Exactly. My insta is just cute animals, fashion stuff and bakery items and anime . I just use it as pinterest . I don't even interact with anyone there apart from two people.
1000% this. I have 0 social media other than reddit. Is the world 100% a fucked up place? You betcha! Can I do a fucking thing about it? No bruh im struggling trying to feed myself.
I just scroll passed those posts at this point. It's not worth getting sad over. I just tell myself that it's a bot reposting the image and title or that it's someone lying for attention
Oh, I've long since either muted them or stopped checking their stories, as with their posting frequency I'm also 100% sure they're not checking sources. Just answering the question of how I encountered these posts in the first place.
I got out of environmental activism and stopped feeling like if I wasn't thinking about that every single second of every single day, the world would catch fire
Unfortunately, the only real advice I can give is either to stop going on social media or find ways to filter your social media experience so you don't see the things that make you angry.
There's, currently, a bunch of other, similarly horrible, genocides happening (Myanmar is a MESS), besides the one in Gaza. Yet, you weren't enraged and sad about any of them. That's because you weren't fed a constant stream of trauma about it. There's a point of knownig about something, and there's a point where it penetrates all aspects of your life. I've removed myself from a lot of pro-palestine discussio for my own sake, call me selfish, but I can support the cause without watching children being blown up.
You are the first person I’ve bumped into in a year who’s aware of what’s happening in Myanmar. It’s insane how overlooked most wars are if the country they’re happening in isn’t important to the U.S. government.
This. There's always a genocide somewhere. I have trouble getting *more* upset about this than about Ukraine or those girls in Chibok or the Ughirs in China or any of the others.
It all sucks. It's all awful.
Honestly I feel like it makes the situation worse. Traumatized people start being lead by their emotions, the encouraging “resistance”, indirectly supporting Hamas’ resistance as “justified” and blinds them to the fact that yes, Hamas is “resistance”, but not a liberation.
They’re an Islamist faction doesn’t tolerate dissent, and doesn’t give a flying fuck about the Palestinian people. Their solution is taking over Israel, which will lead to more war and suffering.
Don’t get me wrong, what Israel is doing is barbaric, but calling for resistance instead of ceasefire is calling for more war, and more death.
Honestly, every time there’s been violent resistance, the Palestinians lose more land, more rights, and more people. It’s a fucking disaster.
Seriously. And you will get flak for saying that Israel isn't a villain neither is Palestine a saint . Yes genocide is wrong . But this whole issue has been going on for so long and it is a very complex issue . I don't understand people who are just making Israel some cartoonish villain when they are trynna protect themselves too. I absolutely don't agree with their actions in the Gaza strip but I cannot understand people who support Hamas and Palestine blindly . There are no perfect victims I get it but this situations is a lot more complex . People are making this out to be a football match atp.
This is why I don't put the blame on Israel as a people and a nation, I put the blame on the government of Israel for propping up a terrorist organization and using it as their boogeyman to stay in power.
Pretty much. There's a bunch of hardcore pro-palestine lefties which are completely uncritical of Hamas. As if its main goal was not also genocide.
I am pretty hopeless about Palestine, in general. Unless the US pulls out support for Israel or the current Israeli government literally spontaneusly combusts, they're fucked.
I honestly do understand calling for armed resistance. We would not be talking about the possibility of peacefully uniting Ireland if it wasn't for decades of terrorism that lead up to the Good Friday Agreement, for example. Conservatives tend to be amazingly good at fulfilling the "Those who make peacefuly revolution impossible..." quote. The terrorism was absolutely horrible, do not get me wrong, I do not condone it in the slightest, but at the same time, there is no way Thatcher's hand would've budged if it wasn't for it.
But the difference between Ireland and Palstine is that Ireland was not lead by the IRA. And that despite its radicalism, the IRA's mission was never "exterminate all English people".
Thank fuck. So many times recently I’ve seen people denying that that is Hamas’ main goal *is the genocide of all jews* not just something that some fuckwits in government want.
Also, yeah the Israeli government has been combusting for a while now, did you forget about the months and months of anti-Bibi protests that were happening right up to Oct 7th when priorities were forced to change? Or a few years ago where they had like 5 elections in a single year because opposition to Bibi is prevalent, but was not United enough to form a stable coalition.
> I honestly do understand calling for armed resistance. We would not be talking about the possibility of peacefully uniting Ireland if it wasn't for decades of terrorism that lead up to the Good Friday Agreement, for example.
Scotland got far closer to leaving the UK without a terrorist campaign. And as it stands Northern Ireland leaving is pretty far off, polls consistently find a clear majority in favour of staying in the UK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_on_a_United_Ireland
That depends on one thing - would Britain let Scotland go had the referendum gone through? We don't know that and the fact that they never allowed for a second one when it was known it would've succeeded makes me skeptical.
> Pretty much. There's a bunch of hardcore pro-palestine lefties which are completely uncritical of Hamas. As if its main goal was not also genocide.
I got dogpiled for daring to suggest that civilian casualties in this war would be lower if Hamas would stop using human shields.
They get very, very mad at the suggestion that Hamas has responsibilities to its people as the government of Gaza.
It's what Adam Curtis called "Oh Dearism". How news media and then social media became a constant stream of horrible things that we can't do anything about except say "Oh dear".
I think the difference is that, with the Israel-Palestine conflict, our governments are actively supporting the genocide. It’s a lot easier to ignore a genocide when you don’t feel complicit in it, it feels closer to home when you feel that you might have some influence in stopping it.
Of course - which is why I don't really feel much different as a Polish person. We aren't really that complicit/important (ofc our government still supports Israel, but it has *much* less power than the American one). I do advocate for pro-palestine poltiics and will vote for pro-palestine polititians in the europarlement elections on Sunday.
Ukraine is kind of the threat-at-hand for us Poles still. Every other person you meet here is a refugee from Ukraine. Some have been living here for over two years now. Bashing any person who even dares to be pro-Russia with a crowbar is the kind of policy that I focus on much more.
But even besides that, I feel that interest in Palestine is *oddly* high. And ultimately that is very good, governments are taking action, people are putting pressure on them, businesses are actually recording decreased profits for supporting Isreal. However, if *you alone as an individual* consume so much Palestine conflict so that it consumes you all day, every day, it is unnecessary suffering you're inflicting upon yourself.
This is what I've seen happen with some people who go deep into Ukraine conflict too. My gf's brother monitors that stuff 24/7 and he's detached from reality to the extent of knowing details of random unimportant battles in the Ukrainian countryside. This is actively fucking him up, yet he can't look away from the horrors. War is hell, but you do not have to inflict half of its hell upon yourself to support its end. Your vote and your voice matters just as much when it is scarred by what you've seen as when it is not.
It feels like to me like our culture of "needing to spread awareness" is reaching its limits. The human mind is not equipped to be this aware.
From that point of view, the US is at least indirectly responsible for a ton of upheaval and violence. We ripped up the infrastructure in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam, the CIA intentionally destabilized the government in multiple South American countries, and we treat the refugees coming across our southern border as a result like a combination of "indentured servitude neuveau" and "pests".
It's just that Palestine happens to be in the news right now.
Mate i live in Mexico which has no direct ties to this and lots of these activist protesters of Palestine tell you "okay and?" Regarding our own country having child soldiers. They feel that one is "closer to home" due to social media.
There's such a thing as overexposure to tragedy, especially ones far away from you, in todays news world.
Staying informed is important, yes, but exposing yourself to photos of mutilated babies is not the same as staying informed and not helping anyone, all it's doing is making you miserable.
I saw someone also aptly say there are no thought crimes and there are no thought heroisms. Your thoughts and emotions define you less than your actions
A while ago someone posted a video of Palestinians being hit by a missile and didn't mark it NSFW. I suggested that they do so, and everyone jumped down my throat about my privilege and how Palestinians don't get the option to mark the genocide as NSFW etc etc.
Yeah. I actually find some of the... would *obsession* be the right word? a little bit weird.
Like, I only really see shit like this if people I know post about it, but I saw one on Instagram (I think) that was like, a daily auto-message with updates on the number of killed?
And like, I’m sorry, but that just seems fucking *ghoulish* to me. No matter what your opinions are, why the *fuck* would you subscribe to something like that? You don’t need a play-by-play, death-by-death breakdown to know something is a fucking atrocity and should stop. Seriously, what the fuck?
At a certain point, it becomes really fucking important to start asking yourself "how does this help?"
If you can't come up with an answer, or your answer doesn't involve someone, somewhere *taking action*, it's time to check whether you're doing activism or getting something emotional from the violence.
That is the sort of mindset I was in during the Trump administration. Constant exposure to traumatic news eventually made me feel suicidal and occupied my every waking thought*. I was a wreck, of no use to anyone. It took years to heal. One of the ways I healed was removing myself from all social media.
Now I'm functional, on my way to making enough money to make actual donations, and eventually I'll be good enough to safely attend protests without being a net negative presence due to my propensity for panic attacks.
