Balancing our Feeds: We’re not meant to take in world changing information all the time

August 27, 2021Leave a comment

A few years ago I got rid of all political news from my feeds. I still have a lot of it blocked, because it did good things for my mental health, but I let some of it back in because I wanted to be aware of what has happening in the world. I think this was a good call. I like having some knowledge without being knocked out by it. And you do get knocked out by it.

I don’t think it’s healthy to read all the tragedies of the world 24/7. That sounds like common sense, but sometimes I worry that it’s not. Sometimes I worry that people have built being hyper aware into their personalities. And if not their personalities, into their routines.

This is one of the reasons I think it’s important to follow accounts that post art, that post family updates, cleaning tips, garden inspiration, fashion goals, and all those types of things. And when I say follow those types of accounts, I mean mostly follow those types of accounts and people. Follow way more of those accounts than news accounts. Surround yourself with the good and let in a trickle of the bad.

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Lurking: The addiction to online subcultures

August 27, 20201 Comment

Hello, you might remember over the past two years I blocked all politics from my social media only to add them back in moderation a year and a half later, I added them back in slowly and with a lot of cation. I only allowed certain people back into my space, and that’s because before hand, I became completely consumed in the Twitter subculture surrounding my political party.

And yikes, did it rewire my brain.

I don’t think we talk enough about what the sub-cultures can do, and not just the political ones but the intense niche interests ones as well. Fans become toxic online, which is why I’ve always warned against becoming a “stan”. These cultures are completely addictive. We like to say that we are just addicted to the site. “Oh, I’m addicted to Twitter” sounds a lot better than “I’ve addicted to a small community with extreme views on sexual kinks”. I’ve never fallen into one of those communities, but I know they’re there and have force online.

They’re all over the place, extreme little groups that have very strong opinions on everything from religious extremists to complete anarchists. They are all there, and they are all trying to take root in your brain.

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Over a year without politics on my social media: Where I stand now.

January 21, 20203 Comments

I made a few posts about cutting out the toxin that is social media politics. (x, x) People get bitter, mean, and downright nasty when it comes to politics, and when you take away the face to face aspect they get much, much worse. I went down a rabbit hole at the beginning of my Lyme Disease sickness and learned everything there was to know about the political situations of that time. I knew everything and I was always… mad, angry, hurt, judgmental. I was getting emotions that I didn’t like, and they weren’t all from the actual politics, but mostly the people talking about them, and how they were doing it.

So I blocked it all. I took out the trash. I don’t follow most my Facebook friends. I muted almost every political word on Twitter. At first it felt a little empty, because I had gotten so used to all the yelling, but then, it became wonderful. I started following people who had the same hobbies as me. I started branching out. Then suddenly the places that were filled with anger were suddenly filled with joy.

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Good role models aren’t the ones trying to influence people.

October 15, 20191 Comment

Instagram influencers. Political influencers. Bloggers even.

If you scan the internet it seems that people aren’t just sharing their lives with you, but they’re trying to get you to live more like them. Whether it’s by changing your lifestyle, buying brands, or changing your opinions, there are a lot of people who want you to change. Maybe they want to be the standard that you’re reaching for, maybe they just like the fame. Whatever the case, the people who are trying hard to influence and be role models… they’re not normally the people you should aspire to be.

The best role models are ones that guide you through life. Their values are set and admirable and their life, despite it’s struggles, has joy in it on a really fundamental level. The best role models are moral ones. They are the content ones. And they are the ones we’d still like to be like when they are in their seventies. Good role models aren’t hard to find, despite what people say, there are a lot of good people in this world. Of course no one is perfect, but a good role model doesn’t pretend to be. They wear their flaws and they work on bettering them.

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Keeping things in mind: Everything online is dramatized.

May 6, 20195 Comments

The internet is a intense place, I don’t think anyone would argue that. You get the perfectly curated views of life and you get anger and intense viewpoints.

There hardly seems to be anything else.

Mid-way views, deep rational thinking, and realistic images are hard to find, but we’ve become numb to the fact that they’re missing. We’re feeding on that content and nothing else. It seems to go over our head that the internet is completely dramatized. The politics are more intense. The tragedies are expanded upon. Conspiracy theories are fed. And perfect lives are staged for praise.

We fall down rabbit holes and don’t realize that the internet is changing our views, but even more so, we don’t seem to realize that the rabbit holes we’re in don’t reflect real life. The internet will make you believe that the world is falling apart, but it’s not. If we go outside we can see that opposite sides come together in hard times and are polite to each other in the grocery store check out. We can also see that those who have perfectly frames lives are still chasing their screaming kids around and getting frizzy hair in the rain. We realize that the front we’ve been seeing, both the good and the bad, are completely overblown.

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Keeping Ourselves from Overdosing on Politics in our Daily Lives.

October 15, 2017October 15, 20172 Comments

It’s been a crazy year politically, but it’s been a crazy year for my view of politics also.

I went to small private college that was very political. Every class was political, every time someone raised their hands it was political. I was overdosing, so to deal with it I drew a firm line in the sand and stated that I didn’t care about politics. And I didn’t, I kept it up all four years. I only voted my freshman year for president and didn’t talk about politics or read about them. I blocked them out of my life everywhere but the classroom, and then rolled my eyes at how people couldn’t seem to talk about anything without them.

Then I graduated and I was no longer overdosing, because people don’t actually talk about politics all the time in the real world. People talk more about boyfriends, buying houses, sports, music. The topic would come up, I started caring a little more about the issues, because it was something you could debate, then close and move onto something else. It was nice. I felt at peace with it.

Then the 2016 election happened and ever since everyone has gone back to talking about politics 24/7 like I was in a classroom again. The issues come up more in real life, people debate more, and they get much angrier than before. And online? Online has become a toxic graveyard where people only seem to want to talk politics. The “talks” aren’t even that, they’re screaming matches, spattered with insults. Nobody can seem to agree to disagree and no one can seem to scroll or walk by something they dislike without commenting on it.

It’s dangerous surrounding yourself with that kind of content all the time, whether online or off. When people are hostile you get hostile. When faced with extremes our own opinions often become more extreme. We start to get to the point we can’t disconnect anything from politics.

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Who taught you that? Asking where your ideas came from.

August 15, 20173 Comments

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately, and the good kind, not the kind where I get really caught up in my own anxieties. I’ve been listening to a lot of smart people, but they haven’t been telling me what to think, which I’ve grown accustom to through years of schooling. No, these people I’ve found through varies outlets on my laptop, where asking me questions. They wanted me to produce the answers for myself.

In a debate I heard someone ask “who taught you that?” to someone who was presenting one of their most dramatic viewpoints, something that they saw completely as fact.

Who taught me my dramatic viewpoints? The answer isn’t one person, it hardly ever is. We tend to take notes from hundreds of people and then write our essays. That’s how we should do it anyways, if your answer is easily a single person than you should probably go take some more notes, even if it’s just to compare and contrast.

But the question got me thinking about how sometimes when we learn things we don’t question it. We just take someone’s (or a group of people’s) ideas and adapt them, they simply become our own. This happens a lot when we are surrounded by one kind of idea. When our notes are one sided.

It’s also why we can see such dramatic phases in our lives when we look back. Who were you around when you went into that stage. Who taught you that way of life?

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