There’s so much doom on social media right now. The environment is collapsing. The economy will crash. Civil rights are ending. Democracy is dead.
What keeps you going? Why do you still get up and go do what needs to be done when the world seems to be ending around us?
By avoiding social media and living my life through memes and video games.
There is a theory that natural human psychology wasn’t made to handle all of the world’s atrocities. People experience a “bad news burnout” because some of us constantly feel disappointed in humans as a race by hearing/seeing sociopathic behavior on an international level every day.
I think I just hit that wall. This thread is fucking depressing. There’s happiness and hope out there, but it seems you won’t find it on social media, I guess. Negativity bias seems more prevalent on Lemmy than others.
There’s a reason why it’s common for people to occasionally want to camp out in the middle of nowhere with no technology for a bit. If I read about some horrible news like a grandma getting shot picking olives on her own land I try to follow it up with something more lighthearted such as kittens hugging puppies. Like eating pickled ginger as a pallette cleanser between sushi.
Negativity drives more clicks so therefore is more profitable for reporting KPI.
I block any C that is news, local regional things, political, or US centric. That seems to kill off most negatively in a platform.
I think that is a lot of what perpetuates doom. Eyes = $$$$
Is this social media?
Not by my definition. I don’t friend people or follow people on here.
Running on hope isn’t sustainable in this world, you gotta run on spite!
I think you just helped me realize what’s keeping me going…
Learning to harness that anxiety helps, too. It’s my fuel and my brakes at the same time.
Study of history.
People have been prophesying the end times for millennia now, for this reason or that reason. I think that ultimately they just don’t like the basic fact that change of some sort or another is inevitable in the world, it will not remain static and no system or institution will last forever. This does not result in any concrete end, however.
To quote Morpheus, “I remember that I am here not because of the path that lies before me, but because of the path that lies behind me.”
There’s also a fair bit of profit-driven exaggeration in just how bad things really are in certain arenas. Bad news makes good clickbait, good/neutral news less so. So the ratio of bad to good news we receive is not actually representative of the full picture of what is happening in the world.
Find a small corner of the world you can improve and focus on that. Can only effect what you can. Not worth worrying about the other stuff.
As hokey as it sounds 🤷♂️
That’s the most healthy way to have a positive impact on the world, imo. Thats what the human mind is best designed for.
Over the past few weeks, I realized that I wasn’t reading the news to “stay informed,” I was reading it because I was bored. As a form of entertainment, it’s pretty awful. 99% of what I read will have no direct impact on me or my family, and just sitting there and worrying about it without doing anything to fix it serves nobody.
Also, I’ve learned to be skeptical of basically every headline good or bad. I saw a headline this week about how upset Trump supporters were with his cabinet picks. Comments in the thread were talking about leopards eating faces. The article was a collection of 8 tweets from supporters showing disapproval.
This news site was just preying on people’s hopes and making a story out of absolutely nothing.
So I started focusing on some personal hobbies and have tried to re-teach myself how to focus by reading some long form fiction.
This is so true. MY eyes are now a commodity and I’m going to choose who gets them more wisely.
Honestly? I have no idea.
Don’t die for your code of ethics…- Patton or something, idk.
Donald Trump will die (don’t care if from natural causes or not) at some point in the near future. Just want to be alive to celebrate.
Reasons you can get banned permanently from reddit for $1000.
Good thing this isn’t Reddit then
I want to watch him die. just to make sure the piece of shit is actually dead.
got my hopes up when covid got him. fat greasy mcdoublefuck still pulled through.
I thought I was devastated then.
Look, I am as heartbroken as anyone that the two crazies that tried, missed (or never got a shot off). But that’s something else. If you’re not trolling, you should probably talk to a mental health professional about those feelings.
There’s still a bunch of kindness around. There’s good food to be eaten and culture to be consumed. There’s drinks to be had and friends to be made. Dances to learn and skills to master.
There’s a lot of things to be hopeful about, aside from the whole everything going to shit thing. And if you can brighten up people’s lives by doing it, you might even contribute to the world going slightly less to shit.
I think it’s time to recalibrate and focus more on the closer things. Doesn’t mean one should ignore the world, but we’re not fixing it by stressing out, doom-scrolling, and posting about it online either. We tried.
I agree. The thing that keeps me going is the idea of finding community again.
Not sure how many people in this thread are American, but we have a very independent point of view. The “optimal” way of living is leaving your parents, leaving your home, and building a new home somewhere else. We tend to be more independent overall and less likely to look to others for comfort, to our detriment. At least, that has been my experience.
So I think the best thing to do is go out there, find a community that DOES care. Because they DO exist. Look for hobby classes, look for new friends in your interests, look for a church (if that is your thing. I am UU so the people at those churches are often some of the nicest, most leftist people around).
I’m moving soon, and I think the thing that keeps me going is the idea of finding new community after I move. You can also affect meaningful change as a community when you can’t do it alone.
This is what I needed to hear. Thanks! Think local, act local to help the global.
My Factorio engineer can’t keep the thing going without me.
You have to automate his job so he can’t feed his family.
I deleted all my social media the day after the election, except for my lemmy account. Mostly because I forgot about it. Now I just read a few news headlines and solve a crossword every day. And WHOA - talk about having bountiful free time now. It’s kinda scary.
Am I less stressed? Meh, maybe a bit. But I’ve decided I’m going to find beauty and amusement in the utter self destruction we are about to witness. I’m going to stand over here and watch the fire while I drink my beer in peace.
My dogs. I stagger their ages so that I’ll always have at least one and thus would feel too guilty to ever kill myself.
Planning 🧠
Ours are 11, 7, and 3.
Nice. Mines about 3. Would you wait until 5 for a new one?
Depends on the breed / size of the dog. Large dogs have shorter lives. I like large dogs. About five years is a good age to get a puppy in that context. I wouldn’t wait more than seven years.
Personally, I would say 3-4 is a good gap. That is what we have done with our last 3 pups, I wouldn’t want them to be much farther apart as I feel like they wouldn’t play or bond quite as well when the older one is more set in their ways and has less energy for puppy shenanigans
Yeah, I got a puppy when my older dog was five. But the puppy died of cancer right when she turned two. So I just got another puppy right before my older dog turned seven. She definitely had more patience for the last puppy, but they are starting to bond and play a bunch. It’s nice to see. The older dog seemed really off and saddened by the loss of the last puppy. Nice for her to have a friend again.
My dogs were 16 and 7 when they passed last year. 😞
I’m so sorry for your loss. It’s wonderful that you had one for so long, though.
Thanks, it was a rough year. Cancer is a real bummer.
Jack Smith dropped the charges without prejudice so they can be re-filed the second he leaves office.
Dude won’t make it that far. Or much further than that.
I keep hoping that everything is exaggerated and it won’t be that bad. That he’ll be out in 4 years and not become a dictator with no more term limits.
If it helps, humans are really really really really really bad at predicting the future. We don’t know what’s going to happen until it does and even then knowing how that changes what comes after is still unknowable.
For example many of the promises Agent Orange made on the campaign trail would have disastrous consequences for everyone, which might be enough to shift the balance back by the midterms.
What else are we supposed to do?
Edit: that’s a rhetorical question, don’t come at me enumerating the alternatives
I drink. I shouldn’t, but I do.
Easy. The world isn’t ending. Ignore the doomers. Problem solved.