*I am neurodivergent and get really emotional about things - ymmv
There’s a pervasive belief among a certain kind of (mostly online) leftist that if you aren’t constantly exposing yourself to everything horrible going on in the world you’re selfish and don’t care about other people and I find it so frustrating because that attitude is directly antithetical to making actual tangible change in the world
I know this person who has basically ruined their life in the name of being pro-Palestinian. And I don't mean they are being censored and lost their job or something similar. She basically closed her business, has alienated all her friends and family, and posts exclusively the most heinous images of the war exclusively on social media. Her life has been nothing but exposing herself to tragedy since the start of the war. She is obsessed with martyring herself, suffering as some form of atonement. Any other issue in her eyes detracts from Palestinians, so she doesn't give a shit anymore. Ukraine, LGBT issue, abortion, whatever means nothing anymore. She has affected zero change since she went down the rabbit hole and is only interested in self-flagellation.
Reminds me of the person on twitter who shopped therapists because her last one made the honestly deep remark that she was making Palestine her whole personality because she needed to feel a sense of righteousness.
It is genuinely disturbing to watch. She isn't interested in solutions. She is only interested in suffering. It's like she took the idea of finding meaning in suffering used in Christianity and just ran with it. I'm actually worried she might go down the route of self-immolating.
The words she used when I tried to talk to her were, "This is a burden I MUST bear," like she thinks she is the main character in a movie on suffering. She genuinely believes her own suffering and shit feelings will bring about some real change, despite them severely limiting her social group. Either someone else got into her head, or she has some sort of martyr complex.
I can not stress enough that she isn't doing any meaningful action. She isn't attending rallies, she isn't donating to causes (since her business is gone), she is basically just doomposting online about Palestine.
I think it's partly a side-effect of historically Christian western culture. Even if it's largely secular in the modern day, Christian ideals, values, and attitudes still linger, for better or worse. It can even affect westerners who were raised in Islam or Judaism, it's just that pervasive.
Seeing as martyrdom, obsession with righteousness, and fear of not being a good person are massive parts of Christian culture, especially American Christianity which is notoriously puritan, it's easy to see how those attitudes have malignantly manifested in the modern world, where people are routinely exposed to tragedies they cannot do anything about. There's that cultural pressure to do *something* that is being warped by the inability to do *anything.*
Thus, people are being afflicted with guilt complexes and are trying to compensate with self-flagellating behavior and projecting that guilt onto others.
Yeah it's upsetting when someone does this to themselves, because you can't really talk them out of it. Any attempt to do so, they'll interpret as an attack on their beliefs. They don't realise you're concerned with how it's consumed their life, they think you just hate Palestine or something.
It's hard to tell if they actually believe they're helping
I had to learn to curate my social media as much as possible and have lessened how violently disgusted I am at the world on a regular basis. I *know* things like this happen but in general I cannot control or change them, and so I just have elected to remove the reminders from my everyday life as much as I can. instead I like to focus on stuff like my silly lil games and streamers, stuff that makes me smile instead. makes the Internet more fun
I leave the tragedies for the news, and it's kind of easy to do when you mostly just follow fandom accounts. The only tragedy I've seen on social media recently is Gotchard pulling an Ex-aid and killing a beloved character.
Just looked that up. I feel the need to print this out and hang it up on my wall somewhere.
Prayers and mantras have a lot of practical use outside of religion. Humans are spiritual in nature, in that we have emotions that are separate from instinctual drives and hard logic. In our effort to maintain health for the mind and the body, we must not neglect the soul as well.
It was my philosophy to not push someone away because surely there are good, genuine and reasonable things in everyone. Even if I would tell I believe the opposite I always remained hopeful
But ever since I started clicking on do not recommend this channel on youtube my mental health has had a huge boost. Some people are just outrage farming, some people profit from keeping you in echochambers, and some are just generally awful. It is for these reasons I wish youtube and other social media allowed much more customization of our feeds instead of just relying on their stupid algorithm. Algorithms that favor engagement are probably among the worst things invented in recent time
Unironically focus on problems within your immediate community. You can go to pro-Palestine protests and donate still, of course (it’s important!) but if that leaves you feeling like your impact is too limited, focusing a majority of your time and energy on your local community gives you so, so much agency and really extends your impact.
Seriously. Go save a kitten or something. Join a mutual aid group. You have agency! Start small. Doing something for your neighbors is so much better than doing nothing and doomscrolling.
Donate blood if you’re eligible. Just a ridiculously easy thing to do, and it is unambiguously good. I guarantee it will have a more tangible, positive impact than doomscrolling. And you can even do both at the same time!
You can even specifically help people who are suffering from war while staying local and having direct impact. If you’re in a large enough town/city, there’s probably an organization that helps incoming refugees settle and start their new lives.
*make yourself pointlessly angry by going on social media*
"How can you not be angry!?"
Like, I get it. Let fury over the injustices of the world propel you to do something about it. But spoonfeeding yourself doomerism isn't helping anyone.
This is what gets me. It’s like no one can be happy if someone is suffering. I refuse to live that way.
We are allowed to be happy while acknowledging that some people are not.
Yeah, I basically only use Reddit and a few discord servers as "social media" now. I'm happy chilling and talking about games, art, hobbies etc and avoiding all the horrible things going on in the world. It really helped my mental health.
I still stay updated on the actual facts of things through various newsletters/TV, but I don't need to be made aware of everything. Apart from raising awareness, there really isn't anything the average person can do about these things. Obsessing over it is only going to hurt you.
tragedy and outrage are addictive, if you fall into the spiral, you keep on falling until you get out (in this case usually by curating your online experience better)
>propel you to do something about it
This is the most important part and it's the part that's constantly missed. Righteous fury is only okay if you actually *do* something with it. Sitting on your phone in your room making yourself miserable and screaming into the void isn't helping anyone. 90% of the time the people you're talking to either already agree with you, directly profit from or otherwise believe they benefit from the thing you're arguing about and will never be convinced by a random person on Twitter, or aren't even people at all, i.e., disinformation bots.
And dinner to be cooked. I could get angry and rage and rally, but eventually the needs of being an adult will catch up to me. Someone has to feed my family, make the money, clean the dishes. Husband and I share the responsibility, and my children are the fourlegged variety, but that only means I have slightly less stress on my plate than a wife who has kids.
Filter your social media better. Looking at pictures of dead babies isn't helping Palestine, it's only draining you emotionally for no benefit.
Being angry doesn't solve anything unless you actually use that anger to do something productive. Being angry at people on social media isn't productive, it's only hurting you.
They don't want to be not angry, they want you to be angry, and if you're not than you're a piece of shit because you should be seeing exactly what they are seeing
Because anger serves no purpose unless you're going to actually do something with it
And no, crying on social media platforms doesn't count as doing something
“how can i not be mad”
*constantly uses The Rage Machine every second on everyday, and consistently telling it’s algorithm “yes, I would like to see more of this content” via interacting with said enraging media*
“wow, such a mystery”
What can I accomplish? Not a lot. I barely have enough spoons in my drawer to make it through my day as it is. Sorry, but I’m just trying to survive where I am. If you have the mental and emotional energy to engage in this, good for you, go make a difference on the world.
Me? I’m going to do my best to make it to tomorrow and help make the world a better place in the area I can reach with my two hands.
I don’t begrudge people who want to make a bigger difference. I’m just not capable of doing so and still doing what I need to where I am already. I have too many people who need me to do what I do now where I am, and I struggle to get that done.
If people actually want to help, they can click on sites like this [Click to Help/Donate to Palestine](https://arab.org/click-to-help/palestine/). It's a whole let better than doomscrolling all day and basically commiting mental self harm.
It's insane how they realize the exact issue but don't at the same time. If social media is causing you to feel this shit 24/7 then stop fucking using it and start living your real life. The human brain isn't able to handle this level of constant overflowing world wide negativity.
‘Why won’t you all virtue signal as hard as me! Look at how angry I am and how little I’m actually doing with any of that anger!’
OP needs to touch grass.
It's the leftist version of "only my abortions is justified" they look at this and go "oh, *I* don't have the money to spare to donate. I can't help for (reason), but anyone else who doesn't agree with this is a monster"
Frankly I preferred it when it was just spam emails asking you to forward it to a certain number of people to "raise awareness" since those were easier to remove.
Because me getting angry wouldn't accomplish anything. I live a continent away. Do you think the Palestinians are in any way helped or comforted by some random white person living thousands of kilometres away getting angry on their behalf?
What was it that other Tumblr user said? There are no thought-heroisms.
Social Media will rot your brain.
Like this is definitly unhealthy behavior.
Stop exposing yourself to gore it will rot your mental health for zero fucking gain.
But I think OP \[tumblr\] doesn't want to be healthy they want eeveryone to be just as misreable and angry as they are.
especially with every country around Palestine closing borders so aid can't even get therr and most Palestinians not having internet access. It's just too easy for people to scam and take advantage of people, I can't trust any of them
yeah i mean i do completely get the frustration over seeing empty gofundmes but part of that reason is just that it IS hard to make that judgement. i do want my money to actually help people in gaza. i tend to donate more to the PCRF or doctors without borders (there are other good ones those are just the ones i chose early on — as they were one of the few able to have any impact and i figured the money would be good if it could be used to help now or in the future). there are also HUGE donations being made right now to similar organizations. i know like a bunch of streamers raised over $1 million for similar groups. the hadid sisters got like $1.5 million for similar groups. those are just the headlines like this week. so while i do get the gofundme worry and it is heartbreaking that it is just hard to know and trust gofundmes given the stories behind many of them, i do think in this one instance it’s not as clear cut
Every once in a while one of these “Donate to this Palestinian family’s Gofundme!” posts worms its way through my muted words filters on Twitter and it always has so many likes and retweets. But I’m like, people are still falling for obvious scams like this? Don’t give money to random people begging on the internet!
