19 ms·

Are you ok?

• reb 4y ago
  It’s rough out there. Be kind to yourself, be kind to others, and try to remember the people around you are just, like you, people. We’ll figure it out in time.
  • hammyhavoc 4y ago
    Wishing you and yours happiness, health and peace.
• redbonsai 4y ago
  Thanks?
• luigi23 4y ago
  AI is gonna shake things up big time, and people are gonna feel the need to get real. With all the tech stuff taking over, we'll prob wanna find something genuine that's not just on a screen… We'll be looking for real-life moments and connections that make us feel alive. Lot of people still keep covid regimen, replacing meetings with zoom calls and consuming news instead of looking after each other
  • another_story 4y ago
    Keep meetings as Zoom only. It allows me time to do real work.
  • b1n 4y ago
    Relevant: - https://www.fortressofdoors.com/ai-markets-for-lemons-and-the-great-logging-off/ https://www.fortressofdoors.com/ai-markets-for-lemons-and-th... - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34169051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34169051
  • ffhhj 4y ago
    The cheerful and polite writing of AI in sync with marketing and corpo-speak will push real humans to adopt minimalized and bitter communication to differentiate from the fake one.
    • smaudet 4y ago
      :') :') :') ROFL "How did you know it was an imposter Jim??" "He was too fucking nice, most Microsoft robots won't cuss to save themselves or others."
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • a_subsystem 4y ago
    Worse, many may end up looking for something to fill the void left by lack of social interaction and not know what it is they're looking for. Others may not know how to socialize if they do know they need it, and may struggle as a result.
    • dorchadas 4y ago
      I think it's even worse than that. AI will claim it is socialisation, and people will believe it. Chatbots and their enthusiasts will claim they're just as meaningful and valid as in-person human socialisation, and will actually make every much, much worse. But as a former secondary school teacher, I can already tell you a lot of these kids don't know how to socialise. They have no concept of empathy or of there being real people out there. All their socialisation is pretty much done only through their phones, and it's not good for them at all. I was like that myself - very shut-in type guy from about 13-16 even though I did have friends and school to help, and I still find myself struggling with a lot of social cues and stuff that I should've been developing then.
  • sangnoir 4y ago
    > We'll be looking for real-life moments and connections that make us feel alive Dollars to donuts, it's going to be AI waifus with a monthly subscription, if the Replika drama is anything to go by.
  • motbus3 4y ago
    I am pro-ai but it needs to be regulated. I know we always talk about the dangers of technology and in the end it turns to be good, but this time there are different components to the equation, that to me seems dangerous. Some of the parts for me are: - This things are coming in the worst moment possible to the economy. - it is majorly controlled by small minorities who are infringing copyright and other licenses and nobody is really doing something about it. - the current AI are not as spectacular as people think, but still super powerful. It will take many white and blue collar jobs but these people are already struggling to keep up to pay for education and they are getting doomed to a worst future not only for them but for their kids. For me a way to solve that is to tax specific types of AI with decreasing taxes. Let's say it starts at 70% and descrease 2% a year. This would allow for some population to go down enough so we need this solution and it would allow people to find the next thing to do while not being prohibitively for research and special use cases.
• deepsun 4y ago
  > what you see in social media is typically so exaggerated and distorted There you have the answer. Exaggerated emotions bring clicks and profit. Wonder why so many video thumbnails now show a large face with some vivid emotion on it? Or "XXX reacts to YYY"? Drives revenue. It's like we're all in a non-stop "Got talent" show where talent performance is less important than judges' reactions.
  • paulpauper 4y ago
    Outside of twitter, things are pretty uneventful for the most part. Every small occurrence of unrest is amplified by the always-on media, and then the memory of which is kept alive in perpetuity by the chattering class online , long after most people forgot or stopped caring.
    • deepsun 4y ago
      Or worse, noise-silencing _real_ problems (wars, ongoing genocide, and looming environmental catastrophe).
  • TheAtomic 4y ago
    Relevant. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4
• hyperhello 4y ago
  I’d say it’s easier to make low effort, nearly worthless posts, which always tend to sound obnoxious if not downright noxious. This is a consequence of social media just being so accessible, and in fact the successful sites cultivate it because clicks are revenue. There are levels of low quality drivel, from the endless topquoting that started on Pinterest, to the know-it-all know-nothing of Twitter, the no-life simulator that is Reddit, and many more styles I’ve noticed. Even HN gets some boring phoned in paycheck comments. Being angry makes you see it more. It makes a reader feel devalued, which perpetuates the anger. The trick as far as I can see is to ignore stupid comments.
• 71a54xd 4y ago
  I just want to grow trees on a farm away from people. Growing things feels right. But I need $$ so I have to stay plugged in for now.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • TheAtomic 4y ago
    Make it happen. A cousin in Sweden owns a tree farm so we visited for a few weeks. Was wonderful. I mean, fairy tale wonderful.
    • 71a54xd 4y ago
      I want to do this outside of the US, but unfortunately I just don't have the cash at the moment :(
• O__________O 4y ago
  I’ll bite. So, it’s easy to get caught up in the moment, but not aware of any meaningful measure of the state of world. Everything is to me ultimately relative. For example, pretty easy to image world being way better or worse, or for that matter, thing’s specific to yourself. Seen author post before, so that added to this post to me adds up to saying — reminder: make meaningful positive connections in the present. I do think specific to author they’ve invested a lot of time building of search service and now future of search for first time in long, long time is uncertain. I personally find that exciting, but easily see how it might be overwhelming too. EDIT: “why touch grass when you can…” https://youtube.com/shorts/iOCR73U8t6E https://youtube.com/shorts/iOCR73U8t6E
• foobazzy 4y ago
  Huh. I thought this would be about the Australian organization [0]. Nevertheless, it talks about similar emotions but goes on a different tangent. [0]: https://www.ruok.org.au/how-to-ask https://www.ruok.org.au/how-to-ask
  • MrVandemar 4y ago
    Mental health is important, and that's a great site and initiative.
• duxup 4y ago
  I feel like social media where negativity gets more ”engagement” is sort of training us, poorly.
