when i read books, make an effort to train my feed, talk to my friends who i know will be polite, dont click on videos that seem off etc. i feel like im lying to myself about reality and guarding myself from the ”real” honesty of some crude places on the internet. i also feel like monitoring what malicious comments say is just checking out the new social norms and that if i dont see what they say i will step out of line socially and do something embarassing. it just feels a bit humiliating and pathetic. when i do something innocuous its like i have a very evil comment section in my head saying very mean things. realistically i know that the title isnt true but i wonder if anybody feels the same.
The internet has irreparably changed “reality” to the point that it became a total choose-your-own-adventure game where the only constants are misery and still having to pay your pound of flesh at the capital factory if you wanna keep playing the game. There’s not really gonna be a way to escape this condition any time soon, but the upside is that the negativity is just as arbitrarily imposed by the system as the positivity.
If you feel this way, consider whether you’ve fallen for the trap of confusing realism and pessimism; you do have a duty to live in the real world but not to make it as dark and gloomy as possible.
An additional thought: social media has an undeniable tendency toward toxic positivity which naturally causes this kind of reaction, too. The fakeness of the online world’s positivity makes us feel like the real world’s negativity is itself the thing that makes the real world real (because the online world is identified by its fakeness). But this is not strictly true. It’s possible the online world is all good and fake yet the real world is not all bad just because it’s the opposite.
Also a paragraph from the wiki article on Byung Chul Han
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byung-Chul_Han
In The Burnout Society (original German title: Müdigkeitsgesellschaft), Han characterizes today’s society as a pathological landscape of conditions such as depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, borderline personality and burnout. He claims that they are not “infections” but “infarcts”, which are not caused by the negativity of people’s immunology, but by an excess of positivity.[14] According to Han, driven by the demand to persevere and not to fail, as well as by ambitions of efficiency, we become committers and sacrificers at the same time and enter a swirl of demarcation, self-exploitation and collapse. In Psychopolitics, Han explains that “When production is immaterial, everyone already owns the means of production, him- or herself. The neoliberal system is no longer a class system in the proper sense. It does not consist of classes that display mutual antagonism. This is what accounts for the system’s stability.”[15]
The demarcation bit is what I’m talking about here, we define ourselves in relation to the expectations we get from online culture but we have to correct for the online world’s biases (as you’re doing). In that process we run the risk of overcorrecting.
I have had the nightmare goggles on for a long time and can’t take them off but I view most of it not worth engaging with
There is nothing wrong from taking a step back and being more guarded…
I hope im not misinterpreting what you are saying…but no.
I sometimes engage with very toxic spaces on the internet (when/if) I feel like it. But obviously that would be tiresome to do so all the time.
I dont feel bad abstaining from social media that is actively harmful to my mental well being and in fact I should probably do so more often.
in fairness i have been dealing with things like domestic problems, and some pretty serious losses but i get like, obsessive about being outside lately.
when i start feeling like the world is shit, the outdoors - like shaded tree-covered areas - are so awesome. I get friends and family concerned about how much time i spend out there and hey it’s obviously some trauma shit on some level, but the air quality is better and the open spaces feel safer. People going about being normal reminds me that for the most part, the acute selection of evil things the algorithms curate for us isn’t actually the norm
I mean usually, I witnessed somebody dying after a shooting yesterday right next to where I live and that was an acute reminder that this stuff does exist and it’s kinda near always
it’s just… there is a hell of a lot more in the world that’s inviting of good than there is of stuff that’s just straight up cooked by evil or w/e
the ground is fertile for a better world, we kinda just gotta reach for it without being idiots about it
I have social anxiety and low self esteem. I am always worried that people think poorly of me and it will cause problems. The root cause is my parents’ mistreatment of me, but there are many factors that fuel it, including social media.
My version of an evil comment section in my head is my parents. I have to remind myself that they were wrong, I do not deserve punishment for trying my best. Criticism can be helpful, but avoid tearing yourself down. Mistakes are natural. Punishment does not help us avoid mistakes. Patient, thoughtful correction is more effective. It’s not all-or-nothing.
Please be kind to yourself. 🙂
Nah fuck that, Hexbear has been the closest to social media I’ve consumed for years, I usually leave the comment section hidden when I watch things on YT. I know there’s awful people out there but that’s like choosing to drink from a gutter when you’re not thirsty. Would recommend when you have these ideas that you’re hiding from reality that you think about how much astroturfing goes on and that the people who are spewing bile and smearing shit on the walls of whatever corner of the internet they inhabit are a relative minority.
Have you looked into Morality OCD? This sounds similar to a friend I know.
But to answer your question. Human nature is always more complicated then people want to give it credit. It is not good but it is not bad either. It can and has done both. Sometimes at the same time. Just because you don’t want to look at the worst of human nature doesn’t mean you are lying to yourself.
