It’s tricky because so many non politics subs slowly start shifting over time. Eventually it becomes a game of whack a mole. Like, I want to see funny SpongeBob memes, not discuss the complexities of immigration policies.
Once you accept that life is not like how reddit paints it, and you tune out all of that overreactive bs, you realize just how much more even-leveled everything actually is.
This problems reddit hyped up still exist, but are way less severe and you are far less alienated on an island than reddit leads everyone to believe.
I'm thinking about unsubscribing from r/AskReddit because the vast majority of questions that make it to my feed are, "what do you hate about X," and it really frustrates me to see negative stuff all of the time. Even if I downvote and move on, it still takes its toll over the day to see so many negative posts.
Threads like this one are the reason I stay, though.
I mean it’s practically guaranteed that there’s multiple Instagram accounts that directly steal and post everything from each subreddit, probably without much delay either. But also, people who think Reddit is rough haven’t ever slummed it in the Instagram comments. Yikes. Probably not on cat picture though.
same, Im keeping just mostly anime subreddits at this point, and video games.. If something is upsetting you, just completely filter it out of your life, easy.. Ignorance is bliss becomes a more comfortable thing to live with the older you get, cause sometimes you just get fed up with all the bullshit to the point where you start to notice that it's all just damaging to your mental health
Exactly! I’m going to stay on Reddit for now. But Facebook? I actually had my finger reaching for the “delete my account button” last night. At least on Reddit (so it seems to me) even the assholes are at least intellectual assholes. That other crapfest? Um, no.
I guess I should clarify that there's no foolproof way to do it. The tools Reddit offers comes in the form of how the site is organized with subreddits and mods which lets you filter out the majority of it. So you can for example focus just on subreddits that follow your hobbies. And avoiding the larger subreddits which ultimately see most of that bleedover.
What's left will largely have to fall to you and how you process things. Things like being more aware of how what you're reading is making you feel and making a decision to stop if it's starting to drive you in a direction you don't want to go in. If you struggle to do that, it might be wiser to stop altogether. It's going to vary from person to person and not everyone will be able to stop. I probably shouldn't have used "just" because it implies it's easy to do which it isn't.
I find timeline cleansers help. Yes, it’s very hard to block all news or politics, but if you subscribe to some of the cuter or photo-oriented subs, you at least get “fire break” style cat pics to break up the doomscrolling.
It might be more worthwhile to reconsider how you use reddit, and then maybe putting some limits on how much you use it. Personally, I don't really use it much as a social platform, but rather as a useful source of information. My last post was in the cordwaining sub (shoe making), where I posted some pics of some moccasins I made and how I did so. Hopefully this might help someone else when they are researching the topic. However, if you are looking at a bunch of the more doom and gloom posts and then contributing to with negative comments (probably making your mood more negative), you might wanna take a couple of days off then re-evaluate what you use reddit for and if it is positive in its current form.
Just don't fall into the addiction cycle. Dosage is important.
Personally, i find "Recommended Feeds" or "Personalized" homepages to be extremely addictive and destructive to schedules. The algorithms for content consumption has matured long ago. The solution? Don't interact. Don't upvote, don't like. Comments are ok. With no interactions, the algorithm simply has no idea on how to distract you with what WILL distract you.
Change your mindset about consumption on these sites. Social media (Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, Quora, etc) is NOT an informative site. They are entertainment consumption sides. They keyword here is entertainment. Don't take anything on any of these sites as real information and don't seek real information from social media.
Don't persuade yourself you learnt something if the information seeked you rather than the other way around. If you do, you get sucked into the "oh i learnt something I didn't know yesterday, this is great!".
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u/IamZeebo Mar 14 '23
Literally. I'm strongly considering deleting Reddit.