Ask Lemmy

Good. You're growing. A lot of us are. The internet is not a place to get depressed, it's a place to unwind in free time.

Just be the change you want to see in the world, and only give your time to others who do the same. Overtime you'll be fine.

Block everything you're not interested in. You don't get brownie points for complaining about stuff, and in all honesty it doesn't make a difference anyway.

if you're going to stay on internet web forums, you need to start curating your subscription lists with only things you 100% enjoy. don't subscribe to any news communities (tech, medical, political etc)

exercise. don't have to lift weights, but taking yourself out for a quick 10 minute walk will do you wonders. you can up the amount of time you walk around once you start feeling better

and, of course, surround yourself with positive people. best piece of advice I've ever gotten was to never let anyone "outnice" me. the scumbags will, of course, take advantage, but they have shown their hand and you can alter your kindness to them accordingly. the genuinely good people, on the other hand, will reciprocate those acts and life gets better for both of you.

good luck and let me know if you have any other questions. you got this! 🙂

Get off all social media you can.
On the social media you can't, block anything politics and news related. They are designed to keep your attention with psychological triggers.
Start a hobby, reading is cheap to get into assuming you have a library. Drawing with pen and paper, colouring in books. Honestly anything that takes you away from a screen.

Gotta find your way back to this vibe. There's a lot of good out there, a lot to be grateful for. And on a long term timescale the world is in many ways better than ever before on important stuff like infant mortality.

Stop reading the news. You rarely if ever get any information that will change your decisions anyway.

Get off any social media or other that feeds you negativity.

I find that 99% of the negativity is online. Interacting with people in person is way more pleasant and upbeat. And basically on youtube ignore all videos with clickbait titles like "We were Wrong about [whatever] - and it's NOT GOOD!", they're all bullshit.

Hosting one or two regular game nights a week in my house has made a world of difference in my attitude.

I've radically cut my news intake and it's helped, but the side effect is a worry about being uninformed and ignorant to what's happening. There's that famous quote about how "withdrawal in disgust is not the same as apathy" and I try to hold on to it.

Social media is also, of course, awful - but in a different way than it was. I used to have friends, family, colleagues and aquantances on it and yes, their curated profiles and posts, which were often at odds with my real world knowledge of who they actually are as people, could be jarring.

However, actual humans have all but disappeared from my feeds. Now it's just click-bait, based on whatever the fuck the algorithms have decided I want to see - which apparently is no longer friends and family posts (which, granted, folks have largely stopped doing), but weird corporate news stories and AI generated articles from sites I've no interest in.

Worse still, if I make the mistake of clicking on a story and find myself reading the comments, the feeling of disappointment, frustration and anger I get from reading the ignorant brain farts that pass for opinions, espoused by a seemingly endless sea of selfish, deluded morons is genuinely disheartening.

I foolishly clicked on a Sky News link yesterday about Musk's soon to be trillionaire status (don't ask me why) and the comment section was just teaming with idiots baying for 'lefty tears' and brazenly bootlicking the billionaires. I'd like to think that a lot of them were bots, but who even knows.

Any faith I had in democracy has completely evaporated. I don't consider myself massively intelligent or particularly special, but it seems like there's a surplus of proudly hateful and stupid folk out there and they seem to be in a majority. These fuckers vote, so it's hard to imagine that we'll ever have a government that has any real decency or compassion at it's core.

Anyway, I wish you well. There is good in the world and maybe we all need to rise above the morons, disengage from the media and just try and do our best by our fellow humans. Maybe that's the key. That, and Ice Cold beer at every opportunity.

Get off the internet. Truly. When it gets to be too much, put your device away and do something else. My go-tos, I either cook something, play music or go for a walk.

Go skate

You can start by trying to stare at this painting for 10 minutes, and tell me what you experience.

Get off social media and avoid the negative people in your life as much as you can for a bit. Read some books. Play a chill video game. Make something. Just get away from it for a while so you can re-center yourself.

Things are bad and we should be worried about them but there's only so much any of us can do about it. If you don't take care of yourself and your mental health you're not going to be able to do good for anyone else when the time comes.

Me too! It's exhausting, and the most frustrating part is that it's contagious. Generally, this means it's time for me to turn off my phone and go outside in the sunshine and watch a soccer game. I dunno what your "watch a soccer game" is, but things like riding a bike or walking in a park or dangling your legs in the ocean definitely qualify. Mostly, the idea is to remind myself there are good things too, and to remember that the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike.

Whenever someone asks me are you watching the news?

No fuck that shit.

But don't you care?

I only care about shit I can control.

Same thing you do when anything else is fatigued, you rest. Take a break from all that stuff. You are not the savior of the world and everything will not fall apart because you stopped paying attention for a little while.

