undesirable developments in politics, society, the economy and so on is practiced here at all. In my opinion, this is important and should not be taken for granted. If only because it is impossible for so many people in numerous countries around the world to express their opinions freely and criticize their governments or powerful people in their society.
In any case, I think that a certain fundamental skepticism towards the existing power structures in politics, media and business is something of a unifying element that motivates many people to participate in Fediverse, after all, this platform is an alternative to the centrally managed social media providers and their functional logics.
Nevertheless, I think your post is important because it shows that all the negativity that goes hand in hand with a critical examination of the numerous problems in the real world is extremely off-putting for many users. This is of course problematic both for the mass appeal of the Fediverse and to a certain degree probably also for the mental health of the user base.
Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer as to how to deal with this in a meaningful way. However, I try to stay positive and hope for the best.
No
I am tired of living in a world with all of these problems. Whether or not I have the luxury to ignore them is besides the point.
Nobody is making the world a better place by paying daily attention to every possible thing that’s wrong with it.
This sounds like the “don’t make everything political” rhetoric which is naively hilarious. If you’re encouraging moderation for the sake of mental well-being, sure - but that is just that, like many other things.
Information is a well; people will come and go. How much any one person consumes, like food and drink, is their choice regardless of consequence. You can argue diet, drugs, alcohol, entertainment, masturbation all the same.
Personally, I’d rather take on the mental burden of being informed over being as clueless as some. Ignorance leads to many problems, higher costs when you’re not much of a problem solver etc.
#VirtueSignaling REEEEEEEEEEE
A counterpoint here, if people don’t talk about a problem, or in this case share, then the problem may go unresolved or intensify.
Multiply that by how many problems affect masses of people.
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.