• Barrin92 4y ago
  >Not that there aren't bad things happening in the world, that's the way it has always been, but your phone will have you believe that they are more frequent and much closer than they actually are. Unless of course you're in Pakistan, where a third of the country was flooded last year, you're currently experiencing the largest land war in Europe's post-war history etc. People aren't okay because the world isn't. Bruno Latour in one of his lectures he gave a few years ago pointed out that we, without doing anything, essentially lost a war to climate change. We can't even imagine that it was completely possible for people two generations ago to have transformed our ways of life, modes of production and so on, so that we could, theoretically now look at the past and see it as a problem behind us. We could literally be walking through a "great climate change war" museum, the way we visit a WW II museum. Instead we're essentially negotiating how fast we drive the titanic into the iceberg. So the question is honestly not why people are concerned but why they're not more panicked, why we're still sleepwalking. If we had sirens in our cities going off given our ecological situation alone, not to mention all others, we'd be running for the shelters like people did during the Blitz. Something that could have been a passing problem in the past has transformed, through inaction and lack of attention into something that threatens entire civilizations.
  • bigDinosaur 4y ago
    Apocalyptic thinking does not help even if it has a good chance of being correct. This is similar to how a panic attack can dramatically worsen your situation even if it is potentially in response to a real threat. Are we doomed? Very possibly. Is adopting an attitude of 'we're just selecting the speed at which we drive the Titanic into an iceberg' healthy or helpful? No.
• photochemsyn 4y ago
  One factor might be the increase in binge drinking during the pandemic, which I suspect fuels at least a certain fraction of anger and bitterness, along with the post-alcohol depression effect, in conjunction with economic and related stresses: > "Using data from a national survey of U.S. adults on their drinking habits that found that excessive drinking (such as binge drinking) increased by 21 percent during the COVID-19 pandemic..." https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/01/covid-related-drinking-linked-to-rise-in-liver-disease/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/01/covid-related... Exercise and a healthy diet can benefit one's state of mind, in contrast.
  • User23 4y ago
    Even moderate drinking has significant lasting physiological effects like elevated heart rate as well as reduced sleep quality and emotional disquiet. It’s just if you drink regularly that all starts to feel normal. I do drink by the way, although very infrequently. I judge that the pleasure I can get from a top shelf bourbon on rare occasions is worth the harm. But when you don’t drink regularly if you’re at all in tune with your body the effects are quite noticeable.
    • simonswords82 4y ago
      Agreed. My wife and I all but stopped drinking in 2023 except for when we go out which is maybe once a month. We get along better. We both exercise more. We are more constructive. Output more. Enjoy life more. I could go on. I wouldn’t be surprised if we continue to phase drinking out altogether. It’s just not worth the downside for a few hours of fun.
• alphabet9000 4y ago
  > Go outside and it's more or less the same as it has always been. not true. many more outdoor billboards and LED billboards everywhere you go. giant screens held up in the air making 'IRL' feel like one big ad without the ability to uBlock it. very trashy and hard to get away from depending on where you live.
  • NorthOf33rd 4y ago
    Going out into the desert and looking up to the stars and seeing satellites everywhere is a big change. As Are drones at every non-national monument Awe Inspiring Place.
    • hammyhavoc 4y ago
      Came here to say exactly this. It's becoming difficult to escape modernity.
• richk449 4y ago
  How much is selection effects and negative feedback? As online discourse gets worse, calm and sane people are more likely to drop out, leaving the extreme people to argue online, making the discourse worse …
  • waboremo 4y ago
    Even for the calm/sane, they too gravitate towards negative content. It's entertaining, it can make them feel better about themselves temporarily, they can use it for cheap content for validation. Social feeds reinforce all of these layers. We as humans also exaggerate negativity, you can read 100 positive comments, they will never have as much impact as that 1 negative one. This is a core component as to why negativity fuels itself. There isn't a lack of positivity online, you can find it very easily in huge abundance, it's just not as viral.
    • richk449 4y ago
      I agree entirely. It’s not just a feedback loop, there is an underlying amplifier.
  • mrweasel 4y ago
    Yeah, I pretty much dropped of a number of platforms, like Reddit, because they have become overrun by people with depression (or supposed depressions) who will use any type of online input field as a way to offload on random stranger. I get that it's because many of them can't afford professional help, but damn that's asking a lot of someone who is just trying to debate the fine points of asian cooking or watch a silly take on yesterdays news.
• popilewiz 4y ago
  [dead]
• davideg 4y ago
  Mornings that I spend outside experiencing my five senses and staying in my body leave me feeling refreshed, grounded, and energized[1]. From this place I tend to have more attention and patience. I seem to have better access to empathy. Mornings that I spend from the minute I open my eyes glued to my phone screen leave me feeling basically the opposite. My attention is completely fractured. My general sense that I'm okay is harder to access and instead I often feel baseline anxiety and uneasiness. I feel less patient and more judgemental. I can't claim that this causes me to be more caustic online (and offline) with people that I disagree with, but I certainly can see why that might be true. Especially when I'm bombarding my mind with divisive, provocative news headlines that are designed to get a rise out of me. [1] I've started doing this more since listening to the Huberman Lab podcast about the health benefits of exposing yourself to morning light. Here's the first Google result going over this info: https://medium.com/@podclips/andrew-hubermans-light-sun-exposure-guide-dd62a43314df https://medium.com/@podclips/andrew-hubermans-light-sun-expo...
  • nicbou 4y ago
    "Mornings are for coffee and contemplation" In the summer, I go have tea on the balcony. I only bring my iPad, which is a glorified notebook and book. It's nice to start the day slowly without a hard dose of internet. I feel like it completely changes the direction my day takes, because I only open the computer once I know what I'll be doing.
    • sh4rks 4y ago
      It sucks that there's only a small window every year when you can enjoy the sun
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• 1123581321 4y ago
  I'm on a forum that's supposed to be the opposite of toxic social media and it's tearing itself apart right now. Actually, two forums are, and one of them is just a place to politely get some software help. People are having trouble discerning individuals in the collective activity, which leads to angry/snippy posts about what the site itself believes and is doing, which leads to individuals who don't ascribe to that, or see something different in the shadow, fighting with them, which leads to genuine acrimony and enmity between individuals, and so on. And these groups are almost entirely composed of people who hate social media and think Instagram/Twitter/Tiktok is destroying society! It's very hard to productively discuss and troubleshoot, and even the best advice (less Internet for awhile) sounds like a personal attack.
