I do notice that it takes more effort though. Before online platforms figured out the whole engagement outrage pattern, I spent a lot of time playing video games, yes, but also reading books or making art.
Then the online platforms started investing in trying to figure out how to engage you, and it is easier and easier to spend time online by default to the exclusion of other things and feel bad about it because your online time wasn’t spent on something that made you feel good like it did in the past. It is surprisingly hard to resist the current big platforms are trying to push us down.
People on the Threadiverse have taken at least a small step by disengaging from Reddit and going to an open-source, non-corporate-controlled engagement-maxing platform. But human negativity bias still makes it a lot easier to post outrage and comment outrage and get in fights. Hell, I am making this comment because of my own negativity bias and desire to expound on how much I hate what has been done to our attention spans! It’s a lot easier to complain than to analyze why I enjoy something. And I think the engagement bait outrage has ruined my brain a bit to still sort of seek that out and scroll (but better Lemmy than Reddit). I’ve been trying to get off but change is hard. Sometimes I relapse and click an article I know will have negativity and anger, like this article I clicked on.
I do really appreciate what you did by posting something to help instead of yet another “thing bad” even if I super agree with “thing bad”, and I’m being part of the “thing bad” pattern right now.
I do notice that it takes more effort though. Before online platforms figured out the whole engagement outrage pattern, I spent a lot of time playing video games, yes, but also reading books or making art.
Then the online platforms started investing in trying to figure out how to engage you, and it is easier and easier to spend time online by default to the exclusion of other things and feel bad about it because your online time wasn’t spent on something that made you feel good like it did in the past. It is surprisingly hard to resist the current big platforms are trying to push us down.
People on the Threadiverse have taken at least a small step by disengaging from Reddit and going to an open-source, non-corporate-controlled engagement-maxing platform. But human negativity bias still makes it a lot easier to post outrage and comment outrage and get in fights. Hell, I am making this comment because of my own negativity bias and desire to expound on how much I hate what has been done to our attention spans! It’s a lot easier to complain than to analyze why I enjoy something. And I think the engagement bait outrage has ruined my brain a bit to still sort of seek that out and scroll (but better Lemmy than Reddit). I’ve been trying to get off but change is hard. Sometimes I relapse and click an article I know will have negativity and anger, like this article I clicked on.
I do really appreciate what you did by posting something to help instead of yet another “thing bad” even if I super agree with “thing bad”, and I’m being part of the “thing bad” pattern right now.
I do know of !takeyourtimeback@lemmy.world which might be able to help with the whole online engagement problem.