Most people will probably disagree and say that I shouldn’t be here if I don’t like it, but yeah, like the title said. I switched over from Reddit for various reasons, and at first it was nice, but now it’s making me depressed just casually browsing Lemmy. Everything here is so drab and negative, sometimes even downright hateful. Everything sucks, here’s a list of companies you should never use, here’s people that do horrible things, here’s a bunch of complaints about stuff. This is why the world sucks, this is why your favourite thing is actually stupid, this is why you shouldn’t enjoy xyz anymore.
At least half of the content on Lemmy is about American politics or how they affect the rest of the world, even on meme and shitpost subs you can’t escape from the constant barrage of politically charged content. And when it’s not American politics it’s American lifestyle, like I get that america dominates the internet but I sincerely do not give a shit about your egg prices or your celebrities when I’m browsing memes to wind down.
And on top of that there’s a distinct arrogance that permeates the fediverse, where people act like they’re better than others for being conscious, and you’re stupid for not boycotting 99 percent of brands and eating vegan and ditching cars and using european FOSS applications on refurbished Linux devices, etc.
Honestly I’m baffled when people ask stuff like “why don’t more people join Lemmy?” Because I honestly would not recommend it to my friends. While it’s nice in some ways, it is also so very exhausting, and for me personally, worse for my mental health than Reddit ever was.
Rant over and obligatory disclaimer: I did not mean to insult anyone, I don’t have anything against the ideologies and lifestyles mentioned in my post, I simply wanted to share my personal opinions.
We’re in a profoundly fucked up timeline right now.
Silence is complicity.
The bad needs to be brought to the surface all day, every day, so we can address it. People MUST be made aware of who the bad actors are so they can be countered.
Because if we don’t, and you think what you’re experiencing right now is depressing…well, just you wait and see.
I think it’s a phase we’re going through. Many (myself included) did not selected the platform for it’s size or contents, but we came here because we “had” to leave where we where (often reddit). So yeah, many arrive negatively charged but it’s up to all of us to build it into something we want it to be.
Making it a more positive is up to all of us. We can and will do it.
Also, and I don’t mean this as an insult to OP or those who agree, most of the people who just want mindless memes are still on Reddit. A large number of people who came to Lemmy are politically charged and mad at the world. And I guess I’m sorry to the non-Americans, I assume there are more Americans here than other countries, and we’re probably going to talk about our experiences. But more people with more backgrounds joining Lemmy will change all of that.
I do think as far as the depressing topics, the discussion here is much better than Reddit overall. But myself, I’m not here for the memes, I’m here for the politics, and I would guess that’s not uncommon here. I think if the world magically gets better that would probably change.
Sorry, but I think that we’re just representing the world as it is.
Sometimes the world situation is so bad that everything gets affected.
I would say that it isn’t necessarily just the situation, but importantly the trend that’s going in the wrong direction (at an increasingly faster pace). Also we just have way more exposure to (miss-)information and our ability to properly filter and absorb it just hasn’t scaled as much.
Because objectively most of us are still living very good lifes and there have been crisis in the past aswell.
I was reading some comic essays by Jean Shepard [he wrote the stories “A Christmas Story” was based on.]
He knew he was poor growing up, but in those days a little money could buy you some nice stuff.
For 5 cents he could go to a movie theater that really did look like a palace.
These days a comic book costs a kid an hour’s pay, and a concert is a week’s pay if you’re lucky.
But you assuming you can get access to a screen with Internet you have access to more free content than that kid could have ever imagined. And those devices are certainly affordable as well, since you can get used laptops or a tablet that does the job for like 100$ and be set for quite a while.
I was thinking more that you could e.g. start work at a company with little education, work there your whole life, be promoted occasionally and be solidly middle class with house, car and holidays. Not quite as easy today as it used to be. Nowadays it’s more of a winner takes all market than it used to be.
I found the work of Andreas Reckwitz, a German sociologist, on the topic quite interesting, but I’m not sure how available it is in English.
Skim through the book “Hell’s Angels” by Hunter Thompson. There’s a chapter about midway through where he writes about the economics of being a biker/hippie circa 1970.
A biker could work for six months as a Union stevedore and be able to hit the road for two years. A part time waitress could support herself and her boyfriend.
I like to put it this way. Before Ronald Reagan was elected, ‘middle class’ was one job supporting a family of four. In those days, $1 million was a vast fortune. By the time Bush Sr. left office ‘middle class’ was two incomes keeping the house going and $1 million was what a rich guy paid for a party.
I’m indigenous Canadian and whenever I have these discussions with my non-native friends … I tell them … now you know how I’ve always felt and still feel.
This is why minorities and people of colour constantly feel depressed, unwell, unhappy and negative … we’ve also developed ways to cope, one of which is to just normalize how all this is just part of our reality … it doesn’t mean we accept it but choose to live with it while also fighting it
Stay safe and keep the public informed on what’s going on in the res. We won’t hear it on the news, but a lot of us care deeply about what happens to your community.
