Looking through my media feeds, including Lemmy, YouTube, News Outlets (Reuters, Financial Times) as well as news related to my profession, I would estimate that 85% of what I see is doom and gloom, i.e. reports about something thatās going wrong in the world or might go wrong in the future.
I try to limit what I follow to educational and unopininated sources (as far as thatās possible anyways) and some satire or a meme here and there. I donāt like suggestion algorithms and donāt use social media, because I donāt want to be trapped in a self-reinforcing bubble. On YouTube for example, I use third party apps which show me only videos from channels I explicitly follow.
Still, itās mostly depressing information: how bad the job market and economy is, geopolitical threats, AI risks, symptoms of late stage capitalism. I am aware, thanks. But I didnāt ask to hear these things over and over and over again, and itās negatively affecting my outlook on life. Iāve given up on reading the news entirely because I just get triggered by the enshittification of society, politics, the environment and daily life where I live. At this point Iād rather not hear about it anymore.
What I want to ask is whether you are having the same experience? Am I doing something fundamentally wrong? I donāt want to be blind to whatās happening in my/the world, but I want to have a positive and optimistic outlook on the future. How can I make that happen? How can I get away from an engagement economy constantly bombarding me with bad news without giving up on learning about the things that I am interested in?
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy š
If your post meets the following criteria, itās welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
Icon by @Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de
- 0 users online
- 289 users / day
- 992 users / week
- 2.47K users / month
- 5.61K users / 6 months
- 1 subscriber
- 3.07K Posts
- 119K Comments
- Modlog
Try to be informed about the stuff you can have an impact on
For example on my rss feed I just wiped out most of the non EU stuff. Itās ok to know that there are wildfires somewhere in the world but being overexposed is really just toxic
I can organize here in Italy, not even the whole of it but my region and the cities I spend time in. Itās much better to know what my little city council is discussing about rather than any even major event but so far from me.
Unluckily, social media doesnāt help too much with curating the feeds but as others said try to work more on mutes and filters. Donāt forget that getting informed is just one tool for change, do not get too high on it :)
Edit and P.S. : itās also much easier that on social networks driven by engagement algorithms the posts that travel the most are the ones that cause hate/rage and sex or generally emotions easier to exploit online. Newspapers themselves tend to post more negative stuff. Itās just a human bias, take it into account and watch around yourself to find the positive stuff of life
I subscribed to stuff that shows uplifting news, added art stuff and some animal content to my feed. I also follow stuff thatās related to my hobbies.
I need some animal subs recommendations š šŗ
I canāt link to the communities right now, but I enjoy superbowl, bats, and foxes