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.
My suggestion? Don’t filter out anything because you need to know how other people think and what’s going on.
Yes, there’s lots and lots of disinformation and shilling, but exercise critical thinking (a part of which is knowing when to believe in something and when not to), and become almost stoic (mostly observe and analyze).
Besides all that, exercise and/or volunteer in your local community. You will feel less shit about things you cannot control.
I filter out a ton of stuff and I still know how other people think and what’s going on. You quite literally need to live in a forest alone without internet if you want not to know. I’m not blocking information. Only limiting the amount of it.
Interesting approach. Let me try a thing…
WE SHOULD ALL SWITCH TO NOSTR, USING UNMODERATED RELAY!
ducks
But seriously, though, sometimes less you know about how other people think, the better for your health. During the pandemic, when the IQ was literally visible on everybody’s faces, never before was I so disgusted and shocked by people around me.