• romwell 4y ago
  >Go outside and it's more or less the same as it has always been That's because the author is living in a bubble. And also because, go figure, your cashier's depression isn't visible when they're forced to smile at you, and people with crippling depression are more likely to not get out of home at all (unless it's for work, if they have it and it's not remote). And because people mask their symptoms of anxiety, but (go figure!) would be more willing to be open about it online, where they're anonymous and won't be judged by people who don't understand what the problem is because things are the same as they ever were. They aren't, and we aren't.
  • miloignis 4y ago
    What's your explanation for what's different?
    • romwell 4y ago
      Real estate crisis, wage stagnation, ballooning college debt (and a degree required for barely-middle-class living), increasing wealth gap, increasingly unaffordable healthcare, a full frontal attack on civil rights (abortion is just one example), militarization of police and impunity when they break the law, ultra-right (aka fascist) groups taking over the conservative party on a platform of division and hurting "the other side", COVID-19 also being a mental health crisis (while mental healthcare is still out of reach), expectation of constant availability by employers, deteriorating worker's rights (what's a union?), lack of public transportation infrastructure (hello, 3 hour commute!), ... That's to start. Maybe be that girl posting a picture of her latte on Instagram isn't the primary cause of everyone being on the edge.
      • miloignis 4y ago
        Most of those have happened before, and within the last ~100/120 years or so (indeed, lots around the 1920s) - Jim Crow laws, WW1, Spanish Flu, WW2, the Great Depression, the Red Scare / McCarthyism, the Civil Rights movement, etc, etc I think the point is is there something different this time, perhaps because of the internet or social media? Or is it just that a lot of these things are overlapping? Because where everything you mention is a serious problem, most of them are smaller versions of problems that we've been through already. On the front page right now: (Nature paper: Negativity drives online news consumption - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4 )
• mindcrime 4y ago
  One of the things that helps me stay sane (to the extent that I can be said to be "sane". Now STFU, peanut gallery!) is... wait for it... fishing. Wait, what? I know, I know. But hear me out. There's a spot where I go to fish a lot, because it's very convenient to access. Because it's very convenient to access, everybody and their cousin fishes there. Due to the fishing pressure, the fishing at this spot isn't really great, at least not for largemouth bass, which is usually what I'm targeting. But still I go. And you know what? The point isn't really the fish. It's about being outside, being near the water, having other people around but mostly not having to interact with them unless I choose to, having the ability to fish right up until dark, then start a little campfire and sit back for a while and listen to the fire crackle and pop while watching the stars come out, etc. It all helps me stay grounded. Even more, another aspect of hanging out here is that it's such a "community hole" kind of place, that you get a really diverse crowd. You get white guys (me), black guys, hispanic guys, black women, hispanic women, old guys, young guys, little kids, asian guys, etc., etc. And out here, I've never so much as once seen race, gender, or age matter to anybody. We all fish, we talk about fishing inasmuch as we talk ("Hey, anybody seen any white bass starting to show up yet? The spawning run should be starting about now?" or "You catching anything today?", or "What bait are you using?", etc.) and that's it. Some people are out there fishing for food, some are there just fishing for sport, some were born and raised in the US and are college educated, some barely speak any English at all and are possibly undocumented migrant workers, but yet at the end of the day we're all just a bunch of people hanging out on a dam by a spillway, trying to catch a fish. It's good to be reminded that there are times and situations where you can throw a bunch of people together in a (relatively) small area who probably have very little in common in many ways, but yet they can be united by their humanity and by a simple common interest. The moral of this story? Take up fishing, I guess. :-) Or if not fishing, at least something to get you outside, away from computers and social media and "tech stuff" for a few hours here and there.
  • fmitga 4y ago
    I have to agree with this notion. Fishing seems to be a community building shared relaxation space, one of my favorite activities to fill my increasingly limited free time. It's very offline and accessible to all, regardless of socioeconomic status.
• electrondood 4y ago
  We are in one giant tech-accelerated feedback loop, which exploits human attention. The limbic system is fastest, so fear, provocation, hatred, outrage, etc. drive clicks. The news media exploits this. Social media exploits this. Politicians play exclusively to their base and exploit this by tossing them red meat in the form of vice signaling. It's all just human attention harvesting, with zero concern for the psychological cost. Social media makes me feel bad, especially when I start my day with it. I will never touch TikTok because I think it's cancer for the human attention span. I deleted my Facebook a long time ago and never looked back. I don't give a shit about Instagram. I wish I didn't use Reddit, but am finding it increasingly cynical and tiresome. May the gods have mercy on our souls if we ever train an LLM on toxic Twitter and Reddit comments and it becomes superintelligent.
  • FanaHOVA 4y ago
    I think semi-private communities will be the way forward. Open ended forums just don't work. I play Magic The Gathering, the public Discord and Reddits are awful. Twitter even worse. There's then a subset of Discord servers that are great to hang out in, and since most people get to know eachother it also makes everyone nicer. Similar thing for a dev tools builders Discord I moderate, it's invite-only and the discussion is very good and non-extreme. The cynics self-select themselves out quickly as there's no likes to be earned.