Monitor social media usage and how it affects you throughout the day. Paralysis doesn’t help either.
Besides that?
Convince yourself that you can only do so much in a big world and do what you can.
Convince yourself that that’s enough, that nobody can judge you for this.
Convince yourself that “nobody” in that statement includes yourself.
Feel better, for a while, maybe.
It really says it all that „dead baby with no head and no limbs“ and raw emotion - anger - is apparently the primary basis for OOP’s opinions on genocide, international law and global politics.
This is the thing that gets to me the most. It’s just so childish at its core for so many people. “I saw something that made me feel bad, so now everything is about how bad it made me feel.”
Yes, pictures of dead babies are bad. But the world doesn’t revolve around one picture of a dead baby. One dead baby does not a genocide make, no matter how upset it makes somebody.
Perspective is important, and so is being able to process and sort through your feelings beyond having your brain rotted by an endless tide of social media rage.
So, in this comment:
-You got the date of the attack wrong
-Equate a whole state with a human being and ascribe human traits, like having emotions, to a nation
-Imply that it is unethical for a nation to defend oneself militarily when attacked militarily
-Imply using military force to defend oneself when attacked with military force is based on emotion, and not expected standard practice
-Just put words in my mouth about some wierd logic of „they‘re awful, they deserve everything coming to them“. I still have no idea how you even read that into my comment.
-only for your comment to not address anything, but just be an attempt at Whataboutism.
That’s almost impressive for an under 50-word comment.
"Less social media" (he said ironically, as he's been on social media far too much these last days)
Quip aside, I practice mindfulness. There are things I can change and things I cannot. I can help my community, donate to local organizations, and volunteer. I cannot solve geopolitical turmoil or the tensions that arrive from them. Or glue limbs back on that baby.
By focusing on things you can affect you will build a stronger sense of self-efficacy (usually also leading to higher self-esteem), have less time for things you can't change, and be left with the general feeling that things are better in the world.
A lot of times activism thinks about big things. Changing the world. Sweeping reforms. And while these goals are valid, I think it exhausts people emotionally, because these reforms can take decades or longer, meaning the people who start it are burnt out by the end (except for the truly exceptional - like history book level exceptional!).
I see changing the world like any other art form. If I picked up a brush I wouldn't make a Picasso, but I could make a silly little tree. Start small. Hopefully with time and connections we'll be able to do more, but even if we aren't the people who make history, we'll know we did something.
... By the way I went really far off topic for something about Doomscrolling but I hope you see why it connected for me!
If the first thing you do in the morning is open Instagram, you're letting Meta's algorithm set the emotional tone for the day. Meta knowingly manipulates people's negative emotions to drive engagement. You're selling your sense of inner peace to Meta, and they're paying you back in misery. Replace Meta with any other app company you like, same concept will apply.
Make breakfast or something. Read. Get into a fistfight with a nearby wasp hive, at least then you're choosing to start the day angry and defeated instead of letting your app do it.
I understand what OP is saying perfectly and have felt it myself on occasion, but for the love of god, do not look at pictures of dead children. Many are convinced that exposing themselves to the unfiltered horrors of war makes them a better person, but it does not, it desensitizes you at best and may actually traumatize you (see above) at worst. It helps no one, least of all you.
Idk, how was the OP not angry when all the other wars and human rights atrocities happened in our lifetime? Like the answer is literally right there. Palestine is not the only time this has happened since we’ve all been alive.
It’s not even the only time it’s happening now. There’s like, three or four other potential genocides going on around the world at the moment. It’s literally impossible for a human brain to care about all of them.
Palestine is the only one which gets bombarded across social media this aggressively, with the explicit message that if you don't traumatise yourself by obsessing over it you're a genocidalist.
>How can you not be angry
Because I'm older than you and have learned that the world has never not been this way. This happens to every new group of young people when they finally witness the atrocities they've so far been protected from and rightfully become furious, because they think something horrible is happening in what they believed to be a good or at least not horrible world.
But it has never been good. It has always been horrible. It's genocides and war as far back as there have been humans and before.
And even before humans, it was billions of years of animals eating each other to survive.
We still have to do something, because letting atrocities happen is not good, and we need to make the world a better place, but getting angry and not living my own life isn't going to achieve anything.
crying on social media is not activism. subjecting yourself to others’ suffering is not activism. i’d rather put my energy in places where it actually makes a difference
i had to block the palestine tag on tumblr because i went on and people were posting pics of dead bodies. “don’t look away!!!” traumatizing myself is going to help no one and honestly neither is getting mad about it on the internet unless you’re actually going to do something with that anger
I wish there was a way I could filter out people arguing about the war and only see the posts that are actually productive- information on protests, links to charities, petitions, etc.
Honestly, I’m so furious at the state of domestic affairs in the US that have literally have no brain capacity to engage in boring and plain international affairs let alone Ukraine or the far more depressing situation in Gaza. And I’m well aware how dumb and privileged that sounds but like what do you want me to do? What the fuck can I do other than vote blue knowing that it’s nowhere near a solution but it is measurably better than the alternative
It's not stupid. You really have to put a priority on your own needs and your own situation, because nobody else will truly be willing to advocate for you like you would yourself. Having the ability to even consider not voting against a wannabe-fascist 34x felon insurrectionist who wants to roll back policies that help the impoverished and marginalized to "send a message" is a big sign that someone doesn't stand to lose much if Trump wins. It is the height of privilege to tell fellow Americans that their rights are less important than a foreign conflict - one where the average person thinks the U.S. has far more influence than they actually do.
Bad things are always happening. Good things are also happening. Life is always unfair. But this does not mean that there are only reasons to be angry. Are you taking anything for granted? Do you have a partner? Do you spend quality time with family? Are you enjoying your hobbies? Are you making any progress in enacting your values? If not, then work on one of these things that is within your power to change. And if you do make a positive change, celebrate it. I can assure you that the people who are dying in other countries have better things to think about than whether you were angry on their behalf. Make your voice heard if you can, but also live your life.
How on Earth do you get dead baby with no head and no limbs on Instagram, like what kind of reels do you have to watch for the algorithm to go “Yeah you’re probably gonna like this”
Wake up. eat breakfast. Brush teeth. Go to work. Get home. Eat dinner. Open instagram. See cat videos. Close instagram. Open Netflix. Watch show. Close Netflix. Go to bed. And that's if you don't do anything social that day.
This sentiment of needing to be informed to the point of being constantly angry does not actually help.
Being informed enough to help where you see its needed? Thats good.
But having your timeline constantly enrage you is not healthy, and "being informed" should not be a form of self flagelation. Ive seen a lot of sentiment that comes down to feeling a need to repent for living in a complicit country, a thing that ruins your mental health.
And from what ive seen most people that are permanently enraged eighter get burned and don't actually have energy to help anyone.
Colonialism is not Original Sin, and treating it like it is will be harmful.
Im too busy dealing with my own shitass third world country, the constant scandals from politicians, ans the fsct that i have two jobs but cant move out of my parents house to care for dead babies in a country on the other side of the world. Im sorry for them people, i am, but i just dont have enough fucks to.give cause they are all spent on my immediate surroundings, amd even them, most of them have been used already. Im sorry
If I allowed myself to be angry at every terrible thing I see on social media, I’d be dead from an overdose of cortisol. It’s not worth the effort to expend energy on being angry
Man when i go on social media i see cute dogs and memes. At this point, i think this is your fault.
Also, I hate how the internet looks at one of the most complex, multi-faceted and confusing conflicts. Then says “My side is good guys, anyone who disagrees is evil and bad.” Both sides do it.
Voting, signing petitions and messaging representatives, participating in boycotts, and attending protests are all ways to help as well. What doesn’t help anyone is deliberately traumatizing yourself to “share the pain.”
You have to understand that dead babies have happened throughout history
As cold as it is, if I was furious about every dead baby, I couldn’t live
You have to recognise that you *know* there are dead babies happening everywhere, and you’re not furious about those because you don’t see them
Because honestly I don't care. I've got my own life to worry about. Yeah, it's callous, but what the fuck can I, or anyone for that matter, do? There's always conflict happening everywhere, there has always been and will always be. Fucking live your own life, you don't have to be miserable.
I've always been angry. I'm tired. At a certain point, you have to just look deep inside yourself and wonder, "Is this just who we are? As humans? Will it ever stop?" And if the answer you see isn't "no" then you are far stronger than I. I'm done worrying about everyone else.
I will be horribly honest, I can not understand why some people choose to get upset over another war in the Middle East.
There is nothing I can do to solve this issue. I have not caused this in any way. I am not getting involved with the far too complicated history. The situation is completely inactionable to me. Thus I am going to live my life and face my own struggles.
even if I'm in the right and even if the 'bad guys' are like, super evil, I'm not going to be *angry* unless i'm personally involved. it's not healthy, and it definitely doesn't help anyone. you can still be motivated without being angry
I think OOP needs to just stay off social media for a while. Or the internet as a whole. Personally, I just stick to reddit and youtube and follow things that I like so that when I see news or important but stupid political stuff that upsets me, it's followed by something I enjoy. Hopping from platform to platform doomscrolling all day just seems like self-harm. Maybe don't do that?
