There’s so much doom on social media right now. The environment is collapsing. The economy will crash. Civil rights are ending. Democracy is dead.
What keeps you going? Why do you still get up and go do what needs to be done when the world seems to be ending around us?
By avoiding social media and living my life through memes and video games.
There is a theory that natural human psychology wasn’t made to handle all of the world’s atrocities. People experience a “bad news burnout” because some of us constantly feel disappointed in humans as a race by hearing/seeing sociopathic behavior on an international level every day.
I think I just hit that wall. This thread is fucking depressing. There’s happiness and hope out there, but it seems you won’t find it on social media, I guess. Negativity bias seems more prevalent on Lemmy than others.
There’s a reason why it’s common for people to occasionally want to camp out in the middle of nowhere with no technology for a bit. If I read about some horrible news like a grandma getting shot picking olives on her own land I try to follow it up with something more lighthearted such as kittens hugging puppies. Like eating pickled ginger as a pallette cleanser between sushi.
Negativity drives more clicks so therefore is more profitable for reporting KPI.
I block any C that is news, local regional things, political, or US centric. That seems to kill off most negatively in a platform.
I think that is a lot of what perpetuates doom. Eyes = $$$$
Is this social media?
Not by my definition. I don’t friend people or follow people on here.
Running on hope isn’t sustainable in this world, you gotta run on spite!
I think you just helped me realize what’s keeping me going…
Learning to harness that anxiety helps, too. It’s my fuel and my brakes at the same time.
Study of history.
People have been prophesying the end times for millennia now, for this reason or that reason. I think that ultimately they just don’t like the basic fact that change of some sort or another is inevitable in the world, it will not remain static and no system or institution will last forever. This does not result in any concrete end, however.
To quote Morpheus, “I remember that I am here not because of the path that lies before me, but because of the path that lies behind me.”
There’s also a fair bit of profit-driven exaggeration in just how bad things really are in certain arenas. Bad news makes good clickbait, good/neutral news less so. So the ratio of bad to good news we receive is not actually representative of the full picture of what is happening in the world.
Honestly? I have no idea. Probably spite. Why should I kill myself? It’s the world that sucks.
Don’t die for your code of ethics…- Patton or something, idk.
Over the past few weeks, I realized that I wasn’t reading the news to “stay informed,” I was reading it because I was bored. As a form of entertainment, it’s pretty awful. 99% of what I read will have no direct impact on me or my family, and just sitting there and worrying about it without doing anything to fix it serves nobody.
Also, I’ve learned to be skeptical of basically every headline good or bad. I saw a headline this week about how upset Trump supporters were with his cabinet picks. Comments in the thread were talking about leopards eating faces. The article was a collection of 8 tweets from supporters showing disapproval.
This news site was just preying on people’s hopes and making a story out of absolutely nothing.
So I started focusing on some personal hobbies and have tried to re-teach myself how to focus by reading some long form fiction.
This is so true. MY eyes are now a commodity and I’m going to choose who gets them more wisely.
There’s still a bunch of kindness around. There’s good food to be eaten and culture to be consumed. There’s drinks to be had and friends to be made. Dances to learn and skills to master.
There’s a lot of things to be hopeful about, aside from the whole everything going to shit thing. And if you can brighten up people’s lives by doing it, you might even contribute to the world going slightly less to shit.
I think it’s time to recalibrate and focus more on the closer things. Doesn’t mean one should ignore the world, but we’re not fixing it by stressing out, doom-scrolling, and posting about it online either. We tried.
I agree. The thing that keeps me going is the idea of finding community again.
Not sure how many people in this thread are American, but we have a very independent point of view. The “optimal” way of living is leaving your parents, leaving your home, and building a new home somewhere else. We tend to be more independent overall and less likely to look to others for comfort, to our detriment. At least, that has been my experience.
So I think the best thing to do is go out there, find a community that DOES care. Because they DO exist. Look for hobby classes, look for new friends in your interests, look for a church (if that is your thing. I am UU so the people at those churches are often some of the nicest, most leftist people around).
