{"id":8358,"date":"2019-08-18T17:51:16","date_gmt":"2019-08-18T17:51:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socialpanic.org\/?p=8358"},"modified":"2019-08-18T17:51:16","modified_gmt":"2019-08-18T17:51:16","slug":"social-media-defined-miserablism-the-philosophy-of-pessimism-and-enjoyment-of-being-depressed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/2019\/08\/18\/social-media-defined-miserablism-the-philosophy-of-pessimism-and-enjoyment-of-being-depressed\/","title":{"rendered":"Social media defined? Miserablism, the philosophy of pessimism and enjoyment of being depressed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ran across a new word: miserablism<\/em>, the philosophy of pessimism and the enjoyment of being depressed. <\/span><\/p>\n

That seems to be the defining characteristic of Twitter, and a good reason to cut way, way back.<\/span><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/dictionary\/miserabilism<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/<\/span>collinsdictionary.com\/dictionary\/english\/miserabilism<\/span><\/a>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

The negativity on social media, especially my Twitter feed, is overwhelming. This negativity has effects on the mental health of those who are constantly posting negativity, and their drive by victims.<\/p>\n

At this point, the noise to signal ratio on Twitter is so large that I am cutting way, way back. I cannot handle the constant and intense negativity, and so much of it is not justified, and often bizarre.<\/p>\n

I saw someone in my Twitter feed unload on her health insurance company with a long thread about their evilness because they would not cover her medication at her preferred pharmacy<\/em>. I looked up her medication (which she listed in her tweet explosion), and the cash price of her medication was as little as 25 cents per day or $7.50 per month. Her outrage made no sense. But it certainly kept her (and her many friends who commented in support) in a continual state of mental outrage and miserablism. None of her friends bothered to fact check and look up the price to put this in perspective.<\/p>\n

About 10% of the population uses Twitter and 80% of the tweets come from about 20% of Twitter users. Stated another way, 80% of the tweets come from 2% of the population. A group that is often opinionated, angry and miserable.<\/p>\n

Twitter does not represent the views of the people: it represents the views of a tiny minority of angry and miserable people. Hanging out with this crowd is not a healthy activity for any of us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Twitter does not represent the views of the people: it represents the views of a very tiny minority of angry and miserable people (most tweets come from about 2% of the population, a group that seems to very outraged and angry). There is a word for this: it’s miserablism, or the philosophy of pessimism and the enjoyment of being miserable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,34,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mental-health","category-other","category-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8358\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}