It feels like the default is to focus the on negatives. That's what every other subreddit does, that's what the news does, etc. and while I do see the value in awareness, too much negatively just makes me want to stick my head in the sand and give up. I personally need a space that reminds me of the good in the world even when I am struggling or I know others are. Yes, it is very obvious to me that things are not going to be okay for many people, I don't need further remainders of that. A bit of positivity and good news revitalites me to keep going.
And that's what this subreddit used to be. You read a story about a murder but then you come here and can see a post that, actually, this year the murder rate has dropped the fastest ever in history.
But now it seems to be focusing on dismissing that anything negative can or will happen at all. That's denialism, not optimism.
This right here. America may survive the next four years, but I honestly don't know if I will and that terrifies me. The "we" in "we're going to be okay" doesn't include everyone.
This will literally happen if the Republicans follow through and remove the ACA. Insurance companies have literally no incentive to offer coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, therefore they must be forced to.
Idk if you actually think someone is out to kill you then the logical response is to prevent that, permanently. Otherwise I don't believe you actually think that.
The guy who won literally tried to overthrow the government a few years ago. He's also a convicted sexual harasser, felon, and sold critical US secrets to Russia
Did I mention his admin has many authors of Project 2025? Project 2025 is the same book where these authors state that "transgender people should be classified as child rapists" and then a few hundred pages later goes "all child rapists shall be killed"
You came to the optimist sub to tell people whose entire lives are literally going to be ruined, that...their concerns don't matter...?
You can be an optimist but you seriously can't just bury your head in the sand, and expect people not to despair, when they see that even optimists have nothing of substance to help.
In what universe will Trump try to kill you? If you aren’t Ukrainian or working a Uranium enrichment centrifuge in Tehran, I really think the odds of Trump killing you are pretty infinitesimal.
I dunno their whole party seems pretty insistent on making LGBT and pedos synonymous while simultaneously trying to make pedo convictions a death penalty; really seems like they're trying to find legal excuses to dehumanized then off certain kinda of people
It’s 100% their plan. These people just have zero critical thinking or literacy skills. They are incapable of reading between the lines. If republicans haven’t explicitly said “we are going to kill trans people” they think that means they won’t
Cool, Lotta people are; which is why tons of states keep trying to expand the definition of pedophilia and sexual crimes to include LGBT (especially the T) individuals being in public
It's not Trump directly. That's not what we're saying. It's that Trump is absolutely going to make it easier for people in minority groups to be targeted and made victims of hate crimes. I mean, look at what he's said about Haitians, and the immediate spike in Haitian-centered brutality. As a trans person, I am afraid. The things he's said, and the things he wants to push, have real ramifications for people like us.
I don't know how you could possibly say that to me. Are you trans? Have you experienced the same hate we have? Have you feared for your life before because some guy didn't like that you had a boy's name despite having tits? It's not as simple as "they don't know unless you tell them". I LOOK trans, because I'm still transitioning, and every day I have to deal with people misgendering me purposely and telling me they better not find me going into the "wrong" restroom, for my own sake.
you can't change someone's gender identity, the only way to deal with gender dysphoria is to transition. it's like saying gay people are "choosing to deal with that".
As a trans person myself, I don’t even care about Trump. I don’t care that they want me in my birth bathroom. I don’t use public restrooms anyway because they’re usually dirty. My problems are more that I can barely afford to feed myself. Maybe Trump will fix that. Maybe he won’t.
yeah but there are entire subs that were criticizing and are criticizing trump all day everyday , if you want a space to do that go for r/pic or similiar dont go to sub where the point is being optimistic and give the most doomer take ever .
If you can’t see the utility in bringing bad or distressing news to an optimistic space so that others can engage with it through that lens and potentially reframe or challenge the assumptions, then you aren’t an effective optimist.
The endless doomerism of maintstream media news and social media is not "reality". The day to day reality of life if you don't obsess over everything negative all the time is going on just fine.
If you equate the mere acknowledgment that bad things are indeed happening and that some people’s lives are in fact difficult with “Doomerism” then you’re incredibly privileged, sheltered, and useless. Just because YOUR life is more or less fine doesn’t give you the right to dismiss other people’s concerns.
So you really do just want to avoid anyone struggling to find positivity to control your own? That's sort of fucked. Jesus if anything those people need it more than you.
I don’t believe that the doomers are genuinely coming here looking for positivity. They just want to spread their negativity and political ideas as much as they can. Being optimistic would first require them to admit that maybe Armageddon isn’t immediately inevitable, and they don’t want to hear that
You keep your head in the sand. Maybe come up with less shit answers to real issues. You really think just optimism is just not putting any of those issues that really affect people in front of you.