I’m moving soon, and I think the thing that keeps me going is the idea of finding new community after I move. You can also affect meaningful change as a community when you can’t do it alone.
This is what I needed to hear. Thanks! Think local, act local to help the global.
Easy. The world isn’t ending. Ignore the doomers. Problem solved.
My Factorio engineer can’t keep the thing going without me.
You have to automate his job so he can’t feed his family.
Find a small corner of the world you can improve and focus on that. Can only effect what you can. Not worth worrying about the other stuff.
As hokey as it sounds 🤷♂️
That’s the most healthy way to have a positive impact on the world, imo. Thats what the human mind is best designed for.
Donald Trump will die (don’t care if from natural causes or not) at some point in the near future. Just want to be alive to celebrate.
Reasons you can get banned permanently from reddit for $1000.
I want to watch him die. just to make sure the piece of shit is actually dead.
got my hopes up when covid got him. fat greasy mcdoublefuck still pulled through.
I thought I was devastated then.
Look, I am as heartbroken as anyone that the two crazies that tried, missed (or never got a shot off). But that’s something else. If you’re not trolling, you should probably talk to a mental health professional about those feelings.
Good thing this isn’t Reddit then
What keeps you going? Why do you still get up and go do what needs to be done when the world seems to be ending around us? For me it’s my family , my own goal like playing gta 6 (even I don’t think I will play) but for me big reason I have friends I like to talk with them and enjoy with them. Because nobody like loneliness even iam introvert guy I still like to share my thoughts with others and knowing thier thoughts.i think it’s enough for me keep going .I wanna suggest you to search about absurdism or watch the movie everything everywhere all at once .
+1 Absurdism
Thank you!
Keeps me going? drugs and food. Life right now is just like a zombie from 6:00-15:00, and later From 15:00-3:00 life can feel good in rare occasions.
Spite.
At first I thought it was the lemon-lime goodness of Sprite that gave you hope, but I read it wrong.
Fear of death.
Like its either nothing. Which is in itself terrifying.
Or there could be reincarnation, which is even more terrifying. Imagine being reborn in North Korea. Or if time isn’t linear, imagine being some enslaved person in the dark ages.
Or being born in some universe that paranormal stuff are real. And evil creatures chase you all the time.
Or being in a dystopian futuristic world where every newborn is implanted with a mindcontrol chip.
Like nobody knows what happens.
Thats the only reason I haven’t killed myself.
You don’t enjoy ANYTHING? Like, nothing at all?
Oh, lol I tunnel vision and focused on that.
Well I like watching interesting youtube videos about science and various topics. Movies, TV, reading SCPs. And um… obviously eating tasty food.
But like depression is still persistent throught all that. Like no matter how much I enjoy. Like a dark cloud that just block the sunlight.
I guess to answer your question: the possibility of future technology give me hope to keep going.
Like we got a device that can fit in a pocket and instantaneously communicate to anywhere in the world. Most people in history can only talk to people nearby. I can just pull up my phone and talk to like the entire population that uses the internet, well… at least the people who use the same platform that I use.
Who knows what technology we get in the future.
Like you ever flew a drone? Its so cool to see the world from above.
Like why traffic jams if we have flying cars.
An hour travel can become like 10 minutes, or less.
Endless possibilities.
In general, humanity (at least in Europe?) developed positively over the past few centuries. There were of course setbacks, but they didn’t last too long and sometimes even lead to great progress. Nevertheless we must fight for progress and shouldn’t give up just because the world once again seems to get even worse. Even more important when it comes to problems we have just a tiny period of time to fight against like climate change, we need to act now and can’t waste ten years being (ruled by) facists.
That’s the crazy thing about all these echo chambers online. Everyone sits around convincing themselves that life is worse than it has ever been, when in reality it’s better in almost every way than it ever has been. Through constant struggle, our ancestors built us a world that is vastly easier to live in than ever before, yet many of us look at what is still left to improve and instead of facing that challenge, just complain loudly about the injustice of it all.
