It seems like no matter how I scroll I find bad news. I know lots of things are happening but I just want funny memes and interesting stories.
I used to be able to get this back in the day on the Reddit app feed, but here the all page is always just depressing stuff. Back then, there was news and stuff but like it felt more balanced in the all feed. I could get bad stuff but lots of interesting stuff too .
I find myself engaging less and less and just avoiding Lemmy more and more since I know the moment I open it I’ll get whacked with more depressing stuffs.
I don’t want politics or world news or really even memes about that stuff anymore. Heck even tech news is depressing. I just want simple scrolling of fun content. Idk it’s just hard to describe.
Does anyone else feel this way about their Lemmy experience?
I remember an old post about someone getting AM radio from their sink (probably from Reddit back in the day). That type of stuff is so much cooler than my feed.
To that end: any recommended active communities on Lemmy with that type of stuff?
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Does anyone else feel this way about their Lemmy experience?
Yes. I usually stick to fandom communities where I post some cool fanart and chat about latest books I have read. I avoid all feed at all cost.
I hoped that [email protected] would be the same as r/[email protected] but the comments are night and day in there. I still repost stuff but a drive to make OC memes is just not there.
I usually hang out in [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected]
P.S. Also my polish instance szmer.info doesn’t have as bad ALL feed as the lemmy.world due to people that don’t care about US politics and not subscribing to those communities.
Step 1: don’t browse the All feed. I dunno how Reddit was okay for you, visiting r/all was always full of Trump this Trump that every 5 minutes.
Block news subs.
Block Lemmy.ml, hexbear, and dbzer0, then make your own list of keywords to block (Trump, Elon, murder, angry, etc etc)
You can block keywords? I just see communities, users, and instances in my block settings.
Yep, my block list is long. It’s updated occasionally. I call it “weeding the digital garden”. Negatively sprouts everywhere and it’s imperative to cull it asap.
The way I see it there’s far too many things in the digital world to care about, so I just care about basically none of them. I’d rather spend energy loving the people I love than being angry at what I see on the internet.
The internet is full of slacktivism and I find it’s more worthwhile to do something good rather than critiquing the bad and doing nothing.
Same as reddit: Subscribe to communities you like then only look at those.
Yes and no, since lemmy has a smaller user base certain type of content will have a much higher presence than reddit. And when 5 instances are all posting from the same source, that will saturate the platform.
If every new user immediately gets turned off by it, because curating your homepage is like step 2, then lemmy will continue struggling with retaining new users.
Lemmy doesn’t really have enough users for the same type of mindless only scrolling in communities you like from what I’ve seen. On reddit I’m subscribed to 2 drama subs Gentoo sub and a few others. There is enough content in that for me to just scroll that instead of all.
on the other hand here I find my subscriptions literally don’t get new posts. It’s fine I’m getting used to it but it means I’m using the all equivalent far more often.
I use all a lot too but I still curate my subscriptions when I want a calmer experience (500+ subscriptions mind).
One trick is to sometimes sort by scaled which allows posts from less active communities to rise
Yeah it’s a shame. I still like it better than reddit but damn. Civilization 7 is coming out in a few days and I haven’t seen a single post.
Make one! I’m sure you’re not the only one here anticipating it. [email protected]
Edit:fixed link
Add a filter for anything political that comes to mind, subscribe to fun instances (history memes, anime, shitposting)
In your Lemmy account settings, set your default feed to ‘subscribed’ instead of ‘all’.
When you open the app or log in on your browser you will only see communities you’ve subscribed to.
It will greatly improve your (and everyone else’s) experience if you subscribe to positive communties and participate in them.
You are 100% correct, negative news has a greater impact on people than positive: https://assets.csom.umn.edu/assets/71516.pdf
Media sites know this, and use it to drive engagement:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4 https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/social-media-facebook-twitter-politics-b1870628.html
And so, negative headlines are getting worse: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0276367
But negative news is addictive and psychologically damaging: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/why-we-worry/202009/the-psychological-impact-negative-news
So it’s important to try and stay positive:
https://www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/benefits-of-good-news
If you want a break from the constant negativity, here are some sites that report specifically on positive news:
- https://www.goodgoodgood.co/
- https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/
- https://fixthenews.com/
- https://positivenewsfoundation.org/
- https://www.onlygoodnewsdaily.com/
And here’s 35 more: https://news.feedspot.com/good_news_websites/
Some communities on Lemmy you might be interested in:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- https://lemmy.world/c/hopeposting
- https://lemmy.world/c/worldinprogress
- https://lemmy.world/c/climatehope
Remember, realistic optimism is important and, unlike what some might have you believe, is not the same as blissful ignorance or ‘burying your head in the sand’: https://www.learning-mind.com/realistic-optimism-blind-positivity/
https://www.centreforoptimism.com/realisticoptimism
And doesn’t mean you must stay uninformed on current affairs: https://www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/how-to-stop-doom-scrolling
https://goodable.co/blog/tips-for-balancing-positive-and-negative-news/
kbin.social is dead btw… if you post there it won’t federate and only people on your instance will see your post.
Why don’t you just keep away from c/all and stick to your subscribed communities?
To discover new communities, I suggest subscribing to c/newcommunities
besides [email protected] there’s also [email protected] and [email protected]
plus you can always just look through the “communities” listing – in the web interface it’s at the top of the page, just select “communities” and “all”.