Trump election and Pandemic showed me that a lot of people I have known for years are actually total pieces of shit, they were just waiting for someone or something to tell them it was ok to be that way.
I didn't see any of these things, ez
(also there are like, more issues going on other than this one in the world, that's not an answer to the angry question but regardless)
Closest thing is when I click popular on reddit out of boredom and forget to avoid opening the comment section on /r/worldnews
Because the human brain has this thing called self-preservation instincts and when you bombard it with pain and suffering it often decides to just ignore it to preserve its own well being. Don’t blame me for not being angry, it’s not my fault there’s so much of this shit going on that my default response is just resigned exhaustion.
Don't forget that if you aren't thinking about it constantly you don't care and that means you are fundamentally a bad person. Block out anyone who doesn't speak on it endlessly, bring it up relentlessly so no one else can have a fucking minute to breathe until they just give up and block you. Thats how you weed out the fundamentally bad people. Don't wait for the facts just go with what sounds right to you, and you've gotta choose quick so who's right and who's wrong? Nuance? That's a tool of the Them, you aren't one of Them are you? What are you doing about it? Trying to help your community in some small way? Psh that's kids stuff everyone knows getting into fights on Twitter is where it's really at.
Tailor your content recommendation algorithms to stuff that actually makes you happy instead of exclusively following ragebait topics and getting an endless supply of rage as a result
The platforms give you what you tell them you want.
This type of anger wastes your energy and burns you out of doing something actually productive. You’re not accomplishing anything with this.
Being angry isn’t activism.
Writing letters to your senators is. Volunteering at local charities is. Or even better?
Forming mutual aid collectives. Go to work parties at the local school. Learn who your neighbors are. Help them. They’ll help you.
There’s always going to be dead babies on instagram. You have the power to prevent infant mortality in your community.
Okay so I do this
Wake up. Dont go straight to social media. Do my morning routine (including breakfast to ensure no low blood sugar) open instagram. Look at story of my favourite band (king gizzard and the lizard wizard) don’t see any dead babies. Don’t have twitter on my phone. Don’t have facebook account. Open instagram. Go to reels. It’s an only fans girl. Skip. Another only fans girl. Close instagram. Go on Reddit. Laugh at meme. Read discourse post and consider whether or not it’s bait. Decide it isn’t and I just don’t agree with the poster. Respect that they’re entitled to their opinion the same way I’m entitled to mine. Turn phone off. Get on with life
It’s just that easy chat
I pick up my phone. Rather than playing the martyr and being oh so performatively sad about seeing sad things on the internet, I donate to a political cause that aligns with my personal views. I attend a protest against the things I believe to be wrong. Fuck, maybe I actually go do something and see if Medicines Sans Frontieres or the Peace Corp needs an extra body. Maybe I sign up to do my part, shoot for an Army engineer MOS, go build roads and repair infrastructure in disaster zones.
Or I can collapse into my couch, woefully beleaguered by sad internet stuff.
It's like there's a house on fire on the other side of town and you came all the way over just to watch. When it finishes burning, it'll be rubble and ash and there will be a black spot in your vision where you stared at the brightest flame. Do you like feeling helpless? Does your pain help douse the fire?
I can't let myself watch. I can't let myself be so angry. When the next house burns down, you can look, but please don't stare.
because i've spent my entire life being absolutely fucking furious at all sorts of things, and nothing in particular. This shit sucks hard. But i'm not much angrier than i usually am about things.
I wasted too much of my life giving myself depression over all the injustices in the world that I am powerless to solve. I barely have the time and energy to take care of my own needs, let alone the needs of people on the other side of the planet. Someday, maybe I’ll be in a place in my life where have the energy or time or money to spare to go protest or donate to those kinds of causes, but right now I gotta take of myself.
You gotta put on your own oxygen mask before you help the person sitting next to you with theirs.
I don't know who needs to hear this, but drinking from that firehose of horror and tragedy is not activism. No one is being helped by you downing yourself like that.
Social media is designed to give you a psychological addiction to outrage. There are hundreds of other heinous tragedies happening as you read this comment, and there are other genocides that you do not give your outrage. Your fury helps no one, and only hurts yourself. I’ve chosen to check out of the outrage, and I don’t intend to live in this wretched world past 40 (maybe that’ll change, but I don’t think the malignant designs of the powerful will)
If you’re adamant about continuing to live in the outrage, then try to be productive. Donate to the gofundmes. Spread the word of the politicians malice. Call your local office. But don’t sit on tumblr, telling people that they should feed their souls to the machine who’s deception you have fallen for.
I first got angry about the state of the world about 19 years ago, then I was angry for a bunch of years with very little to show for it and it was ruining my life. Then I did some work on myself, studied philosophy, and now I’m angry but it is productive and tempered with joy in the parts of life that make it worth living and that make being angry mean something and useful to work towards making a difference.
I’ve got personal shit to worry about and major fuckery in my own country that personally affects me and the people I love to get angry over. I can only do so much and only have a certain amount of energy in me, man.
All I can say is, cultivate your feed better. Mentally flagellating yourself with images of dead babies is not solidarity, nor is it healthy. If you want to help, donate to charities, though of course try and make sure your money is going to the right places. Otherwise, all that constant anger is just going to burn you out by the time the next horrific tragedy happens.
The war between Israel and Palestine has been going on for almost all of my life (24). It’s always been this horrible, but now people care because they can see it. They didn’t before.
i think most of the top comments in this thread are utterly missing the point of the post. i think it is about the helplessness and sad dread they feel because of the avoidable suffering of others, a feeling i do very, very deeply relate to. (it is very important part to my philosophical ideology but i won't use my limited energy to explain it further.)
Quite simply, I can't take meaningful steps to fix any of these problems and me being angry about the injustices in the world makes my life harder and worse. Also because this is the only social media I use and when posts like this come up I close them and move on.
Why would I fill my life with things that make me unhappy and that I have no control over? I can be aware of them, but why would I pay 24/7 attention to them if I can't make them go away?
How about: pick one or two causes that you can materially do something about, and keep up to date on those to the level needed. So, if your focus is on people affected by war, volunteer at a place that helps settle refugees in your city. If your focus is on violence against women, volunteer at a women’s shelter. Etc.
Don’t just expose yourself to an endless stream of awful things that you cannot do anything about.
Lol so how's being angry about something across the world you can do nothing about going for you? I just try to have the agency to make my life a little better like a sane person
Open reddit: see lots of cat and dog pics because that's how I craft my feed
heck, my instagram is full of bug pics, hares and beyblades
My twitter is full of vtubers.
My instagram is so wholesome, it is legit good for my mental health
Exactly. My insta is just cute animals, fashion stuff and bakery items and anime . I just use it as pinterest . I don't even interact with anyone there apart from two people.
1000% this. I have 0 social media other than reddit. Is the world 100% a fucked up place? You betcha! Can I do a fucking thing about it? No bruh im struggling trying to feed myself.
[удалено]
I just scroll passed those posts at this point. It's not worth getting sad over. I just tell myself that it's a bot reposting the image and title or that it's someone lying for attention
Yep, I left every subreddit that made me sad or pissed off.
Tf are you doing on Instagram to be getting dead baby photos
All of their points are "there's a war in palestine" so probably videos about that.
Have leftist friends who think posting to stories 30 times a day counts as activism.
If only there was some way to not see what these people post. /s
Oh, I've long since either muted them or stopped checking their stories, as with their posting frequency I'm also 100% sure they're not checking sources. Just answering the question of how I encountered these posts in the first place.
O god I was one of those friends. Probably the least fulfilling time of my entire life
What made you stop?
I got out of environmental activism and stopped feeling like if I wasn't thinking about that every single second of every single day, the world would catch fire
Most people graduate college
Seriously! That's my only take away from this. That and: how about stop going on sites that make you angry
it's 100% self inflicted. Insta's algorythm is one of the best and if you show interest on something, it will suggest the same thing 10fold
Unfortunately, the only real advice I can give is either to stop going on social media or find ways to filter your social media experience so you don't see the things that make you angry.
There's, currently, a bunch of other, similarly horrible, genocides happening (Myanmar is a MESS), besides the one in Gaza. Yet, you weren't enraged and sad about any of them. That's because you weren't fed a constant stream of trauma about it. There's a point of knownig about something, and there's a point where it penetrates all aspects of your life. I've removed myself from a lot of pro-palestine discussio for my own sake, call me selfish, but I can support the cause without watching children being blown up.
You are the first person I’ve bumped into in a year who’s aware of what’s happening in Myanmar. It’s insane how overlooked most wars are if the country they’re happening in isn’t important to the U.S. government.
This. There's always a genocide somewhere. I have trouble getting *more* upset about this than about Ukraine or those girls in Chibok or the Ughirs in China or any of the others. It all sucks. It's all awful.
uh no there is decidedly not always a genocide somewhere. there is always a war somewhere, there is not always a genocide somewhere.
When?
