I know I'm not the first person to say this, and probably won't be the last, but despite how much Twitter has gone down the hole, and after the Reddit protests, it's kind of wild how much my browsing habits have changed.
Rant and thoughts below
The Original Problem (looking back)
I used to work primarily in media. The news was something I was always, constantly aware of. While my Twitter feed was never terrible, I'd scroll Reddit any free time I could. So between my job and Reddit, I was always aware of what was going on, especially here in the US. There was (and is, I suppose) so much to worry about. And there was always more to learn of. I have a friend who does not pay attention to any news, and I was just always amazed at how much he just didn't know about. Things that were going on in the US, or even in his state. I thought "How can someone not know what's going on? How do you not just passively know what's happening?"
But now I primarily do not work in media. Since Elon took over, I'm no longer on Twitter so don't really see current events. I'm no longer on Reddit since the protests, and so I don't see the news anymore. I didn't really think too much of missing out on this news - I just went about my day to day life. But today one of my friends sent me a tiktok about a Republican Debate that happened last night apparently (today is 8/24/23). And my gut sort of dropped hearing what they're talking about. My anxiety was back (Well, anxiety about politics). And it kind of hit me of like "oh.... I don't feel this daily anymore"
The Results
It really hit me. This feeling of like "oh... I just don't have this passive worry constantly anymore about everything". And this is nice. It's really nice honestly to be blissfully ignorant. However, it also bothers me. I feel like, as an adult who can vote, I should be aware of what's going on in the US. I should be aware of what's going on locally. That way, when it's time to vote, I know what's been going on, and which candidates have been doing what on it. I also want to just know about things going on in the community.
The thing I miss most, specifically about Twitter, is I still have some friends or Content Creators I follow that still use Twitter as their primary means of communications. And I just don't get to interact with those people anymore. It's also hard because I think a lot of people sort of feel a social media fatigue where they don't want to keep signing up for new apps just for the chance it works. And it's a shame because, there's a lot of people I've known over the years that I like to sort of passively keep in touch with - and that's largely going to the wayside.
I also haven't found anything to fully fill the void of Twitter or Reddit. When both of those sites were basically going down, I remember getting worried about like "What am I supposed to do with my free time? The time where I only have 2-3 minutes to do something, so I just browser Reddit or Twitter for a bit". It seemed so sad that these two sites which I viewed as being some of the main internet sites seemed to be going down in fire. And like, while on one hand it's good not to always need to look at something, there's still times where I miss it, and just don't know what to do.
Ideas to Get Better
Around the time Twitter began imploding, I started up a Freshrss server and subscribe to some local news stations. I'll browse it every now and then to get caught up on the news. I also follow any artist I like that has an RSS feed. I really made sure to look for any artist I followed on twitter to see if they had other places I could follow them or subscribe to an RSS feed.
For friends, I really haven't found a solution. I try to tell people about Cohost, but I'm not sure my average friend would really like this place. I'm also not terribly sure how long Cohost will be around, and I don't want to make peoples social media fatigue worse.
If anyone has any suggestions on good RSS feeds to follow for news, I'm all ears! Or if anyone else has any thoughts or suggestions, I'd love to hear them.