I noticed that Reddit seems to make me a lot more cynical and indifferent than I normally am.
Is this me, or something you notice as well?
For me it’s a sign that I probably should read (and respond) less here … back to the real world 😉
(Women as well, of course, but this is AskMen after all)
Update: thanks all for your thoughts!
19 comments
I feel like cynical and indifferent are the modern western meta tbh.
The unfortunate reality, one would say, is that this is the ‘real world’. The world we see and observe is arguably more fake, a gussied up world with rules to make sure that we don’t have to see the nastiness hidden underneath, while the internet has many of those fetters removed, which enables us to see just how awful the human race really is.
Working night shift and otherwise being extremely busy, this is a nice way to actually communicate with people. I try to be courteous and friendly. So this is actually helpful for me.
It’s been useful because social interaction has been able to lift up my mood at bits when I’ve been down, and it’s been harmful because it’s really easy to drop my mood down like that in the first place. So a mixed bag, I would say.
It’s a nice place to scream I to the ether so I guess my mood is a bit better?
No, I wouldn’t say so. There are a lot of foolish people on the internet and sooner or later you need to learn to ignore them and keep scrolling. Once I learned to do this, without needing to change anyone’s mind, I really stopped having a bad time on here. It’s all fun and games to me now.
Forums? No. Corporate media? Yeah, but I’m aware of that and just chuckle at their pathetic attempts to get a rise out of me, so actually no.
Absolutely, and basically always for the worse. But it’s somehow addicting. I wonder if there’ve been studies on this effect of doomscrolling. Why do we do it? Is it because it makes us feel more informed?
It makes me depressed. From time to time I read some good advice but most of the time it will just make me think that nobody needs/wants/likes me.
Well, this is the closest thing I have to a real social life, and since I’m in contact with a lot of people more successful than me and living in better countries than mine, it’s not hard to hate my own life even more. I shouldn’t be here, but since this is replacing something else, I’ll need something else to replace here after I’m gone.
Yes, I have one specific subreddit that changed my mood so far that I had to leave.
When I first joined Reddit I found the MensRights subreddit, I found it interesting as it spoke about men’s problems, a topic I hadn’t read about before.
So I joined, and started reading, after two or three years I realized rhat my feeling toward women had changed a lot, I had started dislikong women.
I did some solesearching, and came to the conclusion that I didn’t want to feel like that anymore, I was and still am single, and didn’t want to make women dislike me (they don’t have to like me, but I don’t want people to actively dislike me), so I unsubscribed to it and haven’t looked back, I am glad that I did read it when I did as it gave me a better understanding of men’s problems, but I am even mire glad that I stopped reading when I reslized what it was doing to me.
bro, be very selective of what you read and click on.
don’t just go to any random sub for entertainment.
don’t just click on any post within a sub because they’re not all worth reading and investing into.
I find myself getting angry about problems I don’t have.
Yes. Negatively.
Why my reddit is things like animals, edc, rooms, pc builds. No talky threads except adhd and this one.
FDS got banned so the misandry is scattered around in more places, I’ve seen
There are a few subreddits and other online forums that I try to visit in moderation or avoid in general. Outside of those places I don’t intentionally visit that often anymore, I really enjoy online forums.
Reading things here just make me more appreciative that the real world that I live in is a much nicer place than how Reddit makes it seem to be. This may have to do with the fact that I live in Canada, though.
Reddit has shown me just how many idiots are out there… and I mean absolute fucking morons. Most are American and most have guns… and hate non-whites.
generally people don’t talk about how happy they are in forums. questions are self-selected for what’s wrong because you don’t discuss what’s right. but forums are good for being aware of issues people have.
take online gaming forums, it’s primarily people whining about balance. people don’t actually want balance, they usually want their counter’s nerfed so that they can run unchecked. if things were perfectly balanced people would find the game boring. but what it does do is give you a feel for what the community perception is which you can then put a story to data if tracked.
forums tend to also get hive-mindy which makes sense. people tend to not stay on platforms that makes them constantly angry and frustrated and most will leave for places and communities that share similar thoughts to them.
in the end people just need to touch grass, and step back from that online persona. the issues i find come up when someone’s online persona is someone’s escape from a more depressing reality,
that being said, it’s nice to be part of a community, have in jokes, etc. having online forums allows you to connect to people around the world. i wouldn’t have one of my longest running DnD groups without /r/LFG for example but it took multiple groups to get to the one i have. and sometimes it’s nice to just speak into the void.
Yeah it’s making me more nihilistic and anxious