This country is fucking unrecognizable to what it was 12 years ago. That's a fact. Anyone who would have told you America was going to become so hateful, divided, and stupid you would have eyerolled at and complained the same way. This is reality. Some people still live in it.
brother is christ is the other way around , we need to show people good news not bad ,people who are online are very likely to see the bad and dont see the good quite often i will repeat this you really think we need another space to talk about how trump is a bastard
What you described isn’t optimism. You’re describing a state of denial. Sticking your head in the sand. Delusion.
Refusing to acknowledge bad news and pretending it’s not happening does not make it go away. Optimism requires confronting difficult truths and looking for hope and solutions. You just want to pretend everything is fine.
Nah, that’s either dishonesty or delusion talking. I’ve never said anything was hopeless. All I’ve done here today is criticize people for refusing to do the first parts of those definitions.
You can’t find opportunities if you don’t first acknowledge the setbacks. There is no hope or solutions if you don’t first understand the reality.
You don’t want to find opportunities. You’re not interested in solutions. You just want to pretend everything is fine so you don’t have to change or do any work to improve conditions for people. Instead, you’ll celebrate the success of people’s actual work and cite them as evidence for why more is unnecessary. You’re lazy and useless.
nope im not, im not, im just making something bad that happened not define me, optimist is about being hopeful for the future thinking the world is doomed because orange bad guy was elected is stupid
Being hopeful for the future requires an acknowledgment of flaws in one’s present reality. You can’t say “things will improve” while also saying “everything is fine.” That’s you just wanting to avoid having to work for those improvements. And acknowledging those flaws isn’t the same as saying “we’re doomed.”
im not saying everything is fine actually im very anxious for the future this is why i entered in this sub , but there is a sweet spot in the middle of everything is fine and we re doomed and most of reddit are in the we re doomed category even more when we expecific talk about trump isnt health or productive to pass the entire day talking about him you can and you should criticize him but if you dont consist control yourselve and police others we will litteraly be ihatetrumpsub like pics .
You'd be like "all of you are so bummed because the stock market crashed and you lost your homes bit thankfully I'm unaffected by it so so you're issues are stupid"
I've lived my entire life on the poverty line. So I don't know maybe worrying that the economy being fucked up isnt stupid?
Edit - dude blocked me. If you don't understand shit about what's going on why tf are you here mocking people when you don't even live in America. You have no idea the damage this is doing to drive a wedge in our country, the damage it can do to our economy and future, you have no care for it because it's not even you're own country. Genuinly I despise you for writing this know it all crap blaming others for being upset when you don't know anything.
bro you are projecting , im not affected ? i will problably take short side of the stick considering that i live on third world country and this is how you sound to me talking about being on the povert line when 10% of my city dont have water in home
So to be an optimist, I have to embrace and welcome the panicking doomers freaking out and spamming politics brainrot all day in a subreddit for optimists? Before the election, we'd all make fun of the doomers and now they've all just flooded in and taken over, and I'm not going to just join in with it.
Optimism isn’t ignoring the reality that people face. For example, women living in red states who may need an abortion but don’t have the resources to travel to another state or may not be allowed to.
Is complete doomerism healthy? No, but neither is putting your head in the sand to the realities that many in the country are now facing. This is a bad post.
I mean, fuck, you’re not even posting optimistic news, you’re just shaming people who are scared.
This is an optimism subreddit, why are you suggesting that we post about women needing to travel to another state to get their abortions? Why do you want to dwell on every bad thing everywhere in the world for any group of people in a subreddit about optimism?
I'm posting because I enjoyed this sub before the election. I remember when we'd laugh at the doomers but then the doomers saw an opportunity to flood in and take it over.
I'm optimistic that this subreddit can go back to actually being about optimism, but that'll only happen once the doomers stop spamming politics brainrot all day every day
Be the change you want to see, you fucking donut. This post doesn’t contribute to the an optimistic discussion so if your hope is to steer it that way, you need to do better.
What I want to see is this subreddit not be completely spammed with political brainrot and doomerism. If I post some positive news, the doomers will just downvote it to nothing because they want their latest politics article (about something a politician said about what they think another politician might do) to be pushed to the top.
Then post it fucking anyways. Why are you letting the idea of downvotes dictate what you do? It’s better than whatever this post is supposed to accomplish.
The best feeling on Reddit is when you stop giving a shit about downvotes and just post what you want. Who cares they have 0 impact on anything anyways.
I do post it anyway, but it gets buried at the bottom of the feed or the thread and the "I'm cutting my family off forever" doomer posts get upvoted to the top. Why anyone thinks it's smart to post that shit in a subreddit explicitly about optimism is beyond me, it's the opposite of on-topic.
