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Practice revolutionary optimism.

My alg never gives me hopecore, just normal and blackpill

This website is the only website with an algorithmic feed I look at any more. Mastodon is strictly chronological, and I have a browser plugin which disables the non-chronological feeds on X. I occasionally check a couple friendly subreddits, but it is an insignificant sliver of what I'm looking at.

Quit infinite scrooling ages ago. Instead I am playing 4 need for speed games in parallel, have 200 hours collectively in destiny 1, 2 and rising while also writing a book and various poems and occasionally making music while also chugging copious quantities of coffee and reading all the manga. The amount of time i forgot i had quitting the scrooling apps was like a smack in the face

No my feed is just one endless uninterrupted scream.

I'm just over here being an unstructured collection of heuristics so

But having a room that my phone isn't supposed to leave is helpful.

Im 24 and dont know what hopecore means. Kind of miss when core was reserved for hardcore adjacent things

Honestly you aren't wrong. But it's hard to know if it's my algorithm or just the daily shifts in the news. I also watch Hasan stream most days (honestly a pretty distressing experience 90% of the time these days).

But I feel like I am on edge and stressed regardless. I can't forget what is happening out there and that it is coming to my city soon. I might get the shit beat out of me which has never remotely happened to me, worst I've been is punched in the head one time.

Someone got taken near my house a few days ago, so something that helps me if I am feeling way to high strung is to do a small bike ride around the neighborhood while keeping my eyes out for suspicious vehicles.

The thing that feels the best is after the big marches PSL/DSA have been holding. Just being around like minded people and the feeling of safety and community there as well as just an outlet for the anxious energy.

Also you gotta really cherish the small wins I think. Which are somewhat starting to roll in, for example, a school district just today adopted an anti ice resolution that organizers had been fighting for almost a year.

Also, really shut off your phone at a certain point. I want to keep checking local organizers Instagram stories during the day, in case gestapo come near my hood, but after a certain point there's nothing to do but doomscroll and you just gotta let yourself unwind without your phone.

Honestly I think looking at social media way less would be much more helpful for your mental health than talking to your psychiatrist. In my experience, therapy is good but it is only one half hour out of your 168 hour week. What really matters is what insights you can learn about yourself in that half hour that you can apply to the other 167.5 hours: better long-term habits.

Not to get all Jordan Peterson here, but personally, I find that going for walks, reading books, and eating healthier food helps to improve my mood. Yes, it is true that climate apocalypse is coming and the forces of capitalism, racism, and imperialism are trying to divide the world into the upper 1% being glorious god masters and the 99% being their permanent slave class. But revolutionary optimism requires looking at history, and recognizing that the greatest positive changes to society came as a response to the most horrible tragedies that humanity has seen, that Marxist teleology does not predict a steady improvement of conditions, but the constant sharpening of contradictions as capitalism causes its own inevitable, chaotic collapse.

Yes this can definitely happen. You're pretty much observing the engagement algorithm shit working as intended.

Content on the major social media sites is (as a rule) optimised for emotional engagement, positive, negative, doesn't matter, but something base and intense and mammalian. Even more so for short form content like YT shorts, TT etc. Being exposed to an endless feed of emotionally provocative messaging is likely very fatiguing for the mind and not good for mental health.

To an extent its "the algorithms" and it is possible to clear your viewing history or create a new account if you want to repopulate your feed with less toxic additions. But recommendation algorithms can just as easily relearn that you are receptive to this sort of emotionally predatory stuff if you aren't selective about what you view and engage with routinely. If you can manage it, it's better to find alternatives to algorithm driven content entirely or at least try to stay away from short form content and engagement bait when you do use those sites.

I have a very lib coded but relevant video I watched the other day about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d43tivfx0qw (specifically about short form video content / emotion hijacking / burnout)

and this, about (allegedly) the role of "boredom" in a healthy mind, which mind likely isn't spending enough time doing while you consume content: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uoJNv9ufjM

It is possible to avoid recommendation engines while still getting enough content slop to fill a day, but it's inconvenient and annoying and technical. Easier to learn better content habits and hygiene imo.

My algorithm swaps between food bloggers and Tumblr posts read over Minecraft parcours.

Social media algorithms are trained on addiction. If the oscillation keeps you addicted then thats how it'll work. Purpose of the system is what it does yada yada.

You would do well to move your social apps to a different folder or uninstall them for a while. it'll help you recenter yourself, at least it does for me.

It's possible to train an algorithm to be maladaptive and then it would end up reinforcing harmful behavior. I think I've experienced what you're talking about.

It's scary to start out with an empty cup again. We tend to cling onto what we've already got, for various reasons, a therapist could help you discover what the reason behind your struggles is. Once you know then you can address it more easily. Otherwise you're just taking stabs in the dark or you might be going off by false assumptions. Another benefit from therapy is that unlike a friend the therapist is dethatched from you and is just there to help you out hopefully. Often the things that we need to hear, in order to improve, are painful unfortunately :/

I’ve separated my media. Social media is exclusively for education and dumb stuff. Anything important goes in my RSS feed. That way they stay separate and I don’t get funny video followed by horrors of the modern world

no

the only "algorithm" site i use is youtube and i beat that one into submission long ago