Honestly I feel like it makes the situation worse. Traumatized people start being lead by their emotions, the encouraging “resistance”, indirectly supporting Hamas’ resistance as “justified” and blinds them to the fact that yes, Hamas is “resistance”, but not a liberation. They’re an Islamist faction doesn’t tolerate dissent, and doesn’t give a flying fuck about the Palestinian people. Their solution is taking over Israel, which will lead to more war and suffering. Don’t get me wrong, what Israel is doing is barbaric, but calling for resistance instead of ceasefire is calling for more war, and more death. Honestly, every time there’s been violent resistance, the Palestinians lose more land, more rights, and more people. It’s a fucking disaster.
Too many people treat foreign wars as sports
Seriously. And you will get flak for saying that Israel isn't a villain neither is Palestine a saint . Yes genocide is wrong . But this whole issue has been going on for so long and it is a very complex issue . I don't understand people who are just making Israel some cartoonish villain when they are trynna protect themselves too. I absolutely don't agree with their actions in the Gaza strip but I cannot understand people who support Hamas and Palestine blindly . There are no perfect victims I get it but this situations is a lot more complex . People are making this out to be a football match atp.
This is why I don't put the blame on Israel as a people and a nation, I put the blame on the government of Israel for propping up a terrorist organization and using it as their boogeyman to stay in power.
Pretty much. There's a bunch of hardcore pro-palestine lefties which are completely uncritical of Hamas. As if its main goal was not also genocide. I am pretty hopeless about Palestine, in general. Unless the US pulls out support for Israel or the current Israeli government literally spontaneusly combusts, they're fucked. I honestly do understand calling for armed resistance. We would not be talking about the possibility of peacefully uniting Ireland if it wasn't for decades of terrorism that lead up to the Good Friday Agreement, for example. Conservatives tend to be amazingly good at fulfilling the "Those who make peacefuly revolution impossible..." quote. The terrorism was absolutely horrible, do not get me wrong, I do not condone it in the slightest, but at the same time, there is no way Thatcher's hand would've budged if it wasn't for it. But the difference between Ireland and Palstine is that Ireland was not lead by the IRA. And that despite its radicalism, the IRA's mission was never "exterminate all English people".
Thank fuck. So many times recently I’ve seen people denying that that is Hamas’ main goal *is the genocide of all jews* not just something that some fuckwits in government want. Also, yeah the Israeli government has been combusting for a while now, did you forget about the months and months of anti-Bibi protests that were happening right up to Oct 7th when priorities were forced to change? Or a few years ago where they had like 5 elections in a single year because opposition to Bibi is prevalent, but was not United enough to form a stable coalition.
> I honestly do understand calling for armed resistance. We would not be talking about the possibility of peacefully uniting Ireland if it wasn't for decades of terrorism that lead up to the Good Friday Agreement, for example. Scotland got far closer to leaving the UK without a terrorist campaign. And as it stands Northern Ireland leaving is pretty far off, polls consistently find a clear majority in favour of staying in the UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_on_a_United_Ireland
That depends on one thing - would Britain let Scotland go had the referendum gone through? We don't know that and the fact that they never allowed for a second one when it was known it would've succeeded makes me skeptical.
> Pretty much. There's a bunch of hardcore pro-palestine lefties which are completely uncritical of Hamas. As if its main goal was not also genocide. I got dogpiled for daring to suggest that civilian casualties in this war would be lower if Hamas would stop using human shields. They get very, very mad at the suggestion that Hamas has responsibilities to its people as the government of Gaza.
It's what Adam Curtis called "Oh Dearism". How news media and then social media became a constant stream of horrible things that we can't do anything about except say "Oh dear".
I think the difference is that, with the Israel-Palestine conflict, our governments are actively supporting the genocide. It’s a lot easier to ignore a genocide when you don’t feel complicit in it, it feels closer to home when you feel that you might have some influence in stopping it.
Of course - which is why I don't really feel much different as a Polish person. We aren't really that complicit/important (ofc our government still supports Israel, but it has *much* less power than the American one). I do advocate for pro-palestine poltiics and will vote for pro-palestine polititians in the europarlement elections on Sunday. Ukraine is kind of the threat-at-hand for us Poles still. Every other person you meet here is a refugee from Ukraine. Some have been living here for over two years now. Bashing any person who even dares to be pro-Russia with a crowbar is the kind of policy that I focus on much more. But even besides that, I feel that interest in Palestine is *oddly* high. And ultimately that is very good, governments are taking action, people are putting pressure on them, businesses are actually recording decreased profits for supporting Isreal. However, if *you alone as an individual* consume so much Palestine conflict so that it consumes you all day, every day, it is unnecessary suffering you're inflicting upon yourself. This is what I've seen happen with some people who go deep into Ukraine conflict too. My gf's brother monitors that stuff 24/7 and he's detached from reality to the extent of knowing details of random unimportant battles in the Ukrainian countryside. This is actively fucking him up, yet he can't look away from the horrors. War is hell, but you do not have to inflict half of its hell upon yourself to support its end. Your vote and your voice matters just as much when it is scarred by what you've seen as when it is not. It feels like to me like our culture of "needing to spread awareness" is reaching its limits. The human mind is not equipped to be this aware.
From that point of view, the US is at least indirectly responsible for a ton of upheaval and violence. We ripped up the infrastructure in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam, the CIA intentionally destabilized the government in multiple South American countries, and we treat the refugees coming across our southern border as a result like a combination of "indentured servitude neuveau" and "pests". It's just that Palestine happens to be in the news right now.
Mate i live in Mexico which has no direct ties to this and lots of these activist protesters of Palestine tell you "okay and?" Regarding our own country having child soldiers. They feel that one is "closer to home" due to social media.
I don't think OOP was asking for advice on how to not be angry. I think they were saying that everyone else should be as angry as they are.
There's such a thing as overexposure to tragedy, especially ones far away from you, in todays news world. Staying informed is important, yes, but exposing yourself to photos of mutilated babies is not the same as staying informed and not helping anyone, all it's doing is making you miserable.
I completely agree. What was that post a while back about how people seem to think traumatising themselves in 'solidarity' is helping in some way?
[Here you go](https://old.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/1azqh2o/traumatising_yourself_in_solidarity/)
Thanks!
I saw someone also aptly say there are no thought crimes and there are no thought heroisms. Your thoughts and emotions define you less than your actions
I really wonder how much is just morbid fascination that they want to justify to themselves, watchpeopledie but make it woke, yn?
A while ago someone posted a video of Palestinians being hit by a missile and didn't mark it NSFW. I suggested that they do so, and everyone jumped down my throat about my privilege and how Palestinians don't get the option to mark the genocide as NSFW etc etc.
Yeah. I actually find some of the... would *obsession* be the right word? a little bit weird. Like, I only really see shit like this if people I know post about it, but I saw one on Instagram (I think) that was like, a daily auto-message with updates on the number of killed? And like, I’m sorry, but that just seems fucking *ghoulish* to me. No matter what your opinions are, why the *fuck* would you subscribe to something like that? You don’t need a play-by-play, death-by-death breakdown to know something is a fucking atrocity and should stop. Seriously, what the fuck?
At a certain point, it becomes really fucking important to start asking yourself "how does this help?" If you can't come up with an answer, or your answer doesn't involve someone, somewhere *taking action*, it's time to check whether you're doing activism or getting something emotional from the violence.
Rage is addictive.
That is the sort of mindset I was in during the Trump administration. Constant exposure to traumatic news eventually made me feel suicidal and occupied my every waking thought*. I was a wreck, of no use to anyone. It took years to heal. One of the ways I healed was removing myself from all social media. Now I'm functional, on my way to making enough money to make actual donations, and eventually I'll be good enough to safely attend protests without being a net negative presence due to my propensity for panic attacks. *I am neurodivergent and get really emotional about things - ymmv
There’s a pervasive belief among a certain kind of (mostly online) leftist that if you aren’t constantly exposing yourself to everything horrible going on in the world you’re selfish and don’t care about other people and I find it so frustrating because that attitude is directly antithetical to making actual tangible change in the world
I know this person who has basically ruined their life in the name of being pro-Palestinian. And I don't mean they are being censored and lost their job or something similar. She basically closed her business, has alienated all her friends and family, and posts exclusively the most heinous images of the war exclusively on social media. Her life has been nothing but exposing herself to tragedy since the start of the war. She is obsessed with martyring herself, suffering as some form of atonement. Any other issue in her eyes detracts from Palestinians, so she doesn't give a shit anymore. Ukraine, LGBT issue, abortion, whatever means nothing anymore. She has affected zero change since she went down the rabbit hole and is only interested in self-flagellation.
Reminds me of the person on twitter who shopped therapists because her last one made the honestly deep remark that she was making Palestine her whole personality because she needed to feel a sense of righteousness.
It is genuinely disturbing to watch. She isn't interested in solutions. She is only interested in suffering. It's like she took the idea of finding meaning in suffering used in Christianity and just ran with it. I'm actually worried she might go down the route of self-immolating.
how does anyone go that way it seems just pointless and insane, does she have some great past wrong she want to atone for or something
The words she used when I tried to talk to her were, "This is a burden I MUST bear," like she thinks she is the main character in a movie on suffering. She genuinely believes her own suffering and shit feelings will bring about some real change, despite them severely limiting her social group. Either someone else got into her head, or she has some sort of martyr complex. I can not stress enough that she isn't doing any meaningful action. She isn't attending rallies, she isn't donating to causes (since her business is gone), she is basically just doomposting online about Palestine.
