The internet has always been my salvation.

As a socially underdeveloped kid, I’d spend my lunch hours in the high school library on those public desktop computers, reading fandom sites about my favorite video games. Computers always made sense to me. I even owe my entire career to them.

But the internet today feels wrong. Whatever the fuck kind of psychological warfare is happening right now with this Epstein stuff is too much for my mind to handle. I can’t do it anymore.

I will love. I will vote. I will support my community and continue to oppose this fucking nightmarish system we all find ourselves in. But I need to sign off.

Imagine the door closing sound effect when logging out of AIM.

  • Schwim Dandy@piefed.zipEnglish
    0·
    6 months ago

    I understand completely but am trying to mold my access to the world in a way that doesn’t cause me such depression. I don’t use the normal social networks, I’ve used the piefed filters to block everything about musk, trump, ice, america, politics, etc. and I’ve never followed any kind of “news”.

    Before I did that, I was literally becoming chronically suicidal(well, that’s not gone but it’s better) from the absolute shit-show that the world has become(it’s not just the US, other countries are quickly adopting the bipartisan hatred model now that they see it works to divide). It would be different if you saw something regarding a change towards improvement but that’s never seen, you just get another endless scroll of shit that is destroying society with no way to change it.

    The fediverse is just as bad as any other social network out there. Although the leaning is opposite, it’s still full of extremism, hyperbolic hatred, ridicule, mockery, division and sufferporn. Without filters, it would be as unusable to me as, say, facebook or trump’s social network.

    I’m withdrawing a lot from people online but still spend a lot of time online, it’s just not as interactive as it used to be.

    If this is not sustainable, I’m sure I’ll likely follow your lead and leave it to the rest of the world.

    • Paradachshund@lemmy.today
      0·
      6 months ago

      I’ve done this as best I can too. It was hard because I feel a need to be informed, but I came to the conclusion that being informed was actually only making me miserable, and didn’t actually spur any kind of action. It was actually the opposite because the fear machine kept me paralyzed with despair and cynicism.

      I cut out as much as I can, and while things are still tough, I have more mental capacity to focus on what’s actually happening to me in the here and now.

      You might know it already but I would recommend a free newsletter called Fix the News. It’s a roundup of only positive news, and not fluff either. It’s honestly done a lot to make me realize the endless bad news is a very narrow look at what’s happening in the world.

    • cosmOS@lemmy.zipOP
      0·
      6 months ago

      It would be different if you saw something regarding a change towards improvement but that’s never seen, you just get another endless scroll of shit that is destroying society with no way to change it.

      Yes, that’s exactly how I feel. It’s almost as if it’s being deliberately rubbed in our faces about our true collective powerlessness in this moment.

      The fediverse is just as bad as any other social network out there. Although the leaning is opposite, it’s still full of extremism, hyperbolic hatred, ridicule, mockery, division and sufferporn. Without filters, it would be as unusable to me as, say, facebook or trump’s social network.

      Yes! I have so many filters enabled in my Lemmy client, but this morning, I stumbled upon a screenshot (since filters aren’t smart enough to extract content from screenshots) of an Epstein email that was so incredibly disturbing in its implication. These aren’t my vile thoughts, yet they’ve been bouncing around my mind all day.

      I can’t take it anymore.

      Please stay strong out there.

  • fizzle@quokk.auEnglish
    0·
    6 months ago

    Yeah the internet is cooked.

    Im trying to invest more time in off-line things.

  • whelk@retrolemmy.com
    0·
    6 months ago

    Set up your own website if you haven’t already, the indie web/smallnet/etc movement lately has been really cool to see and has made the internet fun again for me. Neocities is a great place to start if you need simple hosting, completely free and without ads

  • you_are_dust@lemmy.world
    0·
    6 months ago

    The Internet sucks now. There’s just not “things” on it anymore. When I was a teenager, there was always something new and interesting to do online. Modern Internet is social media, streaming, and shopping. It’s just not the same.

    • Marvie@lemmy.world
      0·
      5 months ago

      I’m sure it still exists , it’s just not easy to find these websites. In those times you had search engines that worked, Even before google existed, and the other search engines weren’t as good , you could find authentic websites

    • BCsven@lemmy.ca
      0·
      6 months ago

      Yep, it was a trove of discovery, now its all data gleaning and AI marketing slop, and other garbage.

  • ChicoSuave@lemmy.world
    0·
    6 months ago

    Nah, it’s just getting good. The Epstein/Mossad files are slowly melting the fascist tide by exposing the perverts behind the curtain. The billionaires are losing their control over information to first hand accounts posted live so we can all see the truth before the spin. The Internet is the forefront of understanding what is about to happen.

    Don’t quit now. If you want to see the truth, the Internet is the last place to host it unfiltered. Quitting is how the billionaires get people to only see the world through captured media.

    • hector@lemmy.today
      0·
      6 months ago

      Fucking optimist over there. There is nothing to celebrate, all epstein has showed us is nothing will force consequences for our connected rich in the west, our opposition to fascists is controlled to prevent us from seeing them face consequences, and that the worst people in the world hold an absolute veto over a critical mass of our lawmakers with that information.

  • taiyang@lemmy.world
    0·
    6 months ago

    I still doomscroll to stay a little informed but my recent salvation has been free ebooks on my phone. Same phone strolling action but instead of doom, I get fun little mysteries.

  • Melobol@lemmy.ml
    0·
    6 months ago

    If you feel you have to step away, then do it for yourself - keep being mindful of the cause. Because it’s not a shut and close situation.

    Life is always changing, tonight you might not want the internet - half a year from now you might need a very obscure information and you will be able to look it up and log off again.

    I love the internet, because it is amazing tool. And so much knowledge is at the tip of your fingerprints! In my childhood if I wanted to learn something I hoped we had the right book home, or it’s library time with the cards and looking for books and hoping the book had an appendices…
    Internet does have a rotten part to it - but to give up all the free education YouTube has, all the wikis on the world - it would be going backwards for me.

    • hector@lemmy.today
      0·
      6 months ago

      Knowledge was at your fingertips. Now it’s not quite that. I put a question into a search engine and don’t get a good answer. Not from the search page, and the enshitified results are almost all written by machines, repeating the question over in every way it could be said, and explaining in exhuastive detail why someone would want to know the answer, all to hit the search engine requirements, then maybe a sentence or two with a lousy answer.

      But you might not be able to find the answer on the page. I’ve to cycle through multiple pages and scan ai written prose to find an answer that I used to get instantly right from the search page.

      I know it can work better, because it did work better. 2021 the enshitification became ubiquitous. That is hardly the only way information is no longer available. Dependent as we are on Search Engines for access to this information, and malign forces having their hooks into those For Profit search engines, we are entering a dark age.

      Unless we get some players not in the Shit Trust, the anti competitive providers of any sector that have decided to all do a shit job to maximize profit rather than compete to offer the best products.

      Or Trustshit, trustshittered search engines, I’m still workshopping the name.