SW Mental Health Advice

I just took a long scroll down the SW feed for the last few hours and it was surprisingly peaceful and enjoyable. Not once did I see anything that raised my blood pressure, made me grit my teeth or trigger me to post a pithy zinger of a reply to something that annoyed me. It was very nice!

So how did I accomplish this? It was quite simple really but it first required an uncomfortable deep dive into the depths of offensive stupidity and searching out all of the trolls in the feed and simply adding them to my mute list. It was unpleasant, but hopefully it will only have to be done once or twice (until they sign up again with new accounts). Now when they add new posts they won't show up for me.I highly recommend it for anyone who sometimes gets triggered by asinine politically-charged misinformation, offensive and racially insensitive and hateful garbage, medically dangerous or just jaw-droppingly rediculous gullibility. I, like many decent people on here, have been guilty in the past of trying to correct such nonsense with a reply or two, but it only makes matters worse and escalates the situation. Now I can simply ignore it all - its wonderful.

*pro-tip to save time. Find the most offensive post and look at all the replies. Trolls are social animals and they like to congregate together and perform self-congratulatory circle-jerks and give each other high-fives. When the usual culprits are all in one place, just go down the list and mute them one by one. They may not be the author of that particular post but if they are there to congratulate the author, they will likely write similar posts themselves in the future.

The truth is, we all have some responsibility for this kind of bad behavior. If we weren't outraged, if we didn't get triggered and respond, it wouldn't be fun for them anymore. They require your disgust to make it worthwhile to them. If they are ignored by enough people they won't have a reason to do it anymore.

There was a time when polite society didn't discuss social or electoral politics, religion and other touchy subjects in conversation in fear of offending people of differing views. Sadly those days have passed us by now, and now offending people has become a sport, it has become normalized. But maybe, just maybe if we turn a digital blind eye to the vitriol and discord, it can feel like the good old days again.

Sam