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.

  • darthelmet@lemmy.world
    97·
    6 months ago

    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.

    • AliceAEnglish
      13·
      6 months ago

      You doing anything to change those problems ?

      • darthelmet@lemmy.world
        3·
        6 months ago

        Admittedly not much anymore. It’s hard organizing people in the face of systemic opposition under the best of circumstances, but I’m also incredibly unhealthy. Socially awkward and anxious is only the tip of the iceberg of the personal problems I have that make it hard for me to engage in real life activism anymore. I’ve tried, but it’s not really something I can do at the moment. I can barely do anything at the moment for that matter.

        That said, there is some small value in trying to convince others to think about these problems and develop class consciousness. I’m not claiming it’s much and it’s stressful/depressing knowing I’m not doing more, but at least I’m not trying to get people to stick their heads in the sand. I’m not actively making things worse.

        • AliceAEnglish
          1·
          6 months ago

          You don’t like ‘owe’ me an explanation of your personal ect ect I can empathize. We all literally have shit going on in our lives myself included so I get that shit is just fucking really tough sometimes. Life is not always the way we want it and we face challenges everyday.

          But that is just the very reality though for the entire human race. No one is exempt from that. Challenges go hand in hand with life in general.

          Don’t make excuses. Take ownership.

          You don’t need to ‘gather’ a group of people to do x y and z. You don’t and can’t force/entice/convince/ whatever anyone to Do what you think needs to be done.

          That’s up to you and you only. You start by setting an example not making excuses.

          • darthelmet@lemmy.world
            3·
            6 months ago

            Agreed that it’s something I need to overcome. But I still think collective action is the only way forward. Half our problems stem from everyone acting as individuals divorced from community.

    • Thorny_Insight@lemm.eeOP
      56·
      6 months ago

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

      • motor_spirit@lemmy.world
        47·
        6 months ago

        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.

      • Cornelius_Wangenheim@lemmy.world
        1·
        6 months ago

        The idea is that you spread the knowledge to others and occasionally do something about some of them, even if it’s only a small contribution.