I know there’s a bit of disconnect by me writing this on an actual social platform, but it’s Beehaw - so it’s cool.
Lately I’ve been getting away from Facebook again. I have friends and family on there who are sharing less than savory thoughts. Thoughts of fear, uncertainty, doubt, and even worse: the fettid stench of hatred. I went on there and decided to try and rationalize through status updates, but found myself becoming more frustrated, more angry myself.
I took a break from it the last couple of days and I feel better now. I’ve shared a couple of articles, but only articles of interests within tech and creativity. I felt like I’m landing a lil bit.
But now I made the mistake of accidentally pressing a notification on my phone… from Twitter (and no, I refuse to call if “X”).
I was lead right to a post where some of my countrymen were snarling at a news article where some politicians were praising certain Palestinians who were fighting for their freedom from oppression and apartheid. The thread was full of videos from certain terrorist groups in Palestine unrelated to the actual people being praised, along with irrelevant subjects about battery manufacturing and green energy.
I’d just like to say that despite the crazy things my friends and family have said, even the crazy things I’ve said, does not have the same pure hatred that I read from that thread. I felt my anxiety bluster up as I mustered the gumption to reply, stating that I wondered why they were sharing videos of people who had suffered apartheid and persecution and blatantly ignoring what the state of Israel has been doing.
I’m now considering just deleting Twitter altogether, as I really don’t use it that much. I used it only for a couple of choice accounts from good people who say wholesome things, but I’ve noticed that their updates don’t show up anymore. I feel like Musk is monetising all the worst parts of human behaviour and that scares the ever loving crap out of me.
Say what you will about Facebook, and I’m very critical of Meta and Zuckerberg myself, but doesn’t Zuckerberg seem a tad more… adjusted? Even though Facebook has been caught funneling people into extremist echo chambers I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything as bad as what I’m seeing on Twitter right now.
I have friends and family who swear that social platforms in them selves is the source of the toxicity that is found on them, but as we can see on certain federated platforms (with strict CoC’s of course) that isn’t always the case.
Oh sure, we can talk about dark design patterns, micro dopamine feeding through doom scrolling and attention fishing notifications until the cows come home, but I think we all know that the internet - and by extension social platforms - is a big old mirror we hold up to ourselves.
It’s like a reflection into our very minds and we don’t like what we’re seeing. We scream into the mirror at some imaginary antagonist, a sick and twisted being that stares back in disgust, but all we really are seeing is the reflection of ourselves.
Anyways, no point to all this. Just wanted to get that off my chest. I hope you are doing well and that you are treating yourself kindly.
Thanks for reading.
Oh, the last paragraph hits hard. I’ve gone the hardcore route and deleted all those apps and just use lemmy as social media - and it’s bad enough here. I realized how much of a smartass I am myself. How often I reply to stuff I could just leave alone. So I just try and uphold my self-imposed quality standards of writing: if it doesn’t add positive quality to the discussion just don’t add it.
And the family and friend thing? I guess I’m still trying to wrap my mind around it, as with leaving certain sites I lost contact with a lot of people. It was a very conscious and also tough thing from my side to not connect to anyone from the real world through this channel. But then, a lot of drama just has disappeared from my life. I don’t really need to know what all those people are doing, have time to focus what I want to do instead - because lately, I have scrolled so much and done so little and it is leaving me unsatisfied. Also, the constant input from online what one could be doing and the pressure to share the results with others was leaving me stressed out.
Now as my instance is small and slow I’m through new posts and comments quickly and sometimes think about stuff for a day or two before responding to someone. It’s a much better quality of discussion and matches my real life speed of life much better.
I agree. It’s better to give a positive reply, make someone feel good about themselves or lend a sympathetic ear than it is to get into an argument. Downside is that there are plenty of discussions where I would like to weigh in, but can’t think of a good way to do so without making matters worse. I’m not always the best with words and it does tend to end with me writing a long reply but hitting cancel at the last moment.
Thing is, in the end I just want people to be happy to participate and to feel that their contributions are valued. And hopefully that the positive attitude rubs off and it’ll get passed on to others.