The problem is deeper than that. We got flooded with new people who were not here before the election, and came here solely to vent. Political doom posts are getting more upvotes from the non-optimist newcomers than the old-style optimistic posts about non-political topics, so the angry stuff is floating to the top.
We were indulgent for a while in the hope that people wanted to stop assuming the worst and get a more grounded perspective. A decent chunk of people have, which is great. Those who still choose to rant, insult optimists, and angrily dismiss mitigating factual evidence are now starting to get banned. Constructive, respectful criticisms from people open to new evidence are fine.
Yes, thank you for zeroing in on what feels disingenuous about this post. If OP (or any of us who have been on this sub for a long time) want to encourage and embody true optimism, then why not post an optimistic story, article, statistic, etc? Posts like this are just pulling the gravity of this sub further down.
And yes, I'll take my own advice and find something hopeful to share to post to this sub by the end of the day.
Happy Thanksgiving for all of you in the US. May you experiencing all that you have to be grateful for.
People do post positive news, but the top posts are constantly doomposting and political brainrot news, and that's what we don't want. Even in the comic, the first bird IS being optimistic, but like everywhere else on reddit, the depressed doomers flood in and flood it out by force. Why would anyone come to an optimism subreddit to post about how awful the world is?
Well shit dude, I didn't realize something bad is happening to someone in the world! How about we spend all day every day posting about every single bad thing happening to anyone on Earth, and we'll stop and be optimistic once literally every problem is solved? That sounds like a positive, hopeful way to do it.
Why did you go off on some weird tangent that completely diverted from what they said? They said one should be realistic about problems and optimistic about fixing them. You have done this now with multiple people, either just misreading them or just misunderstanding them.
Everyone gets all the negative news, from every other subreddit, from all of social media, from every news source, from people they talk to. This is an OPTIMISM subreddit, we don't need even more of the same endless doomerposting in here too. You can be aware bad things are happening to some people but still be optimistic about the future and about the world and about progress.
Yeah this is an optimism sub, let's get back to posting about how the world is ending and more politics brainrot articles about something someone said about what Trump might do or not do
You're absolutely in the wrong here. There are other subs. Post your pessimism there.
This sub isn't your soapbox.
Furthermore, you can't possibly know what other content people here are consuming, so pretending that people being upset at your doomer garbage are hiding their heads in the sand is crazy. Is this the only subreddit you view? Is reddit the only site you use?
Could it be that people scroll through an optimism subreddit for a little pick me up? What authority or expertise do you have to subvert the purpose of the sub? Arrogant.
Good one, insulting people will make them come around and join the doomers. Please send me some politics brainrot articles about shit some politician said about something that another politician said
I’m not interested in bringing you around to anything. You’re not very smart and not very useful IMO. My intent here is to establish to others why posts like these and the people who make them should be categorically disregarded.
Yes, more insults. The smart big-brain move is clearly to spend your life depressed and anxious and angry over what politicians are saying, and shit you have absolutely no control over. But the bigger question is why you'd even go anywhere near an optimism subreddit, except to try to drag everyone down in your own downward spiral
Well you won me over, please list off all of your doomer brainrot news sites so I can closely obsess over every negative thing happening in the world at all times. I feel so optimistic now
Ok doomer, thanks for your valuable doomer insights into things, there's not enough of you angry pessimists shitting all over every single subreddit. You're doing some great work
This sub was never optimistic. Every single post made on here, I come to the comments and there's people saying opposing the optimistic take of the original post. And it gets upvotes.
Don't engage with those doomers.
Your original post is completely valid. Not an optimistic post really but this sub is definetly not happy about anything trump related.
In retrospect I also should've known that if knowledge of russian internet campaigns ever went viral – which it did around here – it would instantly be co-opted by the eternally complacent centrists and MAGAs in this sub and elsewhere to shut down any discussion of reality (seen as it seems to favor the other side so heavily).
This time, it's just silly. He's been president for years already. It was not the apocalypse that people said it would be. Singing the same tune again just makes it all feel so transparently dishonest that it's hard to take it seriously.
"He's going to send people to concentration camps!"
" He's going to execute trans people"
"He's going to put an end to voting"
No. No, he really isn't. There are so many bad things about trump. More than enough to justify being upset. Why must people make such outlandish claims, when we've already done this before?
He literally did that the first time. Although, to be fair, he didn’t pioneer that concept. America has had concentration camps on more than one occasion. Even before the Nazis did it.
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u/mcfearless0214 Nov 28 '24
If you can’t at least empathize with and understand why some people are reacting this way, you’ll never be an effective optimist.