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.

  • corsicanguppy
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    7 months ago

    Except

    Elon Musk this

    Yep.

    and Israel that.

    Definitely that.

    Microsoft ruining windows,

    alwayshasbeen.jpg

    AI ruining internet,

    Nah. Stupid just has a new source.

    right wingers and capitalism ruining the world,

    Just for the 99%

    police being racist and shooting innocent people,

    A painfully bad generalization based on sensationalized news and really badly-trained american muni cops.

    companies demanding workers into offices,

    See: ‘capitalism ruining the world’, above.

    privacy being under constant attack from all sides…

    We need to aggressively shun the worst companies and keep doing it until they evolve.

    And all this despite the effort I go thru to block that from my view

    I see people writing ‘thru’ like it’s a whatsapp chat with their school-chums. It’s okay to dislike what you see, and it’s okay to feel overwhelmed at times. Remind people - like people who think ‘thru’ is appropriate - that they’re smarter, they know better, and they can be better, but that it’s also okay to be working toward that goal without having achieved it yet.

    This will all be fixed, but it feels like a lot, right now. We CAN work on more than one thing at once, too: people can learn the difference between ‘the person that I saw’ and ‘the person whom I saw’ (one of them is an insulting objectification) while they also improve how they sort recyclables. Like how your mom would tell you not to shuffle your feet while she reminded you not to slouch while you walk, there will be many cases where we can be improving one thing and it won’t impact improvement in another avenue.

    Just do your best. That’s all anyone can ask, now as it always has been.