2d ago

Lemmy is making me depressed

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.

64 comments

My biggest issue with Lemmy is how anything with negative annotations can't be praised for any positive contributions.
Right now with Musk for example. The guy is a snake ruining everything he touches. So therefore you are not allowed to be optimistic about development in space travel or having any good experiences with Tesla.
The outrage culture here is insane, and it's clouding every topic. The latest Mark Rober video was heavily edited and gave viewers a reason to question the method of testing. But Lemmy doesn't care because the process isn't important when the results are appealing.
On Lemmy your are for or you are against. There is no room for contrary opinions. Trying to find a forum for your favourite hobby or game is not easy because everything everyone care about is being stuck up about something.
On Reddit every comment on any popular post are just unfunny one liners. On Lemmy you find more though out long form comments on popular post. But they all confirm the current popular opinion, so it's doesn't really matter.

Find the casual communities.
Curate your feed
Stick to non US communities?
Realise that the world is not in great shape right now, people are angry and scared - of course online spaces are going to reflect that.

CURATE YOUR FEED
I know it's not easy. But once you block a lot of the crap, the remaining stuff is great.

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 compiled a list of casual communities awhile ago https://lemmy.world/post/16327122 - I'd strongly recommend curating your own feed of communities through subscriptions and ditch the all/local feeds. Block the politics communities.

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'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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
- 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.

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.
- Thanks for the great list! I found several neat communities I wouldn’t have otherwise.
  
  !communitypromo@lemmy.ca can help too
- 196 has political content as an example of things to post
  
  O yeah good point.... maybe I should change the disclaimer...
- Thanks for this list!
- Awesome list.

Heavy blocking of communities makes this place more tolerable, but I share your pain.

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.

Had Reddit not gone down the shithole it’s in today, it would honestly look the same. Right now is not a good time for the USA, which means politics will ripple throughout most feeds.
It’s so bad, a time traveler from a mere 10 years ago would be shitting bricks. A democracy that has had global military dominance/presence for decades is about to turn to full fascism. We have military bases, in countries we are actively being hostile to. And to top it off, a pretend president keeps trying to annex Canada as an 51st state and start WWIII.

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.

What I did and still do to keep it updated is:
block users, subscripe to what I am interested and use word filters for the rest.
Even when browsing all the word filters take away the majority of what I don't like.

Dude take the time to curate your experience, any "all" section is going to provide you theses feelings especially when the world is hurting. The human brain imo was never supposed to be exposed by such esoteric kinds of news, from everywhere, at once, and is maybe telling you something through theses feelings.
And no, this isint an "unplug yourself from the internet". It's about taking the time about considering WHAT you are doing on the internet in the first space, WHAT you want to accomplish. Living on the internet without purpose, perpetually bored and looking for something without knowing why, without at least
<u>
selecting
</u>
what information you are consuming, digesting, integrating (whether you want to or not) into your everyday life.

Block the news communities.

You hear people say stuff like this sometimes like the news is making me depressed. Is it the news or is it what's going on in the world? It's worse right now man. I mean it just is. It ain't the fault of the website. It's absolutely worse than it was a year ago. That's not even a question.

Processing reality is making a lot of people depressed
It's healthier than the alternatives

Everytime someone talks about being from Reddit but then says Lemmy is arrogant I just have to roll my eyes. Like Reddit isn't the home of the "AcHtUaLlY" contrarian type poster with a big ego?

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.

Every social platform is like this ATM. It sucks but atleast are not being censored like on reddit.

It's really easy to block users here, and it works far better than blocking ever did at Reddit. And I remember reading about an app that (supposedly) filters America and/or Trump from Lemmy, for those who've had enough or need a break.
That said, I follow the news, so depression is my normal state.

ive had the complete opposite experience honestly, my mental has improved drastically since getting banned from reddit and using lemmy instead.
far less snooty assholes, far less bots, far less corporate cenorship, ads, etc.

As an older guy who was until recently a landlord on Lemmy I recommend not taking anything here here too seriously. The media in general can be heavy, we're not designed to know about everything that happens everywhere. We can only influence so much, usually what's around us within arms reach. It's good to be informed of course but don't let it get to you.
- Go seek your validation elsewhere

May I suggest reading "Anna Karinina"?
In all seriousness, Lemmy's only alright. I with you on a lot of it. I don't think I'm as effected by it, but I also think a lot of people are coping with the insult of Trump and more by posting. It makes them feel not alone. As an aside, someone made an instance that filters repetitive content. It only got posted about today, but who knows? Might be interesting to catch a unique post that might have otherwise been buried.

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

Haven't you been paying attention to the world, what's been happening? It's rather a coincidence that you are on Lemmy, while things around us are changing on a daily basis, to the worst.
I'm sure you'll find any community exhausting nowadays.
Don't make it Lemmy's fault, that the world is going full drab and negative.