Man, you got both shit ends of that stick… being part of an ostracized demographic, and being a Canadian living through yet another Trump dictatorship.
If there’s any silver lining to the “51st state” rhetoric, it’s the opportunity to help other Canadians understand and relate to your hardships as a member of a demographic living under the threat of colonization. I hope you guys (as a country) can come together in solidarity, and best of luck to you personally.
https://www.health.com/condition/ptsd/generational-trauma
I heard a lot of stories coming up about ‘the bad old days’ and how those times affected the presant day. I never really beleived it then, but I’m starting to see how it might be true.
I’m in America and it’s everywhere here, every platform everywhere and I can’t handle it also, my mitigation of it online is only go on platforms I can hide keywords and filter things, why I’m on voyager app, I have a extremely long list of filters of instances, communities and even some people, it helps, it’s not perfect but accessibility is important for everyone imo, on mastodon I have filters too, that way when I want to look into American politics I can choose to when I feel mentally healthy. If a platform does not allow filtering of words and such(and actually work not a facade), it’s not a platform Is not worthy of me using.
Heavy blocking of communities makes this place more tolerable, but I share your pain.
Every social platform is like this ATM. It sucks but atleast are not being censored like on reddit.
We need to have some better meme communities. They’re the only reason I do social media at all and they’re just not as dedicated here.
I see a lot of the same passive/aggressive bullshit on both reddit and lemmy. I’m quite new to lemmy and have recently quit reddit. The one thing I’ve noticed so far, that is distinct on lemmy, seems to be intellectual and moral superiority. We cannot judge human behaviour when the participants hide behind a digital wall so you cannot see their face when they spew. That is not bravery, that is anger (I noticed the phrase “impotent rage” is starting to make a comeback).
Overall. I like lemmy better than reddit but am considering why I feel compelled to throw words into the digitalarium at all.
I love peoples comments though. It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad, mad, mad, mad world.
Yeah, I know what you’re saying, especially when I browse “All.”
That’s why I generally just subscribe to comms that I like (about non-politics non-tech things) and browse “Subscribed”. Then when I’m ready after that, then I browse All. Or maybe I just skip All.
click here for a list of communities that are NOT politics, tech, or meme -related.
Most are currently active (except for the ones with a * which were less active last I checked)
GENERAL DISCUSSION / QUESTIONS
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ART / PHOTOS
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ANIMALS
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COMICS / GRAPHIC NOVELS
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ENTERTAINMENT
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GENRES / STYLES
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HISTORY
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INFORMATION / KNOWLEDGE
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OTHER
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FEDIVERSE
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FINDING NEW/GOOD COMMUNITIES ON LEMMY
click here for a list of meme communities
MEMES, SOCIAL MEDIA REPOSTS, AND HUMOR (NON-POLITICAL)
Most of these are currently active. (except for the ones with a * which were less active last I checked). Sometimes politics sneaks in but that’s not the focus.
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Thanks for the great list! I found several neat communities I wouldn’t have otherwise.
[email protected] can help too
196 has political content as an example of things to post
Awesome list.
Thanks for this list!
While I understand your perspective. I want to point out that “lemmy” is not one place. The emphasis is on people being permitted to say what they wish and the conversations being interconnected.
I think you are encountering a social issue, people suck. Fortunately lemmy has a lot of features to turn bad content off. The first is the choice of which server you call home. The moderators from that server will protect you from a select amount of “garbage.” From there you have user tools to block communities/users as you feel is necessary.
The onus is on the lemmy user to curate their content.
I feel that. Tried getting into my niche interests and hobbies, but they are dead on Lemmy. I think being cognizant of problems in the world isn’t a bad thing, but sometimes you don’t want news and I wish the spaces on Lemmy for other stuff weren’t so dead
I think this is what all social media looks like lately.
Recommend to not think of scrolling as winding down. Its never winding down when you doomscroll or make your attention span smaller.
Books are great for winding down and not overwhelming your eyes and brain. Podcasts are fun to listen to while doing chores. Drinking a nice hot cup of tea is the best winding down.
All social media should be consumed lightly. Its not that great for our mental health.
It’s depressing for me too, mostly because there is a lot of news, and the news is all fucking bad these days.
I wanted to try starting over here. But, the vastly smaller user base means specific communities are harder to find, and those that do exist seem to be straggling along.
I think the most recent post in the science fiction one I found was eight days ago.
I get it, remove oneself from corporates that defend Nazis. But man is it hard to find something to keep out the bad thoughts when the alternatives are either throwing tumbleweeds or just amplifying the bad thoughts.
Follow communites you like and put the communites that annoy or make you depressed on the block list.