Apologies for the clickbaity title or for the messy wording to follow. I’m not great at articulating myself.
I’ve been finding myself posting less and less on Beehaw lately and that my enthusiasm for it is fading, and I have been trying to figure out why I personally have felt this way. Beehaw is, in theory, a great community with a solid foundation built on a good code of conduct and mission statement. This is the place that many of us wanted to find, especially those of us who long for the days of webforums and wanted that sense of community that Reddit never really provided.
I think I have figured out why now. Simply put: The vast majority of content posted to Beehaw is news. Much of that news ranges from mostly negative to downright doomscrolling doomerism. There is very little community engagement or discussion going on, just page after page of news. I don’t follow most news-heavy communities, so if I change my sorting then it will filter out some of it but then the posts I see are days to even weeks old. If I sort by Local - New then it is just page after page of news, most of it with very few or zero comments. And this is with several news-centric communities (like US news) already blocked.
Maybe this is just me or maybe some of you feel the same way, I’m not sure. Or maybe it’s just that this Reddit-styled UI doesn’t lend itself well to other types of engagement; I don’t know. But I was hoping to find more here than just another news aggregator. I was hoping Beehaw would be a more positive, uplifting, inclusive place.
This is kinda my take, too; after reading OP's post, I was left wondering how much time they spend on here and what they're doing outside it.
I know everyone's ability and opportunity to be engaged with the world is different, so I hope this doesn't come off as a "touch grass" kinda thing, that's not how I mean it at all. For people with difficulties communicating or mobility issues, sometimes being online is the best way to engage with the world, and I totally get that. However, I think it's unwise to put all of our social eggs in one basket; we need multiple platforms for communicating and outlets for expression and connection. What ways are you connecting with people outside Lemmy?
When I'm feeling sad and disconnected, I like to work against it by sowing the kindness and understanding I would like to be reaping. This is pretty common advice - it's not unusual for someone going through a rough patch to be told to try volunteering for something they care about - and for me, it is almost always Super Effective.
So, maybe posting on a social media board could be fulfilling, if gone into with the attitude of finding a way to contribute instead of trying to find what is needed.
Idk, maybe that doesn't make sense, I'm not fully caffeinated yet and out of medication and I know I'm not totally with it. But hopefully I'm getting the gist across: posting/commenting would ideally not be your primary (or only) way of connecting with others, posting is usually not satisfying, but empathetic/meaningful commenting can be, and if there's not already a meaningful reply to something, try making one and see how it feels. It might feel better than you expected to be that first meaningful comment even if nobody ever replies; sometimes heartfelt expression can be its own reward.
I don't spend much time here at all. I open Beehaw a couple times a day, see nothing that I want to interact with, and close the tab. That was the basis of me creating this post to begin with - that Beehaw is quickly becoming a news feed with no actual meat to interact with.