That’s my approach - once in a while I take a peek at /all, get stressed out and quickly retreat to my curated home again.
Yeah lemmy has bit too much political content. Americans seem very obsessed with it. I just kept blocking all of them and now my feed is pretty free of political nonsense. If I want that kind of content i’ll just read the news paper or go to my news feed of choice
To be fair, a large slice of the user base is in the US and currently everything is collapsing around us. It should come as no surprise that we complain about it a lot. The mods of various communities could certainly enforce rules more; e.g. in shitposting or memes, remove any political content. It would help the situation.
Lol than your country has been collapsing for the last 2+ years, cus it’s always dominated by politics on lemmy.
It’s a difficult balance to strike, since enforcing content also feels like going against the foss ethos… It’s tricky. But just keep promoting Lemmy and the fediverse and some day we will have a more balanced experience
I agree. And yes, the last 2+ years have been a political shit show, because we were scared shitless of what has now happened.
Unfortunately there’s almost nothing left once you’ve blocked all that. I’m close to leaving. No one will miss me, whatever. Occasionally I have a nice interaction though.
Won’t argue with that, 70% is Linux and Politics combined. I do enjoy the “small scale forum” feel, but indeed after scrolling for 30 minutes you will probaly have consumed most of the content for the coming 48hours. After that, shamefully admitting, it’s back to reddit and tiktok.
I’ve been using as an impetus to pick up a book instead, or do something constructive. I get my shot of dopamine, but since it has an end I am forced to do other things.
I’m in the same place. Avoiding politics is not only for my mental health.
In my case, for personal as well as professional reasons, I particularly need to avoid communities where advocating for political violence is tolerated (and in some even condoned.)
I blocked all the politics-specific or adjacent communities, but most of Lemmy seems to want everything to be about politics.
That’s way too toxic for me so I have to detach from Lemmy. I deleted my main account and I’m going to come back in a few months to see if it has calmed down.
Pornography is never bad news. Normalize more pornography in your life
i blocked every single news and politics communities, as well as all the “*** infuriating” ones, it has drastically improved the content of my timeline :)
It will also significantly reduce the amount of content being displayed on my feed
sure, but i feel we can’t escape “news” anyway, so i don’t mind having less of it in one place
Isn’t it the whole idea? ;)
Less content ≠ less procrastination
Less content ≠ less procrastination
And?
English is not my first language (so, looking at your pseudo, by all means help me improve my grammar my dear officer) but it seemed to me the OP was looking to remove some crap from their timeline, not to procrastinate less:
It seems like no matter how I scroll I find bad news. I know lots of things are happening but I just want funny memes and interesting stories.
Yeah, but in response to OP’s post i made the comment that there’s less content for me to procrastinate with. I’m mainly referring to myself
It should make less depressing content emerge
Well that’s the dream innit?
Free content:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Phasellus et massa sagittis velit condimentum placerat at et dui. Sed et vehicula ex. Integer et risus ac dolor volutpat fringilla.
My wife was killed by a lorem ipsum you insensitive bastard.
Removed by mod
I think places like Lemmy are better suited for discussions and ofc ongoing events and politics are a huge part of that.
Have you tried 9gag and other more “lightweight” and meme oriented platforms?
This seems really pedantic. Recommending 9gag because someone does not want to see constant bad news is just a but out there.
You have to block A LOT of communities. In fact, blocking communities is more important than subscribing to them!
Also: https://lemmy.today/post/22524765
Also: Voyager (or other apps) with filters for keywords.
In fact, blocking communities is more important than subscribing to them!
I browse Subscribed. Whitelisting communities is almost certainly going to be a lot more aggressive than browsing All and blacklisting communities.
True actually. Browsing Subscribed is better than All. Although, you have to venture out into All to find new communities to subscribe to.
I also found switching between Hot and Active sorts mixes things up.
Agreed. I block several communities a day.
Same. I try to always block at least 3 new sports team channels before breakfast, so that the sport ball updates don’t completely overwhelm my brief trips into all.
I love that this is a great place for local sports, but it’s not my thing.
I’ve taken a bit of a different approach. I’ve been using a keyword filter to remove posts that contain any words I don’t care to read about. So no posts about trump, Elon, RFK, cyber trucks, etc.
I am not here to get that kind of news, I do that separately with the news sources I can trust and verify. Otherwise any tabloid or sensational opinion piece can potentially try to ruin my day all in the name of getting clicks
This is the way. I blocked keywords relating to Trump, Musk and the far right extremist party in my own country the other day and while some stuff still gets through it has made Lemmy significantly more pleasant to browse.
I can read about that stuff elsewhere if I really want to, but honestly I think we might not even be in this mess if the media didn’t amplify those voices every time they said or did something outrageous.
I implemented the filters using the Voyager app, but I think most Lemmy clients have similar options. On desktop my instance offers Tesseract which also allows filtering by keywords.
I do think it’s important to keep up to date. Even discounting the things I can’t control getting through my filters, there have been things that have directly affected my family and their jobs because of things Trump has done and I did not know about until after the fact. There is a line somewhere that you should be aware of, or else you may just be burying your head in the sand.
Separately, I use boost for Lemmy on android. Thank you for telling me about tesseract. I haven’t been as successful with any keyword filters in browser
Voyager also has a web app interface that has keyword filtering which works well for me. https://vger.app/
