It seems like no matter how I scroll I find bad news. I know lots of things are happening but I just want funny memes and interesting stories.
I used to be able to get this back in the day on the Reddit app feed, but here the all page is always just depressing stuff. Back then, there was news and stuff but like it felt more balanced in the all feed. I could get bad stuff but lots of interesting stuff too .
I find myself engaging less and less and just avoiding Lemmy more and more since I know the moment I open it I’ll get whacked with more depressing stuffs.
I don’t want politics or world news or really even memes about that stuff anymore. Heck even tech news is depressing. I just want simple scrolling of fun content. Idk it’s just hard to describe.
Does anyone else feel this way about their Lemmy experience?
I remember an old post about someone getting AM radio from their sink (probably from Reddit back in the day). That type of stuff is so much cooler than my feed.
To that end: any recommended active communities on Lemmy with that type of stuff?
Have you considered halting the decline of democracy? Then people won’t post depressing facts.
Or you filter by keywords. One of the two things needs to happen for you not to be exposed to negativity.
Not all of us live in the US.
Step 1: don’t browse the All feed. I dunno how Reddit was okay for you, visiting r/all was always full of Trump this Trump that every 5 minutes.
At least Reddit had a nice feature where you could filter out up to 100 communities from r/all. I could still get a varied experience while not having to look at things like politics, sportsball, or games I didn’t care for.
In your Lemmy account settings, set your default feed to ‘subscribed’ instead of ‘all’.
When you open the app or log in on your browser you will only see communities you’ve subscribed to.
It will greatly improve your (and everyone else’s) experience if you subscribe to positive communties and participate in them.
I use Sync and it lets me block keywords like Trump,Elon,Musk. It doesn’t catch everything but does a good amount.
Block Lemmy.ml, hexbear, and dbzer0, then make your own list of keywords to block (Trump, Elon, murder, angry, etc etc)
Yep, my block list is long. It’s updated occasionally. I call it “weeding the digital garden”. Negatively sprouts everywhere and it’s imperative to cull it asap.
The way I see it there’s far too many things in the digital world to care about, so I just care about basically none of them. I’d rather spend energy loving the people I love than being angry at what I see on the internet.
The internet is full of slacktivism and I find it’s more worthwhile to do something good rather than critiquing the bad and doing nothing.
You can block keywords? I just see communities, users, and instances in my block settings.
Some of the apps add this as a feature client side. For example I know sync has this. Not aware of it on the web site though.
Same as reddit: Subscribe to communities you like then only look at those.
Yes and no, since lemmy has a smaller user base certain type of content will have a much higher presence than reddit. And when 5 instances are all posting from the same source, that will saturate the platform.
If every new user immediately gets turned off by it, because curating your homepage is like step 2, then lemmy will continue struggling with retaining new users.
Lemmy doesn’t really have enough users for the same type of mindless only scrolling in communities you like from what I’ve seen. On reddit I’m subscribed to 2 drama subs Gentoo sub and a few others. There is enough content in that for me to just scroll that instead of all.
on the other hand here I find my subscriptions literally don’t get new posts. It’s fine I’m getting used to it but it means I’m using the all equivalent far more often.
I use all a lot too but I still curate my subscriptions when I want a calmer experience (500+ subscriptions mind).
One trick is to sometimes sort by scaled which allows posts from less active communities to rise
Yeah it’s a shame. I still like it better than reddit but damn. Civilization 7 is coming out in a few days and I haven’t seen a single post.
Make one! I’m sure you’re not the only one here anticipating it. !games@sh.itjust.works
Edit:fixed link
You are 100% correct, negative news has a greater impact on people than positive: https://assets.csom.umn.edu/assets/71516.pdf
Media sites know this, and use it to drive engagement:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4 https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/social-media-facebook-twitter-politics-b1870628.html
And so, negative headlines are getting worse: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0276367
But negative news is addictive and psychologically damaging: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/why-we-worry/202009/the-psychological-impact-negative-news
So it’s important to try and stay positive:
https://www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/benefits-of-good-news
If you want a break from the constant negativity, here are some sites that report specifically on positive news:
- https://www.goodgoodgood.co/
- https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/
- https://fixthenews.com/
- https://positivenewsfoundation.org/
- https://www.onlygoodnewsdaily.com/
And here’s 35 more: https://news.feedspot.com/good_news_websites/
Some communities on Lemmy you might be interested in:
- !goodnews@kbin.social
- !lemmybewholesome@lemmy.world
- !goodnewseveryone@sh.itjust.works
- !upliftingnews@lemmy.world
- https://lemmy.world/c/hopeposting
- https://lemmy.world/c/worldinprogress
- https://lemmy.world/c/climatehope
Remember, realistic optimism is important and, unlike what some might have you believe, is not the same as blissful ignorance or ‘burying your head in the sand’: https://www.learning-mind.com/realistic-optimism-blind-positivity/
https://www.centreforoptimism.com/realisticoptimism
And doesn’t mean you must stay uninformed on current affairs: https://www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/how-to-stop-doom-scrolling
https://goodable.co/blog/tips-for-balancing-positive-and-negative-news/
kbin.social is dead btw… if you post there it won’t federate and only people on your instance will see your post.
