dc456 t1_jazxr30 wrote
Reply to comment by alphahydra in New UN brokered High Seas Treaty Places 30% of Ocean into protected areas by 2030 after decades of talks by AstroEngineer314
> kneejerk doomerism and negativity over any positive move
Well this is Reddit…
Edit: I see you’re an oldish account too. Do you think that attitude has got noticeably worse relatively recently?
alphahydra t1_jb034fv wrote
Yes, I do. I think there's a few things at play.
For one, things are genuinely getting worse, and we're starting to see the real effects of climate change and pollution become more apparent, which is shocking a lot of people out of their complacency, flipping all the way to the other extreme. From "that's a problem for the future" to "OMG we're all dead".
People are also a bit frazzled and anxious coming out of the pandemic, and now looking at climate change, biodiversity loss, along with the warn in Ukraine, nuclear risk, the increase in worldwide authoritarianism, H5N1, etc. and it's a lot of crises to process at once.
The internet is also hurting people's ability to grasp nuance. It's critical that we understand there are many different possible levels of "bad outcome". Just because we cross the threshold into one bad scenario doesn't mean all is lost, there's no hope for the future, and there's no point striving to prevent things getting yet worse, or that we can't make things better in other ways.
If we don't celebrate the victories and keep striving, then all really is lost.
dc456 t1_jb05uuz wrote
> The internet is also hurting people’s ability to grasp nuance.
I absolutely agree with this, and I think that extends to logic too. (Too often ‘not A’ is taken to mean ‘B’, when it could be any other letter.)
I also think a factor is that Reddit has attracted more younger people, particularly teenagers, who tend to naturally be a bit more contrarian and absolutist. This means that the top comments often tend to be the opposite of the post.
Which leads me on to my other point which is I think that a lot of the recent influx of users don’t really understand or care about subs, so just see something on their front page and interact with it in the same way.
So a positive sub like this gets doubly hit.
chadnotchad t1_jb03lqs wrote
12 year acct here. Uhhh. Yeah, probably. But there's also millions more users than ever before, and alot of people have alot of reasons to be unhappy. So it's not surprising alot of comments come of extra doomy lately if a large portion of the population is apprehensive af about the future. Having your worries come through casually in a .5 second comment you've thrown into the wind without even necessarily expecting to be replied to, or even intending to read any replies is pretty whatever behaviour, my dude. Is it unhealthy? To ocean conservation efforts, certainly, but maybe it's like a 2020's stress ball for the type of rando's who rightly believe alot what the UN does is lip service, or worse, what the musicians on the titanic did (or didn't do, I admit I'm pulling from the movie here)
The point is if there's more people you see on reddit that feel like doomers, maybe that's simply because there's more people lol. Welcome to the information age, where we get to share all the shitty things 24/7 more or less unrestricted to anyone else in the world at a moments notice
dc456 t1_jb05d8i wrote
> The point is if there’s more people you see on reddit that feel like doomers, maybe that’s simply because there’s more people lol.
I’m not sure that logic holds though, as you’d also expect to see more positive people to counterbalance that.
I think the proportion of unwaveringly negative people has increased.
I think it’s due to a demographic shift in Reddit users as much as anything, but have no real way of knowing.
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