Casual Conversation

At that point, you're just not fitting in with most humans anymore. Doesn't really have anything to do with the internet.

I have had the same feelings as you. For me, the internet has now become more of a way for sharing my own answers with other people, rather than pure consumption. Just re-read what you wrote, imagining the opposite. Imagine if all content on the internet was filled by people like you. Someone who doesn't fall into mental pitfalls. Who is happy. And so on. Wouldn't that be an internet you'd again like to participate in?

I don't post everywhere. I post where I think my truth is worthwhile for others to read. As I hope this truth right here is worthwhile to read for you.

What I'm saying is, maybe it's not time to ditch the internet, maybe it's just time to use it differently.

Also, even though the internet is filled with a lot of shit, through a rationality filter you can still get good tidbits out of it. Just gotta take the good and leave the bad.

There is nothing like interacting with real people to show you how unreal, unproductive, and honestly uninfluential the chronically online environment is. But when it's your whole world, it feels like it is the whole world, and no one you're interacting with has any proof to say otherwise. So then the most universally agreed upon things online seem like they must be true to all, until you talk to someone at a diner and realize no one gives a shit what these communities espouse online to other folks you never see or talk to outside.

I've been feeling the same way a lot recently. The only social media I have left is snapchat, and that's purely because I have a 1000+ day streak with a friend that I feel obligated to maintain. Every now and then I'll wind up on whatever they call their doomscrolling video platform and it feels like fifteen minutes of my life just vanishes into thin air. And whenever I close it, I'm vaguely pissed off and my eyes hurt, but the slight boredom that incentivized me to go there in the first place is still hanging around, so I just feel restless and dissatisfied. It's frankly exhausting. I'm in the "this sucks and I don't want to do this anymore but I'm going to do it anyway and be mad about it" phase of my internet addiction and just haven't quite found the right combination of other habits to prevent me from wandering into those corners of the internet when I don't have anything to do for more than two minutes.

Yeah, the constant doomerism in particular annoys me, and it annoys many others. The whole thing is self-reinforcing. If you are someone bothered by it, you are almost certainly going to unsub from the doomer place after dozens of doomers give unhelpful replies to honest suggestions to improve their lives on a micro or macro scale. And now, because you unsubbed from there, it's even more doomer-y. Repeat this millions of times and you get what we have. Many well-adjusted people refusing to participate online, and doomers self-reinforcing each other and finding themselves unable to improve their lives.

I honestly can’t say I know who social media is even for at this point. There is so much content promoting unhealthy ways of thinking just haphazardly strewn about everywhere. I don’t know how anyone can avoid it all. I don’t know if the benefits can outweigh the costs. Even the most harmless content is forgettable and eats up valuable time that could be used for something more meaningful.

Sometimes I think about how we never see any posts from the happiest people alive. They don’t need social media validation, their positivity wouldn’t generate clicks, and the negativity of social media platforms probably scared them off long ago. As a result of their absence, negativity and unhealthy thought patterns have proliferated unchallenged.

I think you've found the larger part of the Internet you don't relate to anymore with this. Not necessarily the Internet as a whole, but the subset of social media, and the subset within that of the many expressing how bummed they are with things (to put it lightly).

When you shift or fine-tune your focus to use the Internet as it was originally built for (sharing info, collaborative research/creative work), you'll find it more useful and maybe more pleasant. This is more or less what I've tried to do more and more after fumbling about with social media stuff for awhile and experiencing my own growing disinterest in the bummer parts of it.

Speaking of books btw, if you're into public domain work and ebooks, give Standard Ebooks a look! Similar to Project Gutenberg (also great) with more attention to nicer formatting.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Saving this post for future reference.

Internet commentary is like the readers column in newspapers. It's only written by people who feel so strongly about something that they have a need to share or even bother writing it. Angry or frustrated people post more often online than people who are happy or at least content with life. The internet will never be a representation of real life. It'll always be more negative, because negativity fuels the need for a person to express themselves more than positivity. Anger is something you'll want out, while a blissful experience is something you'll want to keep without sharing it with the world.

When reading online stuff, it's necessary to consider this and realize that the content is filtered towards negativity before it is even created. The internet is not real life. It's mostly only the moaning and shouting of real life.

Things that often come to mind when I see that doom and gloom mob behaviour are;

"We all float down here."
&
"Misery loves company."

That's not to say that things aren't royally fucked, but sometimes people find masochistic pleasure in focusing on everything negative and comfort in the fact that they aren't alone in thinking that way.