I’m 43, almost 44, years old and went through a bought of alcoholism during the early part of the pandemic. I went through treatment and have been fine since. However, I can’t help but feel that all the news in the last few months is just the worst. Between the AI bullshit, the wars, the effects of capitalism, and the political situation in general it’s just the worst. Is it just me or have other folks noticed the same trend?
Edit: I should have also mentioned the enshitification of everything tech related.
Edit 2: Thanks for all the thoughtful replies. For some more context, yes I’m American and live in a state that’s about to ban the wearing of masks in public. I haven’t had a drink in over year and have been in therapy for 3 years. I don’t watch any news sources and rarely read media websites. But yet, that information seeps into my life somehow. I donate blood, I make charitable donations, and try to live a good life. I have 2 amazing kids and a great wife. It’s just hard to not end up in a doomer mindset at times. A Bitcoin company bought a power plant up here that has an existing lease to use a lake as cooling water, and it’s heated up the lake to the point that it’s killing fish.
Saiga antelope populations are recovering.
Crime rates dropping in US, multiple companies working with NASA for ISS access, direct observation of gravitational waves, left reddit for Lemmy, multiple COVID vaccines in like a year from outbreak, more usage of renewable energy sources, etc. There are some obvious problems we need to get together and address as communities, countries, and species, but there are a bunch of improvements and advancements being made too.
Massive drop in maternal mortality over the past century
This is enlightening. US maternal death rates compared to other industrialized nations.
That’s messed up
USA, 55th in the world overall, for maternal mortality in a 2018 study.
A fast look at the UNICEF data for 2020 shows 66th.
That’s behind the State of Palestine (61st), Moldova (46th), Albania (34th), Poland (3rd) and Belarus (1st).
https://data.unicef.org/topic/maternal-health/maternal-mortality/#data
It doesn’t help that news corps have found that we generally respond to the negative news much more than we do positive news.
That doesn’t invalidate the negative news, though. I mean, what good news do you think they’re not reporting that makes up for the actual shit going on in the world that has a real, tangible effect on people’s lives?
"Your future is completely fucked, from finances, to freedoms, to democracy, to the damn climate itself.
But, hey, the bees are coming back. For now, at least."
its the fight/flight response. negative news gets people afraid… literally gets their juices flowin. some people who have stopped watching faux news specifically mention the exhausting nature of the constant fear put forth by the ‘network’.
There have been many times in history when things have been far worse, so no, it’s not the worst. But many things are in decline right now. Democracy, digital privacy, trustworthiness of information, global peace, climate, the environment… humanity has to get back on track soon or the future looks pretty grim.
For millenials who have had it timed perfectly to get fucked over by the way of it all our entire life, and when the power is taken back it’ll skip over and be the next generation that follows… Sweet spot generation of pure fuck-assery after being promised an entirely different world. The revolution is coming… It had better. In my opiniom, the best you can do is focus on a more personally enriching life, and forget everyone else’s bullshit.
Graduated in 07. Gave all of my savings to my parents in 08 so they wouldn’t lose their house. Bumbled around for a decade and a half trying to get a degree and start my career only to get shit canned from an okay paying job mid-pandemic. Tripped over my own dick in to a great paying union job. Currently working too much overtime and saving every dime I can because I’ve seen enough shit.
Negativity and wedge issues sell. Keep your head up and don’t let them play you out. It’s all for money or power …or both.
Every time I see people try to blame the media on this, I look at my medical bills, I look at my bank account, I look at the temperature, I look at the cost of housing, I look at the vacant seats where my coworkers sat before they were let go, I look at the election results, I look at my sister who had her right to an abortion stolen, I look at the hateful people that vandalized my trans partner’s car…
And I think, damn…the media sure has some real reach, don’t they? They’re really going all out to make me miserable. I mean, this is some impressive commitment to a narrative. One day I’m gonna break free and live in this reality where “Everything is fine, actually” with the rest of you but first I gotta figure out how the media has me in the Truman Show situation.
Yeah, I can’t really put down all the bullshit in one post. When I say media that means the marketing companies that use it as tool as well. There’s a lot more to everything. Everything is so intertwined and deeply engrained. There is no good sides. All sides have good and bad. Etc… idk it’s paradox that can be investigated and thought over infinitely. …it’s life.
the media sure has some real reach, don’t they?
