I do the exact same as you, with the exception of a few topic-specific instances, where the local communities are only about that