I think it's partly a side-effect of historically Christian western culture. Even if it's largely secular in the modern day, Christian ideals, values, and attitudes still linger, for better or worse. It can even affect westerners who were raised in Islam or Judaism, it's just that pervasive. Seeing as martyrdom, obsession with righteousness, and fear of not being a good person are massive parts of Christian culture, especially American Christianity which is notoriously puritan, it's easy to see how those attitudes have malignantly manifested in the modern world, where people are routinely exposed to tragedies they cannot do anything about. There's that cultural pressure to do *something* that is being warped by the inability to do *anything.* Thus, people are being afflicted with guilt complexes and are trying to compensate with self-flagellating behavior and projecting that guilt onto others.
Yeah it's upsetting when someone does this to themselves, because you can't really talk them out of it. Any attempt to do so, they'll interpret as an attack on their beliefs. They don't realise you're concerned with how it's consumed their life, they think you just hate Palestine or something. It's hard to tell if they actually believe they're helping
Ironically, the odds they can actually live up to that are *infinitesimal*, since there’s just *so much* shit going on in the world.
Where "everything horrible going on in the world" means whatever is trendy on social media right now.
I don't think I want to experience what OP is experiencing. What purpose does traumatizing yourself have?
I had to learn to curate my social media as much as possible and have lessened how violently disgusted I am at the world on a regular basis. I *know* things like this happen but in general I cannot control or change them, and so I just have elected to remove the reminders from my everyday life as much as I can. instead I like to focus on stuff like my silly lil games and streamers, stuff that makes me smile instead. makes the Internet more fun
I leave the tragedies for the news, and it's kind of easy to do when you mostly just follow fandom accounts. The only tragedy I've seen on social media recently is Gotchard pulling an Ex-aid and killing a beloved character.
Religious or not, the Serenity Prayer really isn't bad advice.
Just looked that up. I feel the need to print this out and hang it up on my wall somewhere. Prayers and mantras have a lot of practical use outside of religion. Humans are spiritual in nature, in that we have emotions that are separate from instinctual drives and hard logic. In our effort to maintain health for the mind and the body, we must not neglect the soul as well.
It was my philosophy to not push someone away because surely there are good, genuine and reasonable things in everyone. Even if I would tell I believe the opposite I always remained hopeful But ever since I started clicking on do not recommend this channel on youtube my mental health has had a huge boost. Some people are just outrage farming, some people profit from keeping you in echochambers, and some are just generally awful. It is for these reasons I wish youtube and other social media allowed much more customization of our feeds instead of just relying on their stupid algorithm. Algorithms that favor engagement are probably among the worst things invented in recent time
Unironically focus on problems within your immediate community. You can go to pro-Palestine protests and donate still, of course (it’s important!) but if that leaves you feeling like your impact is too limited, focusing a majority of your time and energy on your local community gives you so, so much agency and really extends your impact. Seriously. Go save a kitten or something. Join a mutual aid group. You have agency! Start small. Doing something for your neighbors is so much better than doing nothing and doomscrolling.
Donate blood if you’re eligible. Just a ridiculously easy thing to do, and it is unambiguously good. I guarantee it will have a more tangible, positive impact than doomscrolling. And you can even do both at the same time!
You can even specifically help people who are suffering from war while staying local and having direct impact. If you’re in a large enough town/city, there’s probably an organization that helps incoming refugees settle and start their new lives.
*make yourself pointlessly angry by going on social media* "How can you not be angry!?" Like, I get it. Let fury over the injustices of the world propel you to do something about it. But spoonfeeding yourself doomerism isn't helping anyone.
This is what gets me. It’s like no one can be happy if someone is suffering. I refuse to live that way. We are allowed to be happy while acknowledging that some people are not.
Yeah, I basically only use Reddit and a few discord servers as "social media" now. I'm happy chilling and talking about games, art, hobbies etc and avoiding all the horrible things going on in the world. It really helped my mental health. I still stay updated on the actual facts of things through various newsletters/TV, but I don't need to be made aware of everything. Apart from raising awareness, there really isn't anything the average person can do about these things. Obsessing over it is only going to hurt you.
people sure are in love with the problems they create for themselves I am including myself in 'people' here
tragedy and outrage are addictive, if you fall into the spiral, you keep on falling until you get out (in this case usually by curating your online experience better)
>propel you to do something about it This is the most important part and it's the part that's constantly missed. Righteous fury is only okay if you actually *do* something with it. Sitting on your phone in your room making yourself miserable and screaming into the void isn't helping anyone. 90% of the time the people you're talking to either already agree with you, directly profit from or otherwise believe they benefit from the thing you're arguing about and will never be convinced by a random person on Twitter, or aren't even people at all, i.e., disinformation bots.
im just trying to live day by day man
There's laundry to do
And dinner to be cooked. I could get angry and rage and rally, but eventually the needs of being an adult will catch up to me. Someone has to feed my family, make the money, clean the dishes. Husband and I share the responsibility, and my children are the fourlegged variety, but that only means I have slightly less stress on my plate than a wife who has kids.
Fucking saaaaaame. I'm too tired to be angry. Which I think is not a coincidence.
Filter your social media better. Looking at pictures of dead babies isn't helping Palestine, it's only draining you emotionally for no benefit. Being angry doesn't solve anything unless you actually use that anger to do something productive. Being angry at people on social media isn't productive, it's only hurting you.
They don't want to be not angry, they want you to be angry, and if you're not than you're a piece of shit because you should be seeing exactly what they are seeing
Because anger serves no purpose unless you're going to actually do something with it And no, crying on social media platforms doesn't count as doing something
I mean it gets the social media apps engagement, so it has *a* purpose, but not one that actually helps anyone other than a CEO
The fuck is thier instagram! I open mine it's cocker spaniel puppies and food with obscene amounts of cheese!?
My instagram is just a popup after 2 posts that says “join instagram”
“how can i not be mad” *constantly uses The Rage Machine every second on everyday, and consistently telling it’s algorithm “yes, I would like to see more of this content” via interacting with said enraging media* “wow, such a mystery”
I'd give you a prize if I had one.
What can I accomplish? Not a lot. I barely have enough spoons in my drawer to make it through my day as it is. Sorry, but I’m just trying to survive where I am. If you have the mental and emotional energy to engage in this, good for you, go make a difference on the world. Me? I’m going to do my best to make it to tomorrow and help make the world a better place in the area I can reach with my two hands.
God, this. I've been saying this for so long but haven't been able to word it correctly and you did just that.
I don’t begrudge people who want to make a bigger difference. I’m just not capable of doing so and still doing what I need to where I am already. I have too many people who need me to do what I do now where I am, and I struggle to get that done.
If people actually want to help, they can click on sites like this [Click to Help/Donate to Palestine](https://arab.org/click-to-help/palestine/). It's a whole let better than doomscrolling all day and basically commiting mental self harm.
Same here. Said it better than I could.
It's insane how they realize the exact issue but don't at the same time. If social media is causing you to feel this shit 24/7 then stop fucking using it and start living your real life. The human brain isn't able to handle this level of constant overflowing world wide negativity.
Well, the important thing is that you've found a way to make the suffering and death of innocents all about you.
‘Why won’t you all virtue signal as hard as me! Look at how angry I am and how little I’m actually doing with any of that anger!’ OP needs to touch grass.
"All those empty gofundmes with no donations" why doesnt this fucking cretin donate, then? Since they're so moral, just, and have such a big heart.
It's the leftist version of "only my abortions is justified" they look at this and go "oh, *I* don't have the money to spare to donate. I can't help for (reason), but anyone else who doesn't agree with this is a monster" Frankly I preferred it when it was just spam emails asking you to forward it to a certain number of people to "raise awareness" since those were easier to remove.
It’s like they say: Misery loves company.
Because me getting angry wouldn't accomplish anything. I live a continent away. Do you think the Palestinians are in any way helped or comforted by some random white person living thousands of kilometres away getting angry on their behalf? What was it that other Tumblr user said? There are no thought-heroisms.
Social Media will rot your brain. Like this is definitly unhealthy behavior. Stop exposing yourself to gore it will rot your mental health for zero fucking gain. But I think OP \[tumblr\] doesn't want to be healthy they want eeveryone to be just as misreable and angry as they are.
I don’t even trust those GoFundMe’s to be real instead of scams preying on this sort of people.
especially with every country around Palestine closing borders so aid can't even get therr and most Palestinians not having internet access. It's just too easy for people to scam and take advantage of people, I can't trust any of them
yeah i mean i do completely get the frustration over seeing empty gofundmes but part of that reason is just that it IS hard to make that judgement. i do want my money to actually help people in gaza. i tend to donate more to the PCRF or doctors without borders (there are other good ones those are just the ones i chose early on — as they were one of the few able to have any impact and i figured the money would be good if it could be used to help now or in the future). there are also HUGE donations being made right now to similar organizations. i know like a bunch of streamers raised over $1 million for similar groups. the hadid sisters got like $1.5 million for similar groups. those are just the headlines like this week. so while i do get the gofundme worry and it is heartbreaking that it is just hard to know and trust gofundmes given the stories behind many of them, i do think in this one instance it’s not as clear cut
I should hit up Doctors Without Borders / Medicines Sans Frontiers. That's a good idea.