I mean, yeah pretty much. It’s been a few decades of sensationalism, anti-intellectualism, and capitalism-is-patriotism rhetoric, but we got here. It’s not entirely the media, but the media definitely has a huge impact.
agreed, life is tough, but remember: we didn’t start the fire!
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It’s pretty bad right now, but it’s not hopeless everywhere! There are some parts of the world that are getting developed for the first time though it’s probably approaching the end for America
I recommend not watching or reading the news. Spend your free time learning about hobbies or finding new ones, getting involved in local politics instead of national/global politics, improving yourself, and finding friends in communities around your hobby.
If you want some PC gaming friends that don’t talk about politics all the time, DM me. We’re in our late 20’s through 40’s.
i’m convinced that creating echo chamber cocoons are the reason why things are so fucked rn.
I’m not saying create an echo chamber, my advice excludes engaging with people who agree and disagree, at least when it comes to large scale politics. If someone wants to get involved in politics, I think they should avoid echo chambers and engage in good discussion. But for people who just want to or need to get away from it, disengaging entirely I think is the way to go. You can still get involved in local polics without engaging in larger politics. They often have direct impacts on your community and it varies wildly between different communities.
As mentioned by other commentators, negative, emotional news sell the best and the news nearly perfected this method during the last couple of years. Yes, it isn’t as good as pre pandemic times, but it’s not the worst. For me it really helped to limit my news time to max. once a day (like in the past with the newspaper in the morning or a news show in the evening) and watching things called “good news”. In Germany some TV shows have this category so I never searched it on social media or YouTube, but I bet there are some channels/pages dedicated to good news (like there is a new treatment for disease XY or here is a good step in the fight against climate change, but sometimes just news like “the big panda isn’t as endangered as it was”.
Only thing that is worse in my mind is the “media” no longer news and “social media” both are largely negative and both are full of misinformation these days.
Housing costs may also be a negative…
Other than that MOST things seem better, we just can’t enjoy anything since the media/social media keeps telling us what we should fear and hate.
Other than that MOST things seem better
This is obviously going to be a discussion that’s going to vary greatly from place to place and region to region, but I honestly what to know what you think this.
This is going to be pretty American-centric, and even then pretty specific to my region, but that’s certainly not the case here. Cost of living has skyrocketed, wages have hardly budged, and people are really, really struggling.
Now, we’ve obviously made some amazing progress in recent history. As fucked as it still is and as far as we still have to go, I think gay rights is probably one of the best examples of this. Even with all the bullshit we continue to see, we’re miles ahead of 20 years ago.
But the overall trend, even internationally, is incredibly worrying. People’s standards of living are decreasing, far right nationalistic populist movements are gaining momentum nearly everywhere you look, and we’re actively watching multiple genocides happen in front of our eyes. Famines are already being massively exacerbated by climate change, you just don’t hear about them because they’re happening in poor countries. Everything points to all our previous warnings about climate change being incredibly conservative. I personally have next to zero hope in the world’s government’s to do a damn thing about it.
Don’t get me wrong, there is absolutely still the possibility for a good ending. These are all problems than can be solved. We even know how to solve a good chunk of them. Just have to actually find the political to force it.
Cost of living has skyrocketed, wages have hardly budged, and people are really, really struggling.
True… However it does appear to be slowing a bit for both the US and Canada
People’s standards of living are decreasing
Famines are already being massively exacerbated by climate change, you just don’t hear about them because they’re happening in poor countries.
https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-conditions
There is far less poverty in the world today than in the past.
Everything points to all our previous warnings about climate change being incredibly conservative.
Probably true, but we also appear to be on the edge of a massive move away from fossil fuels to renewables with the cost of solar dropping, grid level battery systems replacing old coal / natural gas peaker plants etc and the move is no longer just about the “environment” these technologies are in some ways superior or cheaper as well which will accelerate adoption
True… However it does appear to be slowing a bit for both the US and Canada
And until the relationship between cost of living and wages reverses, not just slows down, we’re simply talking about things getting worse less quickly, not getting better
There is far less poverty in the world today than in the past.
