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.
One of Lemmy’s most toxic communities are the Linux people. I’m actually a huge fan of Linux, but the simple fact I use Windows as well constantly earns me personal attacks and extremely negative responses.
My solution (to this and many other issues you describe) is honestly to not read the replies any longer… I just say my bit, and I leave.
I’ve also taken to watching comedy shows that touch upon numerous topics of all the crazy shit going on. The Daily show has been a great outlet for me, and I’m not even a Democrat (I’m independent). It’s just nice to see a popular form of media clearly states “yes, this is crazy. You’re not crazy, THIS is just f*king crazy.”
Edit: For example, Trump recently claimed he never said “lock her up” the other day to Hillary. I saw this on Lemmy first. John Stewart’s reaction a day or two later was perfect, and pointed out the gaslighting taking place.
I just feel like you have to find ways to laugh at all this crazy stuff… So comedy shows help. Just keep your guard up whenever consuming politically charged media, of course.
I just don’t see this toxic linux user thing at all.
Every second post is a meme about Linux users telling people they’re idiots for using Windows, but I’ve never seen Linux users abusing Windows users.
I’m sure that it happens to some extent, but it seems entirely possible to be active on lemmy without encountering a toxic Linux user.
Hey you might not read this since it’s a reply, but John Oliver does a pretty good job also! Last Week Tonight on HBO but they also post all their main stories on youtube.