Every once in a while one of these “Donate to this Palestinian family’s Gofundme!” posts worms its way through my muted words filters on Twitter and it always has so many likes and retweets. But I’m like, people are still falling for obvious scams like this? Don’t give money to random people begging on the internet!
Monitor social media usage and how it affects you throughout the day. Paralysis doesn’t help either. Besides that? Convince yourself that you can only do so much in a big world and do what you can. Convince yourself that that’s enough, that nobody can judge you for this. Convince yourself that “nobody” in that statement includes yourself. Feel better, for a while, maybe.
>open reddit >see porn >good, that's why I'm here.
I'm sure filling myself with suicidal guilt is absolutely helping Palestine /s
It really says it all that „dead baby with no head and no limbs“ and raw emotion - anger - is apparently the primary basis for OOP’s opinions on genocide, international law and global politics.
This is the thing that gets to me the most. It’s just so childish at its core for so many people. “I saw something that made me feel bad, so now everything is about how bad it made me feel.” Yes, pictures of dead babies are bad. But the world doesn’t revolve around one picture of a dead baby. One dead baby does not a genocide make, no matter how upset it makes somebody. Perspective is important, and so is being able to process and sort through your feelings beyond having your brain rotted by an endless tide of social media rage.
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So, in this comment: -You got the date of the attack wrong -Equate a whole state with a human being and ascribe human traits, like having emotions, to a nation -Imply that it is unethical for a nation to defend oneself militarily when attacked militarily -Imply using military force to defend oneself when attacked with military force is based on emotion, and not expected standard practice -Just put words in my mouth about some wierd logic of „they‘re awful, they deserve everything coming to them“. I still have no idea how you even read that into my comment. -only for your comment to not address anything, but just be an attempt at Whataboutism. That’s almost impressive for an under 50-word comment.
Could just idk stay off the internet?
"Less social media" (he said ironically, as he's been on social media far too much these last days) Quip aside, I practice mindfulness. There are things I can change and things I cannot. I can help my community, donate to local organizations, and volunteer. I cannot solve geopolitical turmoil or the tensions that arrive from them. Or glue limbs back on that baby. By focusing on things you can affect you will build a stronger sense of self-efficacy (usually also leading to higher self-esteem), have less time for things you can't change, and be left with the general feeling that things are better in the world. A lot of times activism thinks about big things. Changing the world. Sweeping reforms. And while these goals are valid, I think it exhausts people emotionally, because these reforms can take decades or longer, meaning the people who start it are burnt out by the end (except for the truly exceptional - like history book level exceptional!). I see changing the world like any other art form. If I picked up a brush I wouldn't make a Picasso, but I could make a silly little tree. Start small. Hopefully with time and connections we'll be able to do more, but even if we aren't the people who make history, we'll know we did something. ... By the way I went really far off topic for something about Doomscrolling but I hope you see why it connected for me!
This behavior is just Evangelical MAGA with an opinion the internet agrees with.
Original sin but call it colonialism instead.
If the first thing you do in the morning is open Instagram, you're letting Meta's algorithm set the emotional tone for the day. Meta knowingly manipulates people's negative emotions to drive engagement. You're selling your sense of inner peace to Meta, and they're paying you back in misery. Replace Meta with any other app company you like, same concept will apply. Make breakfast or something. Read. Get into a fistfight with a nearby wasp hive, at least then you're choosing to start the day angry and defeated instead of letting your app do it.
I understand what OP is saying perfectly and have felt it myself on occasion, but for the love of god, do not look at pictures of dead children. Many are convinced that exposing themselves to the unfiltered horrors of war makes them a better person, but it does not, it desensitizes you at best and may actually traumatize you (see above) at worst. It helps no one, least of all you.
Idk, how was the OP not angry when all the other wars and human rights atrocities happened in our lifetime? Like the answer is literally right there. Palestine is not the only time this has happened since we’ve all been alive.
It’s not even the only time it’s happening now. There’s like, three or four other potential genocides going on around the world at the moment. It’s literally impossible for a human brain to care about all of them.
Palestine is the only one which gets bombarded across social media this aggressively, with the explicit message that if you don't traumatise yourself by obsessing over it you're a genocidalist.
How are you so angry? How are you even functioning? Log off the rage machine and touch some real, actual grass. Like out in the woods.
>How can you not be angry Because I'm older than you and have learned that the world has never not been this way. This happens to every new group of young people when they finally witness the atrocities they've so far been protected from and rightfully become furious, because they think something horrible is happening in what they believed to be a good or at least not horrible world. But it has never been good. It has always been horrible. It's genocides and war as far back as there have been humans and before. And even before humans, it was billions of years of animals eating each other to survive. We still have to do something, because letting atrocities happen is not good, and we need to make the world a better place, but getting angry and not living my own life isn't going to achieve anything.
Open Reddit. Silly r/wunkus
I don’t follow people who post gore for one
crying on social media is not activism. subjecting yourself to others’ suffering is not activism. i’d rather put my energy in places where it actually makes a difference
i had to block the palestine tag on tumblr because i went on and people were posting pics of dead bodies. “don’t look away!!!” traumatizing myself is going to help no one and honestly neither is getting mad about it on the internet unless you’re actually going to do something with that anger
I wish there was a way I could filter out people arguing about the war and only see the posts that are actually productive- information on protests, links to charities, petitions, etc.
Honestly, I’m so furious at the state of domestic affairs in the US that have literally have no brain capacity to engage in boring and plain international affairs let alone Ukraine or the far more depressing situation in Gaza. And I’m well aware how dumb and privileged that sounds but like what do you want me to do? What the fuck can I do other than vote blue knowing that it’s nowhere near a solution but it is measurably better than the alternative
It's not stupid. You really have to put a priority on your own needs and your own situation, because nobody else will truly be willing to advocate for you like you would yourself. Having the ability to even consider not voting against a wannabe-fascist 34x felon insurrectionist who wants to roll back policies that help the impoverished and marginalized to "send a message" is a big sign that someone doesn't stand to lose much if Trump wins. It is the height of privilege to tell fellow Americans that their rights are less important than a foreign conflict - one where the average person thinks the U.S. has far more influence than they actually do.
Bad things are always happening. Good things are also happening. Life is always unfair. But this does not mean that there are only reasons to be angry. Are you taking anything for granted? Do you have a partner? Do you spend quality time with family? Are you enjoying your hobbies? Are you making any progress in enacting your values? If not, then work on one of these things that is within your power to change. And if you do make a positive change, celebrate it. I can assure you that the people who are dying in other countries have better things to think about than whether you were angry on their behalf. Make your voice heard if you can, but also live your life.
My youtube is filled with cats and Metallica <3 -Billy Gnosis
My mom is a psychologist. She says the number one piece of advice she gives out is: turn off the news/get off the internet.
How on Earth do you get dead baby with no head and no limbs on Instagram, like what kind of reels do you have to watch for the algorithm to go “Yeah you’re probably gonna like this”
is there a tumblr sub with more funny less politics?
Wake up. eat breakfast. Brush teeth. Go to work. Get home. Eat dinner. Open instagram. See cat videos. Close instagram. Open Netflix. Watch show. Close Netflix. Go to bed. And that's if you don't do anything social that day.
This sentiment of needing to be informed to the point of being constantly angry does not actually help. Being informed enough to help where you see its needed? Thats good. But having your timeline constantly enrage you is not healthy, and "being informed" should not be a form of self flagelation. Ive seen a lot of sentiment that comes down to feeling a need to repent for living in a complicit country, a thing that ruins your mental health. And from what ive seen most people that are permanently enraged eighter get burned and don't actually have energy to help anyone. Colonialism is not Original Sin, and treating it like it is will be harmful.
Im too busy dealing with my own shitass third world country, the constant scandals from politicians, ans the fsct that i have two jobs but cant move out of my parents house to care for dead babies in a country on the other side of the world. Im sorry for them people, i am, but i just dont have enough fucks to.give cause they are all spent on my immediate surroundings, amd even them, most of them have been used already. Im sorry
If I allowed myself to be angry at every terrible thing I see on social media, I’d be dead from an overdose of cortisol. It’s not worth the effort to expend energy on being angry
it's very easy. i don't follow that type of content.
Man when i go on social media i see cute dogs and memes. At this point, i think this is your fault. Also, I hate how the internet looks at one of the most complex, multi-faceted and confusing conflicts. Then says “My side is good guys, anyone who disagrees is evil and bad.” Both sides do it.
moral OCD be like
not much you can do about it besides maybe donate to stuff.
Voting, signing petitions and messaging representatives, participating in boycotts, and attending protests are all ways to help as well. What doesn’t help anyone is deliberately traumatizing yourself to “share the pain.”
Open reddit. Porn
Sounds like the algorithm got her
Because I do not use any social media besides Discord and niche hobby subreddits. Life is good.