Generally true, and this is largely from developing nations starting to have a growing middle class. Unfortunately, all signs point towards that middle class inevitably being consumed by the owner class, as we have watched and are watching the tail end of in the west.
Not sure what that has to do with the famines being caused by climate change though, especially as they are rapidly getting worse. Look at what’s happening currently in Madagascar. This is at a global temperature increase well below where we thought these things would start happening. That’s not even considering that all this is happening while Europe’s biggest breadbasket is currently the home of the 2nd worst war since WW2.
Probably true, but we also appear to be on the edge of a massive move away from fossil fuels to renewables with the cost of solar dropping, grid level battery systems replacing old coal / natural gas peaker plants etc and the move is no longer just about the “environment” these technologies are in some ways superior or cheaper as well which will accelerate adoption
While true, we are still accelerating our carbon production. Like the CoL/Wage thing, unless we see an outright drastic reversal, we are simply talking about things getting worse less quickly, not getting better. This isn’t an issue we can simply continue saying “oh science will just figure it out” on. We’ve been saying that since at least the 60s. Unless we get sweeping, drastic action from multiple large governments, and we get it very soon, nothing is going to change.
That’s also assuming we are actually “on the edge of a massive move away from fossil fuels to renewables”. We’ve been “on the edge” of that for seemingly forever now.
None of this even touches on the overt slide towards far right authoritarianism half the world seems to have taken.
Look, I legitimately try my best to stay optimistic about the future, but it is ridiculously naive to say the future looks brighter today than at the turn of the millennium.
It’s the end of things being easy, that’s for sure. But maybe that’s okay.
Humanity is in for a wild ride with climate change coming. It will upend entire food chains, let alone nations.
Sure, there’s definitely been worse and more unstable periods in history before, but what’s coming is very likely going to make those look tame in comparison.
I fully expect Eco-Fascism to take hold at some and the very people who denied the existence of climate change will demand full control of the last vestiges of the planets resources because in their minds only they are smart and capable enough to dole out what’s left to the plebeians.
In other words, things have been a hell of a lot worse and could get a hell of a lot worse. Instead of waiting in anticipation for the worst that may inevitably happen, do your best to lead a good, kind, and loving life with the people close to you. Things feel like they’re getting worse all the time, and hell, maybe they really are…
But well better to count your blessings now than to waste your life acting like it’s all already as bad as it can be or that the badness is just around the corner. Maybe it is just around the corner. Even more reason to savor the little joys of life while you still have them and to build connections in your community while there’s still time to build Mutual Aid networks. Those things alone can make a dark future easier to suffer, community and fond memories.
You’re telling’ me. The amount if “once in a lifetime” crises I’ve experienced is too damn high. I’m going to be 30 this year and I’ll never be able to afford a house.
If it makes you feel any better I’m 40 and I’ll never afford a house either. Millennials got screwed.
No it doesn’t, you deserve a home.
I’m not saying it’s social media, but it’s social media. You’re connected to negativity 24/7. The algorithm feeds on negativity because that is what makes us stay on there.
I’ve got something to change your thinking. At least it helped me 17 years ago.
Hans Rosling - The best stats you’ve ver seen
I don’t want to dismiss the facts. There are terrible things going on but overall we’re living our best lives at the same time.
Rutger Bregman | Where do we go from here?
And hey! I’m 43 too. You have a whole life ahead of you. You still can go in any direction you want to go in.
I don’t want to dismiss the facts. There are terrible things going on but overall we’re living our best lives at the same time.
You are dismissing the facts, then.
You could only truly believe this if you’re a financially stable, healthy, gainfully employed, cis white man. Because for everyone else in the States at least, life is getting harder. You can cite all the statistics you like about the globe, but that’s not relevant to what people experience in their own lives.
And more importantly, the things that people are depressed about are the things that are getting worse, and on track to keep getting worse. A video about statistics in 2007 isn’t accounting for what we know in 2024 is coming in the future. The outlook is far more grim now.
People have been saying this about social media and the news for a long long time, and every single time they fail to take the context into account. People said this in 2016, too. “Your anxiety is just the media riling you up”. Then the anxiety ended up being a very accurate thing to feel, and in the years after, the real world events caused negative effects on people’s lives.