    • than3 4y ago
      This is doomed to failure. More of something that hasn't previously worked doesn't solve anything. There's a saying, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. The main issues revolve around two things, lack of education about malign influence campaigns and their tactics and targeted blindspots, and structural issues that allow a many to one communication while giving the illusion that its one to one (i.e. bot accounts posing as people to amplify or de-amplify). A large portion of our identities are developed through reflected appraisal, and when you interfere with core identity, and you see it everywhere, this becomes distorted, and can induce demoralized psychological states that include both radically violent states, as well as unresponsive states. Now if you have a destabilizing event, very few resources are actually needed to topple governments as was seen in 1953 with the Shah coup. People generally act and do crazy things when they are isolated and marginalized, its illegal to treat animals that way, and that hasn't stopped technology which allows the perfect weapon to do just that to people, often without their knowledge. This at its core is what political warfare is all about, winning at any cost without war, and there is a very detailed book which has been written and is available for free from US Marine Corp University's Publisher. If you can't identify malign influence, then you are doomed to be a victim of it. The Russian's have called it ideological subversion, the Chinese call it the destruction of national will. Its all the same, and because we value free speech it has been allowed to fester and poison for several generations. You even have people pushing socialist policies now without even knowing its socialist themselves, and without any true understanding of the structural deficits inherent in what they are pushing, such as corruption, shortages, economic calculation problem, and a number of other areas that inevitably make it an unstable system over time. This and other interference is what drives a lot of these issues. Its not rocket science. There's a reason those countries are enemies. They have used malign influence to corrupt and subvert, targeting future generations to destroy our civilization. We as a country largely dismantled our political warfare machinery back in the 70s, at least according to multiple history books I've read, while they haven't stopped, and have in fact developed it even further in scale and scope.
• drewcoo 4y ago
  When all of the web traffic gradually moves into for-profit walled gardens, this happens. Those places will seek to increase profits. They can do it by growing their members but that eventually stops working. They need to make the "content" stickier, more addictive. Cute kitty pics are attractive but not as attractive as porn, but porn has a legally limited audience. Pleasing people brings recurring business, but angering them, angering them with "righteous outrage," that brings them back even more frequently - the A/B tests confirm it. Some people here will blame capitalism, some will blame oligopoly, some will blame lack of regulation, and some will blame other people's meanness. Those are all factors. And then some. This isn't the land of Angelfire and everyone's personal weblog anymore.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• fallat 4y ago
  That is why, recently, I have been doing my absolute best to inject some comedic relief into all Internet discussions. Use comedy instead as a way to convey your opinions. At worst people will laugh, at best they'll laugh and think a bit about what you've said. Well I guess at worst actually they'll be offended, not able to take a joke, and continue on with their own miserable lives ;)
• ascotan 4y ago
  News flash - the internet is full of trolls. Unfortunately since this is now the dominant form of how people get their news it's quite hard to find anything of quality anymore. Everything is a competition for subscribers which leads to clickbait everywhere. sad really.
• soheil 4y ago
  Internet has become a safe space. A place where people can yell at eachother with zero consequences. In human history the average Joe didn't have this. Before a decade ago, really only geeks were online so the convos were more nuanced, deep and just polite all around. That era is over. ProTip: Engage in face-to-face conversations, where empathy and nuance are easier to convey.
  • hammyhavoc 4y ago
    Interesting to call it a safe space. I'd say the internet is a very dangerous place for your mental health. It comes with how easily able someone can step away from it.
    • soheil 4y ago
      That's kinda the point, one man's safe space is another's hell. We either learn to live in harmony or will continue to yell at each other for eternity.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• enobrev 4y ago
  Just as I don't think it's _possible_ to be "ready" to be a parent, I don't think we, as a society, were "ready" for the internet ­— nor were we ready for Covid. As I've learned in the last 3.5 years, being a parent is such an enormous change in life that explaining it is impossible. The fact that every kid is different, and every parent is different, and that we all have our issues and hang-ups and upbringings and preferences, and we can't read minds, and it's impossible to know what a crying child _needs_ without trying everything, is just... different. It's something you have to do to understand. And every time you get the hang of it, they're a month older and there are a whole new set of things to learn and deal with. It seems to take a couple generations to understand it. And by then we're almost gone. In the same vein, when I got online as a young teen in the early 90s, back when there were scary news reports on the nightly news of: gasp "people meeting strangers online!", there was no way to _know_ what it would be like for society to hold up a big fat, unblinking, always-on mirror unto itself. It was impossible to know the implications. A time traveler could not have ever stopped it. We wouldn't have believed them. It's too different. It's going to take generations for us to understand it, and deal with the emotions and the fear and the _everything_ that comes from it. As for Covid, I remember going through waves of depression and grief during the lock-down stages. But then I would remember: "We're _all_ going through this". It didn't make it better; It just made it reasonable. I was weirdly lucky to be a husband, new parent, and a startup co-founder to keep myself focused in that time. It's going to take a long time for us to figure out the toll. We still have no idea. Collectively, we're going through a lot. I hope we can remain kind to one another through this.
• moralestapia 4y ago
  >what you see in social media is typically so exaggerated and distorted that it may as well be entirely fictional Err ... depends on where you live I guess? I'm in a big metro area and the stuff I see every time I leave my house makes me wish I hadn't. Also, Gen Z has truly lost any sign of motivation/interest in life so at least that meme is accurate.
  • berkle4455 4y ago
    > Also, Gen Z has truly lost any sign of motivation/interest in life This is a tale as old as time. And it’s always proven wrong.
    • the-dude 4y ago
      Would you mind citing your source on this?
      • tome 4y ago
        Seconded. ‘“Latest generation” is poorly-behaved’ is a tale as old as time. ‘“Latest generation” has lost interest in life” is something quite different.
        • the-dude 4y ago
          > ‘“Latest generation” is poorly-behaved’ is a tale as old as time. Would you mind citing your sources on this?
          • defrost 4y ago
            Old people complaining about the youth of today is a trope as old as written language: https://historyhustle.com/2500-years-of-people-complaining-about-the-younger-generation/ https://historyhustle.com/2500-years-of-people-complaining-a... https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20171003-proof-that-people-have-always-complained-about-young-adults https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20171003-proof-that-peo... https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/52209/15-historical-complaints-about-young-people-ruining-everything https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/52209/15-historical-comp...
• alxmng 4y ago
  I think it’s deeply cultural. I’m from the USA but live on the other side of the planet. Nobody here is like this, they aren’t angry or bitter, they are generally happy and polite, yet they are on TikTok and Facebook and the same Internet as everyone else.
  • ericmcer 4y ago
    I agree, I think in the US we are blaming social media, Covid, global warming, etc. but what is really bugging me is what lies under all those things, a general feeling that just working hard and being a good person will no longer guarantee me stability and safety. Since forever that has been the contract between the US govt and its citizens. Do good work and you will be safe and free, but it feels shaky now and it makes me feel adrift and listless.
