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.

  • Obinice@lemmy.world
    9·
    5 months ago

    I’m not focusing on the things that don’t affect me in some way, and I’m still miserable.

    I agree that staying informed is extremely depressing. But what would you have me do, stick my head in the sand and ignore what my government it’s doing? Ignore the growing control and power the rich capitalist ruling class have over us all year by year? Or ignore what the growing fascist powers within my nation and other important places like the USA are doing? Or how the global climate for humans is collapsing and what’s causing it?

    Most of these things directly impact me right now, and will continue to have an even greater impact as time goes on.

    I’m not focusing on news stories that have no impact on me. I don’t care what Elon Musk had for breakfast, what the latest hot celebrity is doing, or what the Royal family is up to. Even so, only focusing on what affects me and my family is a huge, deeply depressing weight that is ever growing.

    I agree, it’s awful. But the world, for all the beauty it also contains, is growing ever more awful day by day. I just can’t find it in me to bury my head in the sand and hope it’ll all turn out fine, so instead I stay informed and stay miserable :-(

    We can’t fight back if we don’t understand our enemy and what they’re doing to us. We can’t make informed decisions about who to vote for, for example, if we don’t follow those political parties and politicians track records, their history of decisions and statements and so on.

    People who ignore the day to day stuff and then show up to do 10 minutes of bullet point blurb research to figure out who to vote for are not likely to gain a clear understanding of the parties or candidates true beliefs and intentions. The same is true for companies, we need to stay informed on what they say, what they actually do, so we can be informed on whether we want to work for them, or use their products and services, etc etc.

    We must stay informed. They want us uninformed so they can manipulate us with ease. Ignorance is bliss, but at what price?

    Anyway, it’s a quandary, and a sad one, I agree for sure 🫂

    • laughterlaughter@lemmy.world
      3·
      5 months ago

      But what would you have me do, stick my head in the sand and ignore what my government it’s doing? Ignore the growing control and power the rich capitalist ruling class have over us all year by year?

      Believe it or not, yes. You can do this. You can still stay informed. Just don’t be online 7 days a week. Fight off that FOMO feeling.

    • Thorny_Insight@lemm.eeOP
      2·
      5 months ago

      I think you’re vastly underestimating how difficult it is to avoid the news to the point that you have no clue of what’s going on in the world. If you knew the lenghts I go to to try and curate my news diet you’d think I’d be completely ignorant but I bet you couldn’t name a single important current event I haven’t heard of. If you spend any time on the internet and with other people you’re going to hear about it and if not, then it wasn’t important. Pretty much the only topic I’ve near perfectly managed to seclude myself from is celebrity gossip.