I'm sure you've had other hobbies, get back into those. Play some games, watch some movies, read a book (not about those topics), get some exercise if you aren't already. If it creeps up in the back of your mind to go look at the news or whatever, that's fine just ignore it, it'll go away. Do stuff so that you're enjoying your time and wanting more of it rather than just waiting for the day to end.

Touch grass. Leave your phone home and go outside and enjoy nature. Go on a hike. Stop reading the news, any news, for a while, you will be fine.

Lots of folks say to cut news intake (however it is happening). This is correct. Everyone suggesting you pick up other things, very wise.

If you are burned out of all these topics entirely, this is probably enough/right. If you still, for whatever reason, wish to engage with the unending crisis:

• Sit down and prioritize. Pick a narrow issue, find good sources on Precisely that, and read/engage with only things that fit. RSS feeds support keyword filters.
• Find longform content related to what you care about. Books, long podcasts, etc. Shortform only has time to make you panic. Longform can actually give nuance, solutions, and an honest accounting of the situation (it doesn't always. But you have a chance.)

I've started reading instead of scrolling in my phone. And it's helped a lot tbh.

I'm in the acceptance stage of grief; the world is a shithole. Some people will tell you about all the good in the world, but that is just being dismissive of the bad. Good does not simply cancel out the bad, especially when the recipients of the good and bad are different.

Instead, I try to focus on the things that I actually can change. If you have the means, volunteer or donate to a cause that is important to you.

Focus on the micro rather than the macro, otherwise it gets overwhelming.

A couple things:

• Use keyword and community filters in Lemmy to clean up what's presented to you.
• Use the "Not Interested" and "Don't Recommend Channel" options in Youtube to cull the trash from your algorithm feed.

It will make your life so much more peaceful. Don't let the algos just blast their firehose of shit at you. Tap your own stream of customized content by interacting with these tools instead.

Figure out why you feel compelled to constantly look first because there's a variety of reasons why we can be stuck in a rut. Mine was indoctrinated into me. 1990's school and family taught me to feel shame for not keeping up with current events. My dad seemed to think it was his duty to watch cable news.

Your reason(s) could be different. I had to learn that disconnecting isn't shameful and isn't actually harmful. I'm a peasant with very minority progressive points of view in Alberta. I can't really affect very much at all with knowledge not even through voting under a FPTP system. Nothing peaceful anyways and anything else is taboo still since things haven't declined far enough yet. If my mood is particularly sour, I can disconnect entirely up until I have to make a potentially important decision. Then, I already know where to go looking to get caught up on relevant information immediately. You would too, I'm sure you're well practiced.

I replaced corporate algorithms and content aggregators with RSS feeds for news. I replaced short form video content with nothing since I don't think there's a healthy form of it. I lost word of mouth information especially when it comes to entertainment and local activist information. That's replaced with email newsletters. Took a lot of time to set up but I feel locally connected in a healthier way now.

I word filter Fediverse. Not always, just when I feel burn out. I can with this instance or I could use an app for Lemmy based instances lacking the feature. I have a separate browser extension called FilterBubble for platform agnostic filtering. Again, I toggle my lists on and off depending on my mood. I don't sub to too many meme or news communities here, peace of mind. My RSS feeds are higher quality and match my tastes. I really don't need to see anything posted by media owned by American billionaires or Post Media. Stuff like that.

I know it really doesn't help, but remember that this is how they want you to feel

Find some creative outlets like coloring, clay work, paint. Heck just get a playlist to dance to. Find a little bit of light everyday to get off the devices and have some slow time.

part of this is from so many users fallen to ragebait chasing the addiction of revenge by finding constant new ways to degrade the enemy. i try to do my part a bit by posting uplifting news once in a while but it's so hard not to be surrounded by unnecessary negativity on lemmy. yes things are bad, no that does not give you the right to do the easy thing and make everyone feel really pitchforks about cosmetics over it.

what's something you can do to feel better? for some people sun exposure can help a little. literally, with or without sunscreen. doing things that happen to give you sun exposure like walking around on the streets can still give you enough of the endorphin boost.

a short-term strategy that can be helpful at the start is journaling the things you feel gratitude about. at your own pace, too. go big or go home is a bit of a lie for building habits

Some good suggestions here - I’d also add to defend your boundaries. You don’t need to save the world, or your town, or your - y’know, whatever. Get the you time. (And don’t spend it scrolling.)

Try the ancient mystical meditation art of a good book. You’d be surprised.

Get an outdoor hobby. I like riding bikes in the woods.

This is a call that comes from inside the house.

The world's the world. There's always ugliness, corruption, darkness, deception. There's always beauty, nobility, light, truth.

Watcha lookin' at?

Pick a point of passion, prepare a plan, purge problems, and pursue progress. Proliferate possibilities and promote prosperity.

I work on my car or work on or ride my bicycles. Its hard to worry about shit when you need to focus on what you're doing.

Sell everything, move to Vietnam?

Anything outdoors. I like mountain biking and gardening, but you do you.