I grew up pre-internet and only embraced it at uni, early www time. I grew up not having a mobile phone because they didn’t exist, went to the local (crappy) library if I wanted a map of the world or to do any form of research. Things most people today can do it seconds involved having to get up, go out, and interact with people one way or another.
I rushed out one day and forgot my phone and headphones. I got about 40m away before realising and thought ‘meh’. Didn’t make any difference to my day.
I look at what I do today, and even typing this wouldn’t really have been possible some 25-30 years ago, unless it was in an email to someone I probably personally knew. I only had read-only access to usenet.
Now, everyone (and any bot) can write text on to another computer that others can be influenced by.
Posts that are clearly attempting to manipulate me are everywhere - propaganda thrived in the newspapers, on the radio, the television, and now internet. He who wins, gets to write history.
Having so much information at my fingertips (both biased and factual) mean I actually need to interact with the world less because any inquisition can be solved within seconds.
So now, I’m actively stepping away from the online and want you encourage you to do it too! I’ve started to read a physical book, ask more people questions forget my phone more often, and take a better look at the world around me, and things are so much more quieter!
“Muh anxieties” have no excuse because I need to forget about them to do stuff.
We’re actually becoming a world of isolated people falling into particular funnels that shape us. Break free now and do something afk that scares you. Put your phone down, leave it at home when you go out, ask a stranger for directions.
You owe no online community anything, especially not your short-lived time.
@catty@lemmy.world
I tried to but I couldn’t. Infact my original purpose on the Fediverse was to make new friends which are meaningful. I even made a Friendica account because I thought to myself “Friendica is a Fediverse alternative to Facebook and Facebook was THE place to go to make new friends a decade ago. Maybe I’ll make some new friends on Friendica…” boy oh boy I was so wrong! All that there was in Friendica was posts screaming “oRaNgE mAn bAd!!!1!!1!!” and Snopes bot posting links to their news articles. Nothing else. There’s no way to make friends in that environment. Facebook was not like that 10 years ago, I know that because I was there 10 years ago! Facebook was not political 10 years ago, but now both Facebook and the Fediverse are overtly political. Infact, I feel Fediverse is more political than corporate social media. All I see on the Fediverse are political posts (esspecially about Trump and Musk) and Linux posts. If you don’t like these both, you’ll be alienated here very soon. I’m apolitical and a Windows user. I don’t feel welcome in the Fediverse. It’s hostile. In fact I had to lie about using Gentoo in my last comment (the last time I used Linux was 2 years ago) because I know how toxic c/linuc_gaming is to Windows users. I feel all of the Fediverse is filled with political opinions on the extreme sides of the spectrum and the users are mostly Linux cult members. Let me go below in detail on WHY it is so:
As all alternate social media platforms birth from some sort of protest/activism/boycott, the best example is how Shittit (Reddit) API changes gave birth to Shitmmy (Lemmy) and Deadbin (Mbin). Alternate platforms usually give space to de-platformed individuals (Lemmy is created by Dessalines and Nutomic, both of them are hardcore tankies and genocide deniers. They got banned from Reddit for their genocide denial). In the past Alt social medias gave space for the far right and alt-right, now it’s far left and alt-left. Nothing different. Just look at what shitshow is going on in Shitsky (Bluesky) and Shitlight social (Skylight social)! Every post is “Orange man bad!”, “MAGA Bad!”. I gave Shitlight social a try and couldn’t stand it! The folks there are chronically online and so deluded that they think everyone is MAGA, like for example: there was a video where a young 11 year girl drove her parents car to the supermarket to buy something and crashed the car into the supermarket, the comments were like “The parents are Trump supporters!”. I was like WTF! There was no media coverage of this incident (at the point when the video was made), the video was filmed by someone inside the supermarket, no other context, no nothing! And those deluded people were screaming “Her parents are Trump supporters!” without even knowing the girl’s name! To them everyone is a Trump supporter. Every alt media platform is filled with individuals on the extreme sides of the political spectrum. No alt media platform is suitable for making meaningful friendships. That includes Lemmy, Mbin and PieFed. After typing all this out I’m thinking to myself “maybe I should leave the Fediverse and try to make new friends elsewhere…”.
Thank you for typing all this out - I concur on a lot of things, especially the politics. Once you mute the political communities, lemmy is nothing but gaming, linux, trans, and German and Danish communities about politics! All the noise across networks I suspect is from a lot of bots. For many years (even before LLMs), it’s always been fairly easy to automatically create text posts to persuade and manipulate. Now, with the advent of LLMs, they can adapt to relevant communities and your specific post history to create hard-hitting “OMG someone is wrong on the internet and I must correct them” noise, either to keep you engaged (a la facebook) or to manipulate you or others vicariously.
Just think, all that time and effort you put into typing your response (even if you can type > 100 wpm), you could have spent looking for a real-life community to join - board game clubs, a local coffee / tea cafe and you’ll soon be talking to the regulars, a pub, even for a coffee (especially during the day time) and so on
Start with easy openly friendly people and work your way up. Or just jump in to speed dating and be stupid with it!