Whatever I do, it'll never be enough.

Sounds demoralizing. It's not what you know, it's who you know. World is brutal.

I don't really use X that much, but from what I've heard, it's better in that there's less censorship, and worse n that there's loads of bots, lots more political extremism, etc. But at least it's' not like insta, where everyone is just completely negative for no reason.

Oooh, that sounds like I'm not missing much then..

Thanks for taking the time to inform me.

Unfortunately, when you don't censor and the full spectrum of human behaviour is allowed, you have to excercise a lot of "choice" rather than outsourcing it to censors. But having dreck thrust into your inbox is unacceptable.  At least yu toob does allow you to turn off recommendations, etc.

On the sites where I get my war coverage from, I seem to be the LONE VOICE expressing revulsion for this conflict, tthe vast majorty of people seem hell bent on picking a side and cheering on the atrocity. 

I almost a couple of years back joined a drone company run by an ex .MIL guy, but came to my senses at the last moment. I had ideas about range extension and a novel approach to conferring immunity to jamming, and I'm so glad I kept them to myself now... What both sides are doing with drones is fecking horrible.

As the Gary Clail song so eloquently explains, "There's something wrong with human nature"..  

www.youtube.com/watch

*Edit* I just noticed I have the yamaha DX27 keyboard that is in use there, in practically unused condition. (Turns out I'm an analog sythesiser guy) I'm wanting a reasonable price for it too if anyone here might be interested. A gumtree search will find it easily..

I Sperg said:

you are down with suppression of the far right's right to speak, but there is no suggestion that the far left ought to be sanctioned in a similar way!

I don't get hit by waves of blatant lies, misquotes and twisted propoganda by the far left though. If I did then I'd be making a point about them too, but they seem to lack the foothold on X to get pushed into the algorythm the same way the right does.

Elon has made it clear he supports the far righ which possibly is the cause.

This part thread was about what has changed on X to make it worse - hence my comment on it.

The left vs right debate isn't really part of the discussion around this though so I don't want to turn it into one as these get quite heated.

For the record though, I hold no good feelings towards the extemes of any direction politically.

I Sperg said:

I'm in full agreement about the "nasty accidents" films though. It's just nasty schadenfreud.

It sickens me to see people squished under a block of steel that falls over, a dog pulled into a wood chipper because its leash got caught in a branch or a parade of Russian soldiers blown limb from limb in graphic detail in the name of propoganda.

Especially as nothing of this nature is in my preferences.

It seems a common experience from others I know who use X and most have dropped it over the last year.

O.K. Iain, this is what I don't get: You come across as a pretty "balanced" individual. 

Yet, you are down with suppression of the far right's right to speak, but there is no suggestion that the far left ought to be sanctioned in a similar way! Why are far right past crimes held to be so much worse than teh leftist pogroms in russia, cambodia, china etc. where they seem to agically get memory holed. There's NEVER any condemnation of the people who were behind the holodmor (SIXTY million people) but there isn't a day goes by where soemone doesn't mention the losing side in WW2 as being the very definition of human evil. Mr Musk really went out on a limb financially to restore free & balanced speech on twitter, and it sure was not a money making business decision... 

I see letting the full spectrum of posters have their say as being a PROMOTION of balanced discussion, whereas "twitter" was (pre musk) a censors paradise where if you didn't toe the NWO line, (Like practically evey other "social media" site) you were silenced. 

As for Ukraine war footage, I firmly believe that more people ought to view some of it, disgusting as it is, then maybe we wouldn't all be quite so keen to prolong or assist in that war.

I'm in full agreement about the "nasty accidents" films though. It's just nasty schadenfreud.

OTOH, I do enjoy the "bIg fails" video's that do also pop up where no one actually gets hurt, (the operator makes a sharp exit before the crane and it's load disappear over the ravine, that sort of thing)...

I Sperg said:

DO you hold  X any more hateful than twitter was?

I found it went very rapidly downhill following Elon Musk taking over it - I fairly quickly started to receive lots of unsolicited right wing political posts (nothing to do with my settings), there was a notable surge in bot postings and I also started to receive the most horrific posts with people being killed or maimed in accidents, war footage from Ukraine etc - truly disgusting stuff.

The lack of mod behaviour, the enabling of the far right to post unfettered and the move away from being about discussion to being about polarisation made it unusable for me.

I used to get quite angry after catching up with the days posts in X so it was a clear sign to step away from it.

Don't take other people's bragging literally. 

My late father was at genius level when it came to bragging.  Shame that 99% of what he claimed was a  total pack of lies.

DO you hold  X any more hateful than twitter was?

(Is a genuine RFI, I've used neither except to look at tweets when linked by other media)

I think social media platforms like Facebook can be one-dimensional. In my experience, people are quick to share all the positive things that are happening in their lives, but they will seldom disclose anything negative. It can be all too easy to end up falling into the trap that these people are living their best lives, and having an absolute blast. In reality, their lives may not be quite as hunky-dory as they would like you to think. For all we know, the person who has just been offered their dream job, or is sharing photos of their seemingly-perfect holiday-of-a-lifetime, might well have posted those things whilst in a state of emotional turmoil. Even with family members, there may be things going on behind closed doors (trauma of some kind) that they don't want us to know about.

The only advice I can offer is to try not to compare your own life with the lives of other people.

I can understand why you feel gaslit by your parents. Applying for jobs can be so time-consuming, and dare I say soul-destroying too. For what it's worth, I think few people would begrudge you for taking a break from the job-hunting.

1 sometimes bragging hides unspoken unhappiness, don't trust it. If one were really happy why bother advertising?

2 There is no way we could ever live our lives by meeting someone else's expectations of us.

If we did we would be just play acting out someone else's idea of a life, like a puppet. It never goes well.

3 Finding your own path, and where it's trail head is to get started on your trek on your path, is your only real goal. Forget other people.

4 We are all perfect and enough, juts as we are.

5 It's ok and mind expanding to explore many paths.

Dougliffe98 said:

What makes it even worse is seeing other people on social media (including other members of my own family) bragging about how good their life is

That is one toxic aspect of social media - these people are probably suffering in different ways to you from managers who are sociopaths, companies who don't give a damn and colleagues who make their life hell.

But like all social media, people will post how amazing it is for them. Faking it until they make it - or retire, whichever comes first.

Ignore this facet of social media would be my advice, and if you have X, uninstall that hateful app.

Dougliffe98 said:

my job application count has gone WAAAY above the 130s.

I used to get 200-300 applications off in a month when looking for new contracts and that was with 25 years of excellent experience. It just seems to be the nature of the job market these days.

I've been to loads of interviews in the past where the jobs were pulled in the weeks after as they lost funding, found an internal applicant etc - and from my time recruiting within companies I know that they often have to advertise the roles for legal reasons when they already know who will fill the position but need to go through the motions.

For me the key was to make job hunting a full time job - get 8 hours a day in with either searching / writing applications, attending interviews, chasing on older applications and updating my skills with online courses.

It keeps you busy and feeling that you are doing the max you can while the training is actually making you more marketable.