    • vinyl7 4y ago
      It's because in the US, you have to run in order to stay in the same place. There is no more stability. Swim fast or get eaten by the sharks.
    • alxmng 4y ago
      I agree it’s gotten harder to get by, and that influences cultural malaise and anxiety. I’d like to add that where I am people experience far more political and economic adversity than the USA, yet this doesn’t make them outwardly bitter, cynical, angry, impolite, etc. Anecdotally people are much happier, while being in a worse material situation.
      • theonething 4y ago
        Okay, my curiosity is piqued. If you're willing to share, which country are you in? If not, totally understandable.
        • alxmng 4y ago
          Myanmar (Burma)
• rektide 4y ago
  I semi-sincerely think that observing each other is the most important next step, turning the pre-programmed inter-connectivity of online sites into an intra-connectivity of what works for ourselves. > It's like everyone is so damn angry all the time. If they aren't angry they're bitter and resentful. And when they aren't angry or bitter, they're so depressed they're barely able to crawl out of bed. And if they aren't angry, bitter, or depressed, they have crippling anxiety. I don't see things quite so darkly, but I do see a lot of negative biases that predominate & spread (to diffuse some blame, cynicism is very often a simpler blunter more-accessible message than the complexity of hope in a complex world), I do see an attraction towards dislike & disbelief & negativity & reduction (which win through polarization), and I see a vanishing percent of views towards positivity, towards figuring out what's good (which is more difficult than polarization because it typically refines/selects). Overall, as a user, I want to be able to keep my own score. I want to track & identify user identifies (ideally across platforms) of who is positive/helpful/speculative and who is negative/destructive/limited in view. When I see things, the history of who is posting matters, and my history with their posts matters especially to me. So far that is a leap broadly untaken. Right now most social media systems don't have any real bias towards our preferences, from what I can see. If you're on HN or reddit or whatever else, if someone you've upvoted a thousand times post, their content wont show up any differently, from someone you've never seen, nor from someone you've downvoted a thousand times. The systems are all blind. And frankly I don't think the services should try to tune themselves. I think it's up to us users. That's the competency of the web, that which no other connected system of (imo gross vile) walled-silo apps has: malleability, changability. By being a web system, we users can & should be building our own systems of reinforcement & guidance, should be extending our agency outwards. To tune in to the positive OK voices, to see over time who consistently has good powerful positive things to say, and to dis-regard the voices we are tired & worn for hearing.
• Camisa 4y ago
  I also noticed that. It got terrible fast a few years ago but it seems to me to be slowly getting better over time again. Anyways I had this strange thought some time ago: What if social media is this way by design? I mean, what if it was intended to be shallow, to value weakness, to tell obese people they are fine the way they are, to say it is okay to be afraid all the time? That we should just judge people and that is valuable? And to value feelings and manipulation over truth and honesty? People who don't hold these values will either leave or they will get resentful about how the world "degenerated" and how they are no longer welcome here. It is all lost! The notion of "the world" has been distorted after the pandemic (it was already distorted but the pandemic helped) to mean their phone, the internet, facebook, instagram, twitter, etc. And as mentioned by the article the real world is very different: The grass and the air is revigorating, people don't fight each other as often, they are busy fighting for their dreams, and obese people are told to get healthy, weak people are taught how to be strong, and if you lie people will hold you accountable instantly. A 40 year old psychopath will not tell a 12 year old that their gender is wrong because he will be punched on the face or sent to jail. Sorry for having to go there, it is just an extreme example. Maybe it's possible that by making the social media landscape hostile to the kind of people who are good we can get them to be happy in the real world? Where we need them building a better society? I don't feel right saying this but part of me is fine with leaving people who are evil or lazy hypnotized by their phone.
• calderknight 4y ago
  "people's negative feelings about the world are unjustified because when I go outside I feel like things are all right" I think judging the state of the world in this way is a bad idea.
• danielvf 4y ago
  The advice about going outside is great. It's really good to have repeatable weekly interactions with people too. Your hobbies, or your kids hobbies are easy ways. But how bad things are online, I've only only heard about, and rarely seen. I use twitter. Web only, no notifications, timeline view (only people I follow, chronologically). If anyone retweets drama, I block the author. Second time, I unfollow. My feed is full of awesome smart people in different industries building things that matter. I learn, and I can interact with great people in my industry. It's as good (though different), as ICQ/AIM back in the day or the early days of Facebook.
  • paulpauper 4y ago
    I take it one step further: I go directly to a select few twitter timelines, no following , no account
    • nicbou 4y ago
      I do the same on all social media. I don't follow anyone. However you need many ad blocker rules to hide suggested content that fill the holes. I was thinking of redirecting the home pages to the notification feeds.
  • boringuser1 4y ago
    [dead]
• antiquark 4y ago
  The rise of Wokeism correlates with a decline in mental health. We should think hard about what's causing what.
• patientplatypus 4y ago
  [flagged]
  • ikt 4y ago
    I think this is exactly the type of post the OP was talking about
    • beefman 4y ago
      Yes, but OP didn't say it was invalid. I replied to this comment but by the time I submitted, it was flagged and my reply was blocked. Here it is: You sound pessimistic. And with reason - declining prospects for family formation in the West are well documented. But it can be done. We can't predict the future. We can do what our ancestors have often had to do in the past – take a leap of faith.
      • patientplatypus 4y ago
        [flagged]
• f0ld 4y ago
  I would suggest reading a bit about why the world is what it is now. Join some Goodreads groups. Find people who read to talk to. That's my escape route. Plz don't ruin that too.
• ivanivanovich 4y ago
  honestly i don not think im ok, im living friday to friday. All i expect is to go out with my friiends and to talk shit. monday to friday i do my software development work but i do now give a shit. sorry for my bad english,
• lwansbrough 4y ago
  I attribute it to the decline in sex. /shrug
• JasonFruit 4y ago
  You know what? I'm fine. It's easy to think what you see on the Internet is real, but it's not; at most, it's only part of what's real. There's a huge segment of the population that doesn't reveal itself on the internet in a personal sense, and is not a part of "Internet drama". They, for the most part, shrug at politics and social fads and war and rumors of war, and are just fine. Maybe those of us who believe we are not fine should try to learn what the ones who are fine are doing differently, and emulate them.