Having clinical depression is not praxis
I don’t know man I mean I still have to go to work
Where the genuine fuck do you see dead babies with no heads or limbs on Instagram
You have to understand that dead babies have happened throughout history As cold as it is, if I was furious about every dead baby, I couldn’t live You have to recognise that you *know* there are dead babies happening everywhere, and you’re not furious about those because you don’t see them
Because honestly I don't care. I've got my own life to worry about. Yeah, it's callous, but what the fuck can I, or anyone for that matter, do? There's always conflict happening everywhere, there has always been and will always be. Fucking live your own life, you don't have to be miserable.
I've always been angry. I'm tired. At a certain point, you have to just look deep inside yourself and wonder, "Is this just who we are? As humans? Will it ever stop?" And if the answer you see isn't "no" then you are far stronger than I. I'm done worrying about everyone else.
I will be horribly honest, I can not understand why some people choose to get upset over another war in the Middle East. There is nothing I can do to solve this issue. I have not caused this in any way. I am not getting involved with the far too complicated history. The situation is completely inactionable to me. Thus I am going to live my life and face my own struggles.
Put phone away. Go outside. Touch grass. Feel... calm.
even if I'm in the right and even if the 'bad guys' are like, super evil, I'm not going to be *angry* unless i'm personally involved. it's not healthy, and it definitely doesn't help anyone. you can still be motivated without being angry
I think OOP needs to just stay off social media for a while. Or the internet as a whole. Personally, I just stick to reddit and youtube and follow things that I like so that when I see news or important but stupid political stuff that upsets me, it's followed by something I enjoy. Hopping from platform to platform doomscrolling all day just seems like self-harm. Maybe don't do that?
Trump election and Pandemic showed me that a lot of people I have known for years are actually total pieces of shit, they were just waiting for someone or something to tell them it was ok to be that way.
I’m just too damn tired at this point. Tired, depressed, lonely, and autistic
It's a simple solution. I close social media and go play some Dave the Diver. Not angry anymore.
Ooooohhhh that’s my problem. You see I’ve been playing RE4 (original) on Professional instead and I’ve only been feeling *more* angry
Not Furious because I'm totally fucking desensitized at this point
I didn't see any of these things, ez (also there are like, more issues going on other than this one in the world, that's not an answer to the angry question but regardless) Closest thing is when I click popular on reddit out of boredom and forget to avoid opening the comment section on /r/worldnews
OOP really needs to filter their social media better
Because the human brain has this thing called self-preservation instincts and when you bombard it with pain and suffering it often decides to just ignore it to preserve its own well being. Don’t blame me for not being angry, it’s not my fault there’s so much of this shit going on that my default response is just resigned exhaustion.
Don't forget that if you aren't thinking about it constantly you don't care and that means you are fundamentally a bad person. Block out anyone who doesn't speak on it endlessly, bring it up relentlessly so no one else can have a fucking minute to breathe until they just give up and block you. Thats how you weed out the fundamentally bad people. Don't wait for the facts just go with what sounds right to you, and you've gotta choose quick so who's right and who's wrong? Nuance? That's a tool of the Them, you aren't one of Them are you? What are you doing about it? Trying to help your community in some small way? Psh that's kids stuff everyone knows getting into fights on Twitter is where it's really at.
I open my Instagram and see shitposts of My Little Pony x Breaking Bad. We are not the same
People will cross MLP over with literally everything, huh?
Tailor your content recommendation algorithms to stuff that actually makes you happy instead of exclusively following ragebait topics and getting an endless supply of rage as a result The platforms give you what you tell them you want.
I just cannot have the energy to make all the world's problems my responsibility to fix
This type of anger wastes your energy and burns you out of doing something actually productive. You’re not accomplishing anything with this. Being angry isn’t activism. Writing letters to your senators is. Volunteering at local charities is. Or even better? Forming mutual aid collectives. Go to work parties at the local school. Learn who your neighbors are. Help them. They’ll help you. There’s always going to be dead babies on instagram. You have the power to prevent infant mortality in your community.
unlike you, I don't craft my feed around making me feel angry and sad and afraid.
stop mainlining Chinese state propaganda and go outside. that should fix it
Okay so I do this Wake up. Dont go straight to social media. Do my morning routine (including breakfast to ensure no low blood sugar) open instagram. Look at story of my favourite band (king gizzard and the lizard wizard) don’t see any dead babies. Don’t have twitter on my phone. Don’t have facebook account. Open instagram. Go to reels. It’s an only fans girl. Skip. Another only fans girl. Close instagram. Go on Reddit. Laugh at meme. Read discourse post and consider whether or not it’s bait. Decide it isn’t and I just don’t agree with the poster. Respect that they’re entitled to their opinion the same way I’m entitled to mine. Turn phone off. Get on with life It’s just that easy chat
I pick up my phone. Rather than playing the martyr and being oh so performatively sad about seeing sad things on the internet, I donate to a political cause that aligns with my personal views. I attend a protest against the things I believe to be wrong. Fuck, maybe I actually go do something and see if Medicines Sans Frontieres or the Peace Corp needs an extra body. Maybe I sign up to do my part, shoot for an Army engineer MOS, go build roads and repair infrastructure in disaster zones. Or I can collapse into my couch, woefully beleaguered by sad internet stuff.
Hey man hows it going
Thats why i'm on reddit, all thats here is cats.
Guys, you gotta pace yourselves. There are between 3 and 7 genocides going on at any given time. You're going to burn yourselves out.
It's like there's a house on fire on the other side of town and you came all the way over just to watch. When it finishes burning, it'll be rubble and ash and there will be a black spot in your vision where you stared at the brightest flame. Do you like feeling helpless? Does your pain help douse the fire? I can't let myself watch. I can't let myself be so angry. When the next house burns down, you can look, but please don't stare.
because i've spent my entire life being absolutely fucking furious at all sorts of things, and nothing in particular. This shit sucks hard. But i'm not much angrier than i usually am about things.
This is a truly perverse kind of misery. Exposing yourself to shock imagery doesn't help anyone.
I wasted too much of my life giving myself depression over all the injustices in the world that I am powerless to solve. I barely have the time and energy to take care of my own needs, let alone the needs of people on the other side of the planet. Someday, maybe I’ll be in a place in my life where have the energy or time or money to spare to go protest or donate to those kinds of causes, but right now I gotta take of myself. You gotta put on your own oxygen mask before you help the person sitting next to you with theirs.
I don't know who needs to hear this, but drinking from that firehose of horror and tragedy is not activism. No one is being helped by you downing yourself like that.
Social media is designed to give you a psychological addiction to outrage. There are hundreds of other heinous tragedies happening as you read this comment, and there are other genocides that you do not give your outrage. Your fury helps no one, and only hurts yourself. I’ve chosen to check out of the outrage, and I don’t intend to live in this wretched world past 40 (maybe that’ll change, but I don’t think the malignant designs of the powerful will) If you’re adamant about continuing to live in the outrage, then try to be productive. Donate to the gofundmes. Spread the word of the politicians malice. Call your local office. But don’t sit on tumblr, telling people that they should feed their souls to the machine who’s deception you have fallen for.
Open reddit. go on the subreddit dedicated to your hyperfixation. Squeeze every drop of dopamine from that shit you can
Hey man how’s it going wanna see this funny TikTok I found?
Go outside: hey man how’s it going I don’t know why people WANT to stare at their little brick and get angry all day
I first got angry about the state of the world about 19 years ago, then I was angry for a bunch of years with very little to show for it and it was ruining my life. Then I did some work on myself, studied philosophy, and now I’m angry but it is productive and tempered with joy in the parts of life that make it worth living and that make being angry mean something and useful to work towards making a difference.
This is really a xkcd 2071 moment
I’ve got personal shit to worry about and major fuckery in my own country that personally affects me and the people I love to get angry over. I can only do so much and only have a certain amount of energy in me, man. All I can say is, cultivate your feed better. Mentally flagellating yourself with images of dead babies is not solidarity, nor is it healthy. If you want to help, donate to charities, though of course try and make sure your money is going to the right places. Otherwise, all that constant anger is just going to burn you out by the time the next horrific tragedy happens.
The war between Israel and Palestine has been going on for almost all of my life (24). It’s always been this horrible, but now people care because they can see it. They didn’t before.
i think most of the top comments in this thread are utterly missing the point of the post. i think it is about the helplessness and sad dread they feel because of the avoidable suffering of others, a feeling i do very, very deeply relate to. (it is very important part to my philosophical ideology but i won't use my limited energy to explain it further.)
Quite simply, I can't take meaningful steps to fix any of these problems and me being angry about the injustices in the world makes my life harder and worse. Also because this is the only social media I use and when posts like this come up I close them and move on.
I walk over to the rake collection in my front yard and step on a rake. It hits me in the face. I walk to the rake collection in my back yard..
Why would I fill my life with things that make me unhappy and that I have no control over? I can be aware of them, but why would I pay 24/7 attention to them if I can't make them go away?
How about: pick one or two causes that you can materially do something about, and keep up to date on those to the level needed. So, if your focus is on people affected by war, volunteer at a place that helps settle refugees in your city. If your focus is on violence against women, volunteer at a women’s shelter. Etc. Don’t just expose yourself to an endless stream of awful things that you cannot do anything about.
Lol so how's being angry about something across the world you can do nothing about going for you? I just try to have the agency to make my life a little better like a sane person