> It seems like people are increasingly exhausted and disillusioned with life.

Is life today bleaker or harder than it was during the Great Depression? People still made time for each other.

What if it is the media that is making people exhausted and disillusioned? Not the other way around.

dyauspitr 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It’s bleaker because everyone knows a lot more. People back in the day were for lack of a better word- naive. They had no idea what others were doing outside of their neighborhood and what was in the newspapers. There are incredible, chronic hidden pressures in the world now even if you individually disengage from social media and the like.

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CooCooCaCha 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I’m not arguing that today is the worst time to ever exist in the history of humanity.

I’m arguing there are legitimate reasons why people are exhausted and disillusioned with the current state of the world.

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legitster 18 hours ago | parent [-]

No one's saying there aren't legitimate reasons to be disillusioned with the world - but that's not mutually exclusive from people socializing or having community. If anything, it's one reasons people are so exhausted and defeated to begin with.

There's a reason people call it "doomscrolling", and it's not because it's healthy escapism. Bad news and defeatism is psychologically addictive, and platforms have financial incentive to pump your brain full of negativity. Regardless of how bad it is outside, the internet is not a protective bubble - it's an opium den.

	▲	CooCooCaCha 16 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes they are. People are blaming it almost entirely on scrolling social media.

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Arainach 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In the Great Depression there was community and hope. People could band together, form unions or political movements.

Today, computers allow for mass dystopian control. Cameras and algorithms everywhere with no chance of appealing to an actual human.

There are multiple kinds of suffering, and even if more people have sufficient nutrition and health than in the great depression, it's much harder to see hope for the future today.