I get depressed sometimes too about Lemmy and the state of it. I love questions, for example. And I feel there aren't a lot of interesting or good questions being asked for people to answer. It's always about personal problem suggestions, some political baiting or whatever. And they'd go quiet for a while until more of those are posted again. AskReddit, while repetitious at times, had a lot of questions asked by the hour. Lemmy doesn't have that.
On paper, Lemmy has a lot of users of its own, but you can't say the same for activity. In practice, you will see the same old users basically try to carry instances on their backs when they're the only ones posting.
And the reality of it is, is that Lemmy has absorbed Reddit's rejects. I'm talking, reddit users who were a problem over in Reddit, probably got banned enough times to be IP/shadow-ban on sight, now they come here. And it is obvious how badly they shit up the place unapologetically.
I know the Fediverse has a long way to go to be an established platform and alternative for people to escape from the other platforms, but if this is the kind of direction it is going, it's going to take twice as long or might not have a future.

Yeah you're absolutely right. The solution is to develop a comprehensive approach to blocking all the crap. Initially this can feel a lot like a game of whack-a-mole but it does get a lot better quite quickly.
Where the platform tools fall short you can use other tools to fill in the gaps. I use uBlock Origin for a whole host of stuff but specifically here for blocking posts containing certain keywords. It's not perfect because it also blocks humorous British fart jokes, some card games, and a certain snooker player (Judd) but those might be rectified by extending the syntax somewhat.
- Uh no. Be involved or sign off. Sorry about your safe space, but we need people to do more than be a checked out online zombie.
  If the world is just too tough, go touch grass and see that it helps you. Then help the rest of us DO SOMETHING about it.

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.

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.
- Lemmy has tons of meme communities, what's missing?

I can see how it could. Take a break from here and any online space that's making you feel this way. Don't feel obliged to participate or "fix" them.
Remember that these are optional. If they start bringing you down instead of up, take a break or move on to whatever invigorates you instead. Rekindle an old hobby, try a new one, try learning more about something you're curious about, or the like to find something else to channel your focus toward.

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.

I have noticed the same thing, I think it’s really just the news. Most of the posts I see are news articles or about the news. Recently I started using Mastodon and found it to be much more positive. Yes, we are living in tough times. But we need to see evidence of things worth saving in humanity, like community and compassion to keep us going.
- You can block the politics subs, although personally I'd recommend just subscribing to subs that interest you and browsing your subscribed feed. See https://lemmy.world/post/16327122 list for casual communities.

I get this, but also there's a lot of tools to block a lot of what you're mentioning. A lot of the assholes who are here are worse than the average reddit asshole but I would say the asshole percentage in general is lower.
I don't want more people to join Lemmy. Not many more at least. I like being in a community where ditching driving and other bad habits are seen as good. People really do have growth to do when talking to others about these things though.
Edit: also wanna add that the trump administration is going to increase depression regardless. Even if you think it doesn't impact you or you can avoid it, that won't last. Sorry. It blows and I hate what's happening on the world stage right now as much as the next guy

Just to point something out here.
The thing you had to get off your chest was a depressing and negative bit of content, about how negative and depressive all the content on lemmy is.
If this was a meta-troll post, well done!

Follow communites you like and put the communites that annoy or make you depressed on the block 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.

Change your attitude, change your world. Instead try to frame it as how you're incredibly lucky to live in a place where your greatest concern is the freshness of memes, instead of waiting for your life as you knew of to come crashing down. That way, talk of the unfolding horror can bring you joy that you're not one of us on the receiving end of it.

It’s depressing for me too, mostly because there is a lot of news, and the news is all fucking bad these days.

I hear you.
My least favourite thing is how often the first comment on a post is a contrarian "well aksurly..." As if contrianism is engagement.
It hardly makes for a welcoming environment.
The worst thing, the longer I stay here the more often I catch myself doing it too.
- “well aksurly…” As if contrianism
  You spell 'correction' strangely.
  
  I'm taking it that you were making a joke, and a pretty funny one too. Doesn't deserve to be down voted.

Sometimes you just have to block what depresses you. Hexbear is a popular block. My partner blocked the main politics so he gets a trickle, not a fire hose. I ignore anything commobdreams, dailybeast, rawstory, HuffPost, etc because they’re tailored to headline what an echo chamber wants to hear, and their incessant spam probably did impact the 2024 election.
RedNote makes my partner laugh.
Echo chambering is unhealthy. Mix it up a little and don’t be afraid to block things, or to go off it completely if you need to.
Also, be sure to read/listen to things not on social media.

Amen. Lemmy is completely unusable without heavy content filtering, and even then, it's only barely worth visiting. I pick the communities I follow very carefully, yet sometimes I only see four posts on my front page because everything else gets filtered out by keywords. The unfiltered feed of popular Lemmy communities is utter poison for anyone's mind. And before the "sticking your head in the sand" argument comes up again - it's impossible to avoid this stuff even if you try. If, by some miracle, you actually manage to completely avoid something, you can be absolutely certain it wasn't even slightly important. The only way to consume anything even remotely resembling a healthy media diet is to actively avoid the firehose of news.

Sounds like you want an echo chamber where reality is different. Check out Beehaw and enjoy the view of the walls.

64 comments