I (23M) am becoming increasingly aware that my regular exposure to political content seems to be incompatible with my own mental well-being.
I was raised by two narcissistic parents, one of whom was violent. I have very few positive or loving memories. My trauma turned my brain into a 24/7 threat detector. I’m constantly thinking about everything and everyone that could kill me or take everything I have.
The Internet has taught me that the world is less awful than the hellish place I came from. But I’ve hit a wall where I can’t get better because I am constantly being reminded by well-meaning people that everything in the U.S. is going to shit.
My trauma narrative eats this stuff up. It sees fascists on the streets, impending financial and ecological crises, the dangers of cars, widespread hyperindividualism, the decline of third spaces, and constant phone and social media use. Then it says, “Nobody can be trusted because capitalism makes everyone shallow and selfish. Going outside is dangerous because of cars and fascists. Most people don’t want to socialize because they are too busy. There are no good places to meet anyone. Everyone who does socialize is just a fair-weather friend because support is outsourced to paid therapy and the eroding welfare system. I’ll never be good enough for a partner because I can’t build a stable life and dating apps are designed to not work. Any job I get won’t last long because of the collapsing economy. Going to college is too financially risky. There is no stability. Nothing good ever lasts. My progress will be wiped out by systemic forces far beyond my control.”
It seems like U.S. politics is about instability and collapse at this point, and because I have so few positive memories, it feels like life itself is about instability and collapse. Your money, your job, your social circle, your health, everything you’ve worked for – all of it could just go up in smoke tomorrow. I can’t take anything for granted or have any confidence in the future. I can’t fully enjoy anything because I’m too busy thinking about how I’ll cope with its inevitable loss.
Is this really what life is? Just watching every good thing disappear? Being born into a mostly-functioning society just to watch it fall apart? Knowing you’ll have to weather every struggle alone because people only care about themselves? Being promised a stable life and career all throughout school only for the rug to be pulled at the last minute?
There has to be more to life than this.
Is staying on the Internet really worth it?
(Also yes I go to therapy, I’m working on myself but that shit is hard af sometimes)
Get off the internet and pay attention to real life. Is this what “touch grass” means? Even politics used to be about reality but we’re in an age of internet politics that’s entirely toxic. Yes the internet can be toxic and we’d all be more healthy with less of it
all of it could just go up in smoke tomorrow.
It always could. The only difference is now you have people shouting on the internet about it and politicians who seem intent on causing it.
But even in the places with the most toxic politics, it usually won’t. Even where the hatred spite and racism is the worse, the reality is your neighbors and commutative more impact.
There are many good people in the world coming up with good solutions to problems we have, who are being held back by the bad people in charge.
Ah man. Kind of sounds like my internal thoughts sometimes, also was in an abusive household, entire family is maga and insane (potential mental disorders)
I definitely feel for you being that age in this shitty timeline. I won’t sugar coat it. Today’s world is shit. Everything was demonstratably better in the US 20 years ago. Especially for anyone interested in tech.
Youre right. Everything could go to shit tomorrow. I think this daily, I could get cancer and have a week to live, or damage my brain and be unable to work or do anything I enjoy forever.
Keep reading, I’m not done!
However ive found that turning that negative thinking into “I dont give a fuck” has really turned shit around for me. I’m here, I can’t choose my family, but beyond that, I can choose my friends and how I live my life and doing what I want without thinking about what others are doing or thinking.
Another huge help was reading The Power of Now (by Tolle. If you want a copy I’ll send you the eBook just message me). Ive read it three times. Its a massively calming book that really helped me just be.
Another helper, stop reading news bullshit. On my Lemmy app I block specific keywords (trump, ai, llm, openai, etc. ). Our human brains aren’t meant for this barrage of information and nothing you do is going to change all the evil people in the world. Uninstall Lemmy for a while and use wikwok to get your scroll fix and learn something while you’re at it! Or another tip, on weekends I either shut my phone off or leave it on the bedroom table like a house phone and check it once or twice a day if needed. Its much more freeing. Or just unplug your router and pretend its 1999, I have weekends like that too. Just enjoying the here and now.