  • mxkopy 4y ago
    People who are worried about things they have no control over usually have other issues. "Emulating those who are doing fine" usually means just not having issues.
  • smaudet 4y ago
    "what the ones who are fine are doing differently" * enslaving other peoples - either indirectly through foreign sweatshops or directly by exploiting e.g. a younger generation - see parenting and house price inflation - rents are unaffordable as housing prices inflate and also mandatory because housing is no longer affordable for most, families cannot start when people don't have the financial stability or social backstop to do this. Some of these jack-asses have recently been attempting to forcefully impregnate women to "fix" this, that will go about as well as it sounds. * being older/part of a club - having wealth and connections is something you build over time, and gives you advantages others cannot replicate. You can't just "do something differently" if that requires suddenly coming into wealth and influence. Maybe you should not feel fine, and maybe you are a (quickly) shrinking has been "majority". Social data (not online social media but actual census etc) seems to be on my side, not yours.
    • JasonFruit 4y ago
      I can't help but think you're making a lot of not particularly charitable assumptions about people who opt out of online culture in this comment.
      • 4y ago
• beefman 4y ago
  It's tempting to blame the technology that arose around the same time as these changes, which have also affected all aspects of social life. Technology absorbs the zeitgeist. Those of us who saw it in the 90s know it can easily go a more optimistic color. There must be a more fundamental cause.
• NorthOf33rd 4y ago
  Is it a problem that when the author writes “and there’s the war” I have no clue what they are talking about?
• paradite 4y ago
  Reminds me of the article Taking a “War of Words” Too Literally, (March, 1998), Washington Post I've reproduced it on my blog: https://paradite.com/2014/01/23/good-articletaking-a-war-of-words-too-literally/ https://paradite.com/2014/01/23/good-articletaking-a-war-of-...
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• crooked-v 4y ago
  I feel like it's willful ignorance at best and intentional trolling at worst for someone to express this kind of attitude while ignoring how there's been a massive expansion in faux-news services, primarily but not exclusively right wing, that are fundamentally designed to addictively condition their viewers with rage and fear responses 24/7.
• noahbradley 4y ago
  I'd recommend Tim Urban's (of waitbutwhy fame) new book, What's Our Problem. It's a deep dive on a lot of these things in the last decade and how we ended up where we are now.
• aeharding 4y ago
  Go outside and everything is covered in fucking cars.
• sjducb 4y ago
  > Go outside and it's more or less the same as it has always been. What you see with your eyes and what you see with your phone is shockingly difficult to reconcile. Agreed. All of the bad things in the world get amplified and sent to your phone. Then you feel depressed.
• yew 4y ago
  What is there to talk about? I can't imagine I'm the only one who mostly cut out after everything that happened in the 2010s. Too dangerous, too unwanted, too toxic. (Fewer creeps in private communities too, of whatever kind of people you want rid of.) If everybody does it, what's left is what's left.
• bcbrown 4y ago
  This post is talking about the prevalance of the emotions of anger, bitterness, anxiety, and resentfulness online, and I think it's interesting and noteworthy how many of the comments here express similar emotions. Over the past year or so I've found myself becoming increasingly intolerant of people for whom those are the dominant modes of expression. With my best friend of over twenty years, almost no matter the topic of conversation, he'll find a way to express those emotions. It's becoming an increasingly substantial issue for me, and I often find myself curbing my urges to reach out to share something I find interesting, cool, or funny, because I'm pre-emptively trying to shield myself from the negative emotions I know will inevitably be in his response. My own emotion about this trend is mostly sadness. There's so much cool stuff happening in the world, so many interesting things to learn about, and I wish it was easier to find a community of people whose predominant response is sharing in that excitement.
  • smaudet 4y ago
    Hacker news used to be a place I turned to for that sort of thing, but yes lately it has become a complete horror show, especially with the advent of AIs I mainly want to imprison the creators, inflict corporeal punishment, etc. (I have found it soothing/calming to imagine e.g. various terrible tech leaders being tortured) - not that I don't value knowing which terrible things are happening in the world of computing or otherwise but I miss when HN was spewing out interesting new frameworks every other day. I don't think it's on HN though, every time I find a new community that is more like that it seems it slowly becomes corrupted, usually thanks in part to some idiotic tech bro "oh we made it easy so now your meditative thing has a bunch of annoying notifications, yay progress"
  • thefz 4y ago
    > This post is talking about the prevalance of the emotions of anger, bitterness, anxiety, and resentfulness online, and I think it's interesting and noteworthy how many of the comments here express similar emotions. I started this as an exercise, but now I am doing it every day: as soon as a comment, news post, or anything else irritates me, I close the website/app. I found this helpful expecially with Reddit. I use it so much less now that I don't even have the app on my phone. I feel better and I don't feel angry for no reason anymore.
• throwitaway222 4y ago
  No: * My wife's dad passed away extremely unexpectedly (at 64) 8 months ago * My dad just started showing signs of ALS about 3 months ago and is probably a few months away from death (it is an EXTREME accelerated onset) * My wife recently started to experience extreme depression, insomnia, anxiety, OCD, and has been trying everything and nothing is working yet. * Had to fix my truck's belt twice in one week * Someone ran into my car and it was totaled * My personal inflation rate is somewhere around 100% for everything: cheese to diesel gas * I had to take a second job to pay for my wife's medical bills * We live in an RV because home prices shot up right around the time we were trying to close on a manufactured home - the seller then refused the original price AFTER the bank loan was completed (which forced a loss of 10k) * We both get irritated when we see someone complain of long lines or just something that doesn't fucking matter. * Don't worry, while we do own guns, we're not the type to lose our shit and aim at people. > I can only speculate. I don't know what's going on. Maybe I'm just imagining things. Maybe I'm the one that's gone crazy. No we're all experiencing things differently. I would say though, that the world is extremely unstable for people close to the border of unaffordability. If things slip any more, the world is going to implode. I think people with money - basically the "winners" while covid politics made for easy money. Those people ought to think about that. It very well be an extremely important time in history to truly have "fake jobs" so that the world doesn't go there.