The world is not a TV show. What happens in the news, what people talk about on social media, no matter how negative it skews, those things happen in real life, not a vacuum. Many of them affect you in ways you can’t even comprehend, and many of them affect you in very obvious ways that some people just seem to want to overlook.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Hans Rosling - The best stats you’ve ver seen
Rutger Bregman | Where do we go from here?
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I know you already got this but here is it again in my own words: don’t watch the news, don’t read social media, make personal connections one on one with people and judge your life by your vision and lens. Most people are judging it through a distorted news or social media centric set of glasses and it sounds hopeless. But when you look at your own family and friends you might just realise they’re better than you think, you’re able to find time to play and connect, you can still work and live with comfort, and your kids can grow up strong and healthy.
Start discarding that which is not truely part of your life, ignore the billionaires, the enshitification and all other forms of uncontrollable and frankly, barely affects you. These societal issues are always painted with someone else’s view point.
When you find something that does directly, without someone else telling you it does, affect you, and you’re in the mentally healthy place to take on that challenge, that’s when you Ave. If you think about it like that, and others did the same, most of our societal problems would be tasked by those who are in positions to do so.
I say this as someone who’s currently on 24/7 standby watching someone kind of like you, but going through depression, going through hopelessness, and going through addiction recovery (with all the slip ups). And their life right now is made, but they’re so busy fixated on issues they can’t either control nor have affects on them. They’ve got a house, it’s part paid off, they’ve got a well paying job, the owners of that job respect and offering pay rises to them, they’ve got a partner, who’s struggling their best to help them. In isolation they’re in luxury. But they get self worked up about other people’s business and societal or global issues. For what good? Stay grounded and self aware. Be thankful to yourself for making it so far already, and see the upward trends over the entire life and not the tiny problems of today.
Everything does suck. But it will suck whether you pay attention to it or not. Unplug whenever you need to. If you’re in the US that goes double at least through the election. Also, something that really helped me out of a similar pit of despair, was finding ways to volunteer. Getting face to face with some problems you can actually do something about (i.e, feeding hungry people) is a good way to ground yourself. Good luck out there.
Do you know how much better we would all be doing as a country if we had no access to “news”?
I’m sixty-two and I think one reason we feel so anxious and depressed all the time is because we have more information than we have ability to act.
Think of the myriad threats there are to the earth and humanity. If we ALL undertook to fix them together, there’s still the question of priority. We can’t do everything at once.
And most global problems require a unanimous response. Like the United Nations, if one country votes NO, you can’t make progress. So unless we plan on a global war over climate, or plastics, or AI, or humanitarian treatment of humans, it’s going nowhere.
We have elected officials who CAN effect the change that’s needed. They are trained. They have inside information that we don’t. They have access to technologies and resources we don’t. We absolutely have to make the best choices for our elected leaders that we can, and then trust them to do the right thing. But, after that, we can’t continue to let it eat us up.
I’m with Dory on this one. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.
I disagree. Back in maybe the 60s the public broadcast networks were not fully beholden to investors, did not have competition from the internet, and didn’t have to do 24 hours of news. As a result, they had time to do responsible reporting. The current power structure encourages news media to do whatever it takes to grab your attention and hold it, and the best way to do that is fear.
I have not fully cut out the news from my life. There are some channels on YouTube that do good reporting like Sir Swag and of course Phillip DeFranco.
Another thing to point out is that, assuming you are American, we are in an election year. News companies really ramp up the fear mongering on election years.
What part are you disagreeing with? We sound the same, kinda, to me.
I don’t think the amount of information is the problem, just the way it is presented to us.
IMHO, my mental health improved significantly after substituting Lemmy for Reddit and Mastodon for facebook/insta/etc. Or maybe I’ve just gotten better at being unattached to digital life and social pressure
Well, I’ll say this much.
You certainly know how to gling.
Thats a reference to a relatively famous linguistics study lol. A bunch of children were given questions such as “This is a man who knows how to gling. He is glinging. He did the same thing yesterday. Yesterday he _____.” or presenting them with a wug and then asking what the plural of wug is. The children had very consistent answers to these nonsense grammar questions, showing that grammar rules are mainly learned through experience instead of being memorized for each word.
Huh! I might have guessed that, but it’s always good to get a study to back up things.
So, “I have glinged”, or “I have glung?”