Another thing you can do is find others similar to you either IRL or online and build community or at least moderate aquantanceship (word?). Someone told me this once and I think its good: the only thing that really matters in all this, is people who care. Thats really it. Finding people with similar beliefs and interests is really going to help especially if you live in magaland(it gets depressing, I know)
Your question of “staying on the internet” I’d say yes, because its awesome, but you need to get off corpo net. Build your bookmarks folder with individual websites from the smolweb, try out gopher or the Gemini protocol, etc. There is so much awesome shit on the internet that unfortunately has been buried and shoved out of our sight (on purpose by corpos) .Especially at your age, you may not have gotten to experience how awesome it used to be before corporations destroyed half of it. But there is still a beautiful human side of the internet; you need to dig for it. Use kagi, ecosia, searxng to find these hidden gems. Or Lemmy smolweb, I have found a lot there too. Stay off the big 3 corpo sites they are just cancer.
Also it does seem like you may have the mentality of “if I have nothing I have nothing to lose” which isnt a totally bad thing per se, but I like to ask myself if in 10 or 15 years I should have done a thing and if the answer is yes I’ll wish i would have, I’ll do it (example, gym. I hated the gym but I make myself go and its really not bad at all, and I’m hopefully prolonging my healthy life).
Anyway, youre obviously aware of the issue which is very good, a lot of folks aren’t and they turn to the manosphere or 4Chan trolling. Dont do that. You are already changing your thinking just by recognizing you want a change. Make small changes first.
Its weird in many way life is incomparably better than even fifty years ago. The air is cleaner, society is more tolerant and respectful of differences, material prosperity is much greater.
Yet at the same time things are falling apart as the relative decline of US and Europe encourages polarisation and the structural inequality of neoliberal ideology increases hardship especially on the young.
And we hear so much about the bad aspects of technology, but technology is a tool that can be used or abused, and it is moving fast. Think back ten years and even in that short a term technology has improved your life hugely
No, it’s not entirely awful. There are awful things in it for sure, but there are also amazing things, which is how it’s always been.
People growing up today live under the threat of climate change, fascism, rampant inequality etc. These threats are real. But there’s a lot of good stuff happening too - crime rates are falling constantly, and we’re on the verge of some big medical breakthroughs such as being able to treat cancer with CRISPR and Oncolytic viruses to give a couple of examples. We might be about to double the lifespan of cats.
Every generation grows up under some sort of threat - nuclear annihilation in the 80s, WW2 before that, WW1 before that etc. Mad kings, dictators, plagues, wars… you’re dealt the hand you’re dealt. But everything is cyclical - fascism flares up and then gets squashed, the economy booms and busts, politics swings right, then left again. Because of that, sometimes the cycles line up so that a few things suck at once. But nothing is permanent.
We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.
- Ursula Le Guin
That’s not to say everything will be fine, or that we’re doomed. Most likely some people who don’t deserve it will suffer and die, some people who don’t deserve it will live charmed and privileged lives and learn nothing, and some people will just be fine. As it has always been.
As people have stated, some things are good, some are bad.
The most important factor for anyone answering you is are they even aware of their privilege or lack thereof.
One thing I haven’t seen mentioned, is the fact that based on the wealth and progress of the world, basically none of the issues that remain, should.
This is the absolutely unbelievably infuriating part, and it’s made worse because people will come into forums like this, and say “bruh I have a mini computer that does everything and the 60s didn’t even have civil rights”. That’s a complete false equivalence that means NOTHING.
Unfortunately, right now oligarchy is rampant, fascism is categorically and indisputably on the rise, and a few billionaires are actively deploying all the money and losers they can to keep shit shifting wealth, and power in their direction.
If we do not stop them soon, they will quite literally burn the world down for a fucking dollar.
It’s great to take advice here and exist in a bubble, but society is not a bubble.
In other words “I don’t care about politics” or “I can’t look at it because of X reason” are really great thoughts, but politics absolutely gives a shit about you and it will decide your future with or without your input.
A lot of what you see online is people making the perfect the enemy of the good, intentionally divisive foreign propaganda, and extremists trying to get you mad about their thing. Houses really are a lot more expensive than they were in the middle of the 20th century but compared to the rest of human history that period was the outlier, now things are just returning to ‘normal’.
I’d say if you are able to maintain steady income, friends, interests, don’t live in an active war zone or other disaster area, and have a few other lucky circumstances like that, you can (at least for now) have a reasonably happy existence. You don’t have to ignore or deny the terrible stuff going on elsewhere. There have always been wars and poverty happening, but it’s ok to respond more to your sense of your immediate surroundings (where things are going ok) than to your sense of bad stuff happening in remote times and places.
The internet and political news reminds us that bad times may be coming for everyone due to global warming, AI propaganda from encroaching dictatorships, and all that stuff. Don’t ignore that. Oppose it if you can. But, don’t let it overcome your hopefully-reasonably-good existence in the present.