  • throwitaway222 4y ago
    My dad passed away tonight. :(
  • smaudet 4y ago
    Agreed, I am not near the lines I know others are so very close to, and yet so far from achieving any financial goals it feels as if I am stuck and unable to do anything but preserver and hopefully not get (too) unlucky. While I would say I work hard and I would appreciate a significant raise if "fake jobs" become a thing, there really is so much money out there we can absolutely afford it. They should also mostly be all remote work jobs - while we have mountains of cash in some places (not banks if you have followed the news the scumlords of techno-industry land have raided those establishments, not that banks have ever been solvent but actively destabilizing them is something different), we do not have enough petrol, batteries, or plastics to maintain the jobs we do have indefinitely. We will need to be living sustainably at home with biodegradables and renewables, perhaps figuring that out can be part of what those "fake jobs" entails - given money to live and figuring out how not to lose your sanity or induce harm to the environment which keeps you alive. Of course panoply of threats is a growing concern, I agree that our phones do not reflect our lives but they do reflecting growing misfortune - having a phone is an indicator that your life will not look like what your phone is talking about.
• 1attice 4y ago
  Reminder to readers: it's 2023. Do not self-report as being not-ok on a public-facing site. Even a throwaway account can be linked back to you. This may have implications for your insurance, your employment, and your relationship(s). I don't doubt the genuine good intent of the OP, but this is not a safe forum for this kind of discourse. Take it to Discord.
  • hammyhavoc 4y ago
    Bold to assume Discord is any different when searchable history is inevitable as the biggest criticism of people moving their technical support to it.
    • DaBarrington 4y ago
      At least when it comes to Discord(and Reddit actually), there are scripts that you can run that deletes all of your activity/posts/etc from the server. I am pretty certain that Reddit still maintains hidden logs of everything you do even if you have deleted everything from your profile, but at least this way it will hopefully be much harder for people to get into that info. As for Discord, I have no idea if they keep logs of everything you do but I would assume that is the case. On second thought, in the past I have had Discord server mods yell at me for things I'd posted but also deleted, so there is definitely still a record of your activities to some extent.
      • BeFlatXIII 4y ago
        Reddit may not need the hidden log, but plenty of Reddit scrapers will keep the text regardless of whether it is deleted at the source.
    • 1attice 4y ago
      > Bold to assume Discord is any different when searchable history is inevitable as the biggest criticism of people moving their technical support to it. Good point; Signal it is.
      • 4y ago
• notbuyingit 4y ago
  > Go outside and it's more or less the same as it has always been. I don't even think it's worth trying to unwrap this. Things are fine, why are people so angry, says someone not struggling to survive, says someone who isn't in a group targeted by others, says someone who must feel relatively sure of their job (lol) and continued healthcare. Not to even consider the dystopia that is many peoples struggles while others sit on the side and loudly, brazenly shout "this is fine"! Count your blessings, at least, yeesh.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• t0bia_s 4y ago
  It could be a consequence of overconsumption biased media. We should confront received info with everyday reality and do not let virtual sensation take our mind. So I don't think it's new normal to have people freaking out everywhere because it is not what I observe around me. Do not let media think for you.
• VoodooJuJu 4y ago
  I used to feel a similar despair, until I touched grass. If you identify with the blog post, I recommend getting off the internet. Go garden, sit on the deck and drink some vinho verde, enjoy the breeze, read or write something, go buy a copper-bottom stainless steel cooking pot you can pass down to your great-grandchildren, come up with a good recipe that you can also pass down to them, just relax. The internet isn't real, not nearly as much as you think. Go spend time with people who aren't terminally online. You'll feel embarrassed and relieved, embarrassed for how cringe you were for ever caring at all about that socialmediathing that enraged you or whatever, and relieved that the real world is actually quite nice with some quite nice people in it, grounded, interesting, pleasant.
  • boringuser1 4y ago
    [dead]
• camillomiller 4y ago
  This is on the home page along with the link to this study, which mostly answers the questions posed by the blog post: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4
• 34750987234 4y ago
  What we don't see enough of is individual stories about how people came to think the way they do. Every post/comment/reaction you see online, is simply the result of a chain of interactions in-person, and online. I think if you asked people why they hold an opinion or support something/someone, there would be some seminal moments that shaped their views. After these views take shape, people just creep into their bubble, and have a predictable and fixed opinion to each news story that comes out. You need to tackle these seminal moments, the first things that come to people's minds, first in order to change minds.
• junon 4y ago
  Same exact thoughts. I always battle internally whether or not I'm just getting old and starting to think the quintessential "back in my day" thoughts but it's hard to ignore the fact that going online anymore is increasingly unpleasant. People everywhere, even in person, seem defensive, angry and tense almost as a rule. This isn't going to last.
• thenoblesunfish 4y ago
  It has to be mentioned that "the internet" which seems like "everyone", as discussed in this post is a self-selecting group of people. The longer we have this "the internet" (which is prone to be upsetting, as the post discusses) the more people will learn to avoid it. This was really driven home for me when I mentioned commenting on a YouTube video to one of my more real-world-well-adjusted friends, and he admitted that such a thing would never even occur to him.
• motbus3 4y ago
  Same feelings from me. I would really love if some read and argument with me to give me some other point of view. I thought on that for some time and for me there are some things going on. 1. We reached top of economy about 10 years ago, then we hit speculative gains for a while and now the market is regulating so there will be some bouncing. Perspective of achieving plans done 10 years ago are falling apart and naturally everybody feels pessimistic. 2. Politicians and top rich people now have enough power that they can literally mock us and nothing happen. In South Korea the government had the audacity to say that people needs to work at least 69 hours. Everybody knows the schemes bezos and musk do to avoid taxes while everyone is screwed to buy food. 3. People became lazy and used to have small amounts of happiness instead. "Since I'm not going to be able to afford a house I will spend 300 USD in a plastic grogu toy". 4. We see climate change, food scarcity starting, etc but we don't want to change a thing in our habits. Let me explain this last item better. The world is going to a crazy direction, everybody can see. People have been fighting each other instead of finding common problems to solve. Whether you believe people are manipulated or not does not matter. So nobody has hope that things will change. Nobody wants to work for the change because we are all tired "slaves". Now that we are broken, politicians and powerful people are making their moves so they can extract whatever they can before next big disgrace.