Noted, thanks
Why don’t you just keep away from c/all and stick to your subscribed communities?
To discover new communities, I suggest subscribing to c/newcommunities
That’s my approach - once in a while I take a peek at /all, get stressed out and quickly retreat to my curated home again.
besides !newcommunities@lemmy.world there’s also !communitypromo@lemmy.ca and !trendingcommunities@feddit.nl
plus you can always just look through the “communities” listing – in the web interface it’s at the top of the page, just select “communities” and “all”.
I’m trying to move my news off social media and on to RSS. I set up an RSS reader with a handful of trusted and varied news sources (some mainstream, some independent, some local, some foreign) and now I’m starting to filter out news from Lemmy and other social networks.
Some things I quickly noticed is that not having a comments section is actually great, I can jump straight to or past subjects I’m not in the mood for, and there’s no endless scroll but if I feel there’s too little I can add more sources and if there’s too much I can take some out. I still also use Lemmy so if I find an interesting new blog or website, I can add it to my RSS reader to keep following it instead of relying on strangers posting new content and it getting voted up. This lets me focus more on the smaller special interest groups that social media is actually good for.
Does anyone else feel this way about their Lemmy experience?
Yes. I usually stick to fandom communities where I post some cool fanart and chat about latest books I have read. I avoid all feed at all cost.
I hoped that !hopeposting@lemmy.world would be the same as r/hopeposting@reddit.com but the comments are night and day in there. I still repost stuff but a drive to make OC memes is just not there.
I usually hang out in !anime@ani.social, !lightnovels@ani.social and !hermitcraft@lemmy.world
P.S. Also my polish instance szmer.info doesn’t have as bad ALL feed as the lemmy.world due to people that don’t care about US politics and not subscribing to those communities.
Add a filter for anything political that comes to mind, subscribe to fun instances (history memes, anime, shitposting)
i blocked every single news and politics communities, as well as all the “*** infuriating” ones, it has drastically improved the content of my timeline :)
Yeah lemmy has bit too much political content. Americans seem very obsessed with it. I just kept blocking all of them and now my feed is pretty free of political nonsense. If I want that kind of content i’ll just read the news paper or go to my news feed of choice
To be fair, a large slice of the user base is in the US and currently everything is collapsing around us. It should come as no surprise that we complain about it a lot. The mods of various communities could certainly enforce rules more; e.g. in shitposting or memes, remove any political content. It would help the situation.
Lol than your country has been collapsing for the last 2+ years, cus it’s always dominated by politics on lemmy.
It’s a difficult balance to strike, since enforcing content also feels like going against the foss ethos… It’s tricky. But just keep promoting Lemmy and the fediverse and some day we will have a more balanced experience
I agree. And yes, the last 2+ years have been a political shit show, because we were scared shitless of what has now happened.
I use voyager and block words phrases and instances that bring that stuff up. And sometimes users who repeatedly do it too.
I’m also on Lemmy blahaj which don’t know if that matters. But over time I rarely have a lot of depressing political things in my feed anymore. Just every so often.
I have another account on Lemmy world for political things already I rarely use it.
I’m also on Lemmy blahaj which don’t know if that matters
It does. If your home instance blocks other instances then you’ll never see their posts, regardless of your settings.
I don’t believe there’s a native way to see these blocks in Lemmy, you’d have to look at a third party site that tracks that sort of thing.
If your instance blocks other instances, they are listed on the “blocked” tab of the Instances page (the link is in the footer).
E.g. for lemmy.world https://lemmy.world/instances
Remember that spam instances are a thing, and are often what is being blocked by admins.
I think places like Lemmy are better suited for discussions and ofc ongoing events and politics are a huge part of that.
Have you tried 9gag and other more “lightweight” and meme oriented platforms?
This seems really pedantic. Recommending 9gag because someone does not want to see constant bad news is just a but out there.
