I don't go to Reddit anymore, but I imagine it looks like how Facebook looks last time I saw somebody on Facebook, which is to say it's like LinkedIn but with more bots, meaning a garbage fire being actively and perpetually painted.

I think this is what I love. Whenever I open up Lemmy, it’s like a portal to 7 or 8+ years in the past. To when not everything was engagement driven slop (even tho it was well under way to becoming that back then).

there are still some traditional forums around, relevant, and pretty much the de-facto global community hub, e.g. boardgamegeek.com

I found this too initially. What I did was (and this may not work for you but it's probably worth a whirl) only subscribe to easygoing / fun / quirky stuff for my "home" feed which I sort by "scaled" then bail into the top twelve hours of the "All" feed to keep up to date with what's happening in the world.

A quieter, pleasant home feed is a good start to your day.

how do I make my feed less depress

That's the interesting part of the "old internet", you curate your own feed.

Fediverse,Technology, and Privacy are chock full of all the news, and right now, there's a lot of negative going around.

Start by noticing who's posting in those forums and blocking the ones that are generally negative. We have a lot of bot posting that lays one way or the other. There's a Monday morning US time bot that just floods with the most depressing stuff. If you can't get it to sort out with that, start looking at other technology or news communities. Do the same thing there with blocking doom bots.

You can't pull Artax out of the quicksand, but you can keep him from sinking so fast.

If you want people to be less depressed, that's one thing. Maybe you could be the change you want to see in the world, or something.

If you want to just not see depressing things, go back to the matrix and live among them.

Your choice.

Tldr: You're awoken to the horrors of reality. "Woke", even. Welcome, Cypher.

Post to communities that are less depressing and get more things going

Be the change you want to see!

Got permabanned from reddit formoffering general safety advice to protestors in Minnesota in early 2025.

Fucking fascist racist piece of shit spez. May his guards be the first ones to desert him during the apocalypse.

Lemmy: the Methadone of Reddit addiction!

@dessalines@lemmy.ml, how do I get in on the series B funding round?

Honestly yeah. I do have a Reddit account, but I get way more responses and quality interactions here than I do over there anymore. Every comment over there is just someone trying to make a joke these days.

Not just in magnetude, but it feels more evenly spread out too. Even communities/subforums that by other standards would be absolutely silent, if you post something, you may still get a reaction, like a comment, a thumbs up, a boost or crosspost, etc.

I'd say it's closer to forming clusters instead. Sure some groups may seem more hegemonic for being more incisive, but I can notice some splits in vision.

The lack of global karma makes me care a lot less about that, though. Let 'em be mad. If a joke falls flat or the sarcasm wasn't obvious, then I can just move on.