• walterbell 4y ago
  has the Internet gone progressively more crazy the last decade or so? ... we should talk about this and try and figure out what's going on ... the discussion climate appears to have deteriorated with every election cycle since the early 2010s ... what you see in social media is typically so exaggerated and distorted that it may as well be entirely fictional The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act was passed in 2012, https://www.rcreader.com/commentary/smith-mundt-modernization-act-2012 https://www.rcreader.com/commentary/smith-mundt-modernizatio... > our government was permitted to lie to people in other countries, but not to us here at home. This prohibition was lifted in 2012, when the SMMA was signed into law by President Obama, allowing the same propaganda disseminated by our government to foreign publics, to now be released in the U.S. for the very first time ... The SMMA promotes unholy alliances between the U.S. State Department and America's corporate media that unbinds reporters and news departments from the solemn responsibility to verify information. In addition to traditional corporate media, PR agencies created teams to participate in online discussions [1]. 2010's techniques pioneered by various governments to influence online discourse were likely generalized and scaled for commercial and special-interest customers. > When you react with far more emotion than reason to news items, without stopping to question any part of that item, you've been successfully triggered into a highly specific, predetermined response – a conditioned response. Triggering itself is a primary means of conditioning, with lots of proven behavior science to inform it. So now its your turn to inform yourself so that you can identify the oft-applied behavior modification techniques being deployed constantly throughout media genres, including social media – such as short, fast-paced segments, redundancy/repetition, subliminal suggestion, cognitive dissonance, projection, nudging – the formidable list of conditioning techniques is worth knowing if you hope to avoid or overcome these traps. Only then will you advance onto recognizing propagandized newz so that you can resolutely reject it. [1] 2014 book, "Grassroots for Hire" by Edward T. Walker, http://web.archive.org/web/20210918020918/http://techsoc.com/grassroots.html http://web.archive.org/web/20210918020918/http://techsoc.com...
• favaq 4y ago
  This is the result of you surrounding yourself with terminally online people. Those who don't spend their waking days using social media are perfectly fine but you don't hear about them.
• zug_zug 4y ago
  Eh, I think people are okay, they just line to whine and moan. Certain groups of people do that (and sometimes exclusively that). Lots of old people just love to rant about bad the worlds getting (and always have). Or other people love to complain "this neighborhood used to be so great before [3 years ago]"... The whining is often just a (I don't want to say pathetic but, not socially adaptive) form of attempting social-belonging/bragging ("The movie sucked the book was better" hipsters == Look at me I read books, I don't own a TV, etc). There is anonther phenomenon on reddit where (e.g. /meirl) people make jokes (and not always jokes) about how sad/lonely/loveless/awkward they are. Mostly funny to me as an anti-bragging thing. Anyways the internet isn't angry, there are just certain sites that have algorithms that promote angry content. If you don't like those sites you can easily find other stuff (tons of non-angry subreddits, tons of positive youtube, etc). I will agree HN's sentiment has gotten more negative and less substantive (on average, still tons of good comments but more to wade through). I'd love for HN to adopt a new algorithm that can better differentiate venting and substance.
  • austinshea 4y ago
    Why do you think this? “The whining is often just a (I don't want to say pathetic but, not socially adaptive) form of attempting social-belonging/bragging ("The movie sucked the book was better" hipsters == Look at me I read books, I don't own a TV, etc)“
• jart 4y ago
  As machines get smarter, humans get dumber. At this rate, we're all going to be begging to consume only machine generated content in five years.
• arisbe__ 4y ago
  This will be labeled a conspiracy theory, and rightly so as it is literaly about highly secretive conspiracy, but dont let that stop you from looking deeper into it. I am confident there is something to this and that it is huge. Essentially we havent been paying enough attention to the breadth of neurotech out there as we have thought neuralink was the only approach. https://twitter.com/MartinS67861003?s=09 https://twitter.com/MartinS67861003?s=09 One will only be able to move beyond the 'they are just schizo' phase with enough time and evidence.
  • wholinator2 4y ago
    Uhhh, those tweets read like a mentally ill person descending into obsession over chatgpt spitting out general answers to leading questions about a fairly obvious technological leap which I'm sure many many people have thought of. The gist i can get is basically, nerves use electricity, people can manipulate electricity, therefore this person believes it's _currently possible_ for someone to have a device that can on the fly _discover and track the location of every neuron in your body_ (he literally says this but provides no proof), and then send specific impulses that can essentially control you like a walking puppet? This is, obviously, fucking ridiculous. Like sure, it's theoretically possible but the single biggest difficulty is the one he devotes the least time explaining. How will the device discover the location of every neuron in your body. Does a model of the brain that allows full control of muscular and speech actions exist? Those things are like 100 years away. Have you looked at a brain scan? They're ridiculously below the resolution to pinpoint single neurons and those scans are the size of whole rooms! You can't just justify any ridiculous bullshit by saying, "they're gonna tell you this is bullshit". Of course they're gonna tell you this is bullshit! Show me documents. Elon musk can barely get a monkey to play a video game with an implant in its brain. To be able to remotely discover and control an entire human nervous system and brain with a consealable device is pure fun science fiction. That's nothing to say of the mans obvious illness. He's messaging the dallas fbi with this stuff! Telling people to "get access to this phone number and look at the texts from this other phone number, there you'll see what they don't want you to know". Or, "hack into my Gmail, look at me emails, they'll show you things you wish you didn't see". Clear mental illness. Sad that you're parading him around like this. Boy i hope this isn't you, because oh man, good luck.
• gumballindie 4y ago
  The internet has gradually become the new tv. The less you use it the better for your mental health.
• antibasilisk 4y ago
  I'm Not Ok (I Promise)