Certainly, if spending all day on the internet makes you neurotic, then try to cut back on it. Some people choose to eliminate it completely from their lives, at least for a while. I haven’t done that so don’t know if it helps.
Don’t forget being straight and white, otherwise you’re persecuted by religion and the government
It all depends on what kinds of privilege you have access to. If you’re a cishet (or at least bi and in a straight-passing relationship) white dude with a decent job, you’re probably doing just fine right now, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Barring some major catastrophe like war, there’s very little that politicians will do to disrupt the day-to-day lives of someone in that kind of demographic. It’s important to remember that “being able to disengage from politics because no policies will target you regardless of who is in power” is a form of privilege, and a rather large one at that.
As an American who has had to flee states due to political persecution, my saying of late has been:
“You can ignore politics. Politics will not ignore you.”
As an American who has had to flee states due to political persecution, my saying of late has been:
“You can ignore politics. Politics will not ignore you.”
There’s a lot of responses here already… But if it ever feels hopeless or overwhelming, I recommend just go to a nearby park, sit on a bench, and watch nature and life going by. Compare what you’re seeing, with what you’re feeling. Do they match up? Or is there a difference there?
This is what I would recommend also. You really need to be in nature, in forests, feel the sun and observe how you are feeling.
You have to learn to watch the circus, as I call our society, from outside instead of believing in what it’s telling you.
Think about your emotional state a lot and figure out what makes you feel good. And do that.
Sit? They took away the benches. Funding cuts.
Install new ones on a moonless night. When they tear those out?
DO IT AGAIN.
Get a hobby. Find people in your area that share that hobby. Form social groups around that.
You do realize that, as an adult, you can just start a club, right? Why do you think your high school had all those clubs and activities in it? The hope was that you could keep doing things like that as an adult. Every aspect of schooling is meant to serve as practice for adulthood.
Hell, you could start a “third places” club. Get a number of people together. Every Saturday afternoon, on a rotating basis, someone’s home becomes a “coffee shop” that everyone goes and hangs out at. Don’t even need to plan a lot of programming. You don’t need to worry about any kind of business license, as you’re not running a business. It’s just a friend group that holds rotating social gatherings.
The Universe gave you an imagination for a reason. USE IT. Find something that interests you or some need in your community. Find others with that passion or interest. Find something that brings you joy and meaning, something within the limits of your talents and resources. If it doesn’t exist, will it into being.
Build the world you want to see. The labor will buy your sanity.
All things end. It’s the price of existing. But new good things come. There’s danger, but there’s also plenty good.
Go out, try to make some friends and when you fail try again until you succeed.
There’s good in this world and it’s worth fighting for.
deleted by creator
Depends. Is your family rich?
Yes and no.
Yes, in that it does and will affect you, and you do need to take an interest. You need to vote in every election you can, you need to stay involved, you need to make a stand. Without that we will lose everything we care about. Those in power have shown that they are happy to chip away at things, but as soon as any opposition is shown they start backing down.
No, in that your life is your own, and you can’t let politics dictate your life. As someone with a ton of anxiety, I cannot read the news daily, I do not subscribe to the news communities, I have to stay away from it. I choose to live my life and make the most of it, living day to day. My family and friends are the most important to me, and I spend my time enjoying them. I came very close to crumpling into a deep depression due to the news, and then got help. It was a hard lesson in learning I cannot personally change everything, and I cannot hold myself responsible for everything that has happened.
Confused? Good. It’s a personal journey, you have to pick and choose yourself, and draw your own lines and figure out where your responsibility is and when you’ve done your part. I stay educated, I know what’s happening, I know who I’m voting for, I know when to stand up. That does not mean I need to stay glued to my computer and doomscroll. You’ll have to draw your own line.
Just a note about voting in some places, it may not matter anymore. I’m not saying don’t vote, most people still should but how shall I put this…
Billionaires and private equity bought Dominion and all the other voting machine manufacturers. The “changes” to election integrity departments of the government are also… Notable.
Yah. I don’t have a solution but chances of voting our way out drop by the day
Yes and no—depends on your proximity to the catalysts. If you’re ridiculously privileged, like I am, the world has never been safer.
But, imo, it’s important to hold two truths:a. The US is as about as safe as it’s ever been
b. Shit, on the whole, is absolutely fuckedWe are all part of society and we owe it to each other to at least maintain awareness of the goings-on.
Find your personal balance—don’t simply pretend everything is rainbows.
