Most people will probably disagree and say that I shouldn't be here if I don't like it, but yeah, like the title said. I switched over from Reddit for various reasons, and at first it was nice, but now it's making me depressed just casually browsing Lemmy. Everything here is so drab and negative, sometimes even downright hateful. Everything sucks, here's a list of companies you should never use, here's people that do horrible things, here's a bunch of complaints about stuff. This is why the world sucks, this is why your favourite thing is actually stupid, this is why you shouldn't enjoy xyz anymore.
At least half of the content on Lemmy is about American politics or how they affect the rest of the world, even on meme and shitpost subs you can't escape from the constant barrage of politically charged content. And when it's not American politics it's American lifestyle, like I get that america dominates the internet but I sincerely do not give a shit about your egg prices or your celebrities when I'm browsing memes to wind down.
And on top of that there's a distinct arrogance that permeates the fediverse, where people act like they're better than others for being conscious, and you're stupid for not boycotting 99 percent of brands and eating vegan and ditching cars and using european FOSS applications on refurbished Linux devices, etc.
Honestly I'm baffled when people ask stuff like "why don't more people join Lemmy?" Because I honestly would not recommend it to my friends. While it's nice in some ways, it is also so very exhausting, and for me personally, worse for my mental health than Reddit ever was.
Rant over and obligatory disclaimer: I did not mean to insult anyone, I don't have anything against the ideologies and lifestyles mentioned in my post, I simply wanted to share my personal opinions.
I would say that it isn't necessarily just the situation, but importantly the trend that's going in the wrong direction (at an increasingly faster pace). Also we just have way more exposure to (miss-)information and our ability to properly filter and absorb it just hasn't scaled as much.
Because objectively most of us are still living very good lifes and there have been crisis in the past aswell.
I was reading some comic essays by Jean Shepard [he wrote the stories "A Christmas Story" was based on.]
He knew he was poor growing up, but in those days a little money could buy you some nice stuff.
For 5 cents he could go to a movie theater that really did look like a palace.
These days a comic book costs a kid an hour's pay, and a concert is a week's pay if you're lucky.
But you assuming you can get access to a screen with Internet you have access to more free content than that kid could have ever imagined. And those devices are certainly affordable as well, since you can get used laptops or a tablet that does the job for like 100$ and be set for quite a while.
I was thinking more that you could e.g. start work at a company with little education, work there your whole life, be promoted occasionally and be solidly middle class with house, car and holidays. Not quite as easy today as it used to be. Nowadays it's more of a winner takes all market than it used to be.
I found the work of Andreas Reckwitz, a German sociologist, on the topic quite interesting, but I'm not sure how available it is in English.
Skim through the book "Hell's Angels" by Hunter Thompson. There's a chapter about midway through where he writes about the economics of being a biker/hippie circa 1970.
A biker could work for six months as a Union stevedore and be able to hit the road for two years. A part time waitress could support herself and her boyfriend.
I like to put it this way. Before Ronald Reagan was elected, 'middle class' was one job supporting a family of four. In those days, $1 million was a vast fortune. By the time Bush Sr. left office 'middle class' was two incomes keeping the house going and $1 million was what a rich guy paid for a party.