LoopyPanda said:Social media for me is more isolated, but also very easy to get tired of due to how easy it is for toxic groups to cluster together and spread. It's honestly tiring for my mental health to engage in political or ideological/philosophical stuff on there just by looking at it! It's really a mixed-bag of luck who you'll encounter and your mileage may vary greatly.
JamesYTP said:LoopyPanda said:Social media for me is more isolated, but also very easy to get tired of due to how easy it is for toxic groups to cluster together and spread. It's honestly tiring for my mental health to engage in political or ideological/philosophical stuff on there just by looking at it! It's really a mixed-bag of luck who you'll encounter and your mileage may vary greatly.
Really? Out of general privacy concerns and such I usually don't talk politics in places where my real name is used online like most social media, but in my general experience, people are often more reluctant to make toxic kinda comments where people they know IRL can possibly see it and their real names are used. The sole exception, of course, is YouTube's comment sections if you count that as social media. There the toxicity levels on YT are damn near fatal lmao. Even those aren't as bad as they used to be to my eye though. This might just be because I'm old now and don't have the energy for such people and am more selective in my interactions. Only really toxic group I ever found was this one Star Wars Expanded Universe group I was a part of but other than that one I've never seen a flat-out toxic one. I find there are more forums and such with flat-out toxic atmospheres and ones made explicitly for "dark" purposes, but that might be just me.
I kind of find a trade-off though in that the depth of discussion on social media with complete strangers is kind of shallower and duller. Particularly re: political stuff and whatnot since with social media groups people can kind of make groups around political and philosophical ideologies and they become echo chambers pretty quick and the people with differing views who do pop in come off more like trolls who aren't particularly interested in any real debate than anything (partly because they usually are). So in that regards if you know how to choose a forum well social media almost just becomes a more sophisticated version of an email list lol.