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130

How do you cope with the state of the world today? (lemmy.world)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Everything just seems so out of control. The US seems to be tearing itself apart. The world is on fire. We seem to be going backwards when it comes to freedom and human rights. We've turned our backs on each other. How do you cope with all this without just giving up?

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 10 months ago (1 children)

End of the day, nothing you can do will change what's happening half way across the world, so why let it change you?

I beg to differ. Here are a few things you can do. I agree these won't make an impact, but if enough people are willing to do these, it could work:

Donate money if you can afford it. (Just carefully check where you're exactly donating to.)
Promote non-propaganda, factual information. Muscovy spreads disinformation through social media and propaganda websites using their trolls. So why can't ordinary people step up and upvote, share, publish, and promote factual information? Sure, the algorithms of social media platforms favor the disinformation, but again, if enough people are willing to overcome what's happening, I believe, it could make a change.
Promote education. Only stupid people can be influenced by the far right propaganda. Unfortunately there are way too many stupid people.
Just do what you're good at. If your profession is irrelevant, that's fine. But if you happen to be a hacker, or want to become one, go ahead, and fight online scammers and trolls. Are you a software developer? Wanna be a web developer? Create something that has an impact if you have the free time and interest. Make it open source. Encourage others to join. Again, if you have no affinity for this kind of stuff, it's totally fine.
Do your research and vote on elections.

In my opinion, this kind of mindset of "you cannot do anything, get used to it" is a very demotivating and harmful piece of advice. Because that's what's been going on all this time; everyone being ignorant, while evil people never stop doing what they're doing.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

So why can’t ordinary people step up and upvote, share, publish, and promote factual information?

They can, it just doesn't work terribly well. Persuading people is not necessarily about actual facts or rationality, even at the best of times, without even involving any strong feelings, or identifying with outcomes, or other interests of conflict.

Facing profit motives, politics, power dynamics, organized propaganda, and bad faith argumentation in general, it's even more grim. Russia and the other troll farmers are making a concerted specific effort out of this. The numbers, resources, and, sadly, human psychology, are on their side.

Making up some bullshit about 5G mRNA causing steel beams takes 10 seconds, maybe add another 5 for calling you a sheep once you rightly ask what the fuck whoever's been smoking. If you wanted to debunk the actual claim, you'd spend orders of magnitude more time and effort than they did, only for them to refuse to even glance at your arguments and studies. Assuming the entire belief isn't fake just to fuck with people, "facts and logic" certainly weren't involved in arriving at it, and are unlikely to budge the actual reason for that belief.