Many obvious cases of people responding from emotion from headlines and not actually reading articles. More infighting in comments. Less debate and dialog, just arguing.

So well put. People responding to headlines alone really is the bane of social media. Personally, I've begun to systematically add a quote from the source article, even when it doesn't add much to my comment. As a way of subtly showing others that I actually read the article and that perhaps they should too.

[–] anon6789@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago (7 children)

I appreciate the nice words.

I like to do the same thing, grabbing snippets of q that article, not whatever broad frustrations we have on the topic while ignoring the new info we're being given. That makes all the posts feel the same and full of mostly generalities or just straight complaining.

There are some prior sharing really interesting and important things, and I don't get the appeal of using social media to wallow in misery when it can be used to educate and congregate. Things like 50501is using it to try to build political momentum. I want to get people interested in less familiar animals and hopefully encourage them to volunteer, donate, or at least see them as more than memes or NPCs and rather unique individuals that have important roles in our world and have full lives and semblances of individual personalities.

It just feels we're squandering an opportunity if we just let this place turn into just another social media site.

[–] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (6 children)

I second your manifesto. It's always been a mystery to me that so many people seem to enjoy wallowing in misery and anger and negativity and helplessness. It really seems to be the essence of much of social media. I'm guessing it's something to do with catharsis, and release of frustration. But there must also be a certain personality type that is attracted to social media - and apparently we're the odd ones out. Just downvoting is a mystery to me TBH (I see it as pure toxicity and obviously antithetical to civilized discussion) and I know from bitter experience that quite few people here agree with me on this. But there are a few who do and I take heart from that.

It just feels we’re squandering an opportunity if we just let this place turn into just another social media site

It can't ever be that bad as long as there is no advertising. That's my positive spin.

[–] Elevator7009sAlt@ani.social 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Anger can cause a dopamine response too—I assume this is why it's so easy to doomscroll on political content even if you yourself aren't fighting. I specifically went and cut out all the online fighting by only using Subscribed and being very strict about what I subscribe to—not just the obvious "delete if you don't want to fight" places like Politics, but also many meme communities where a political meme or "haha I'm so depressed" meme will be posted, and then anger-filled analyses of what's causing the bad politics or depression (which ends up looping back into politics) in the comments. (My first cut was leaving Reddit for Lemmy once I realized they auto-sorted my homepage by Controversial and I couldn't stop it.)

I also try not to downvote unless someone is just being plain rude and mean to others. I know I'm commenting late here, but wnated you to know you're not alone and you have one more agree-er.

[–] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago

Some excellent points here. Needless to say, I totally agree.

“delete if you don’t want to fight” places like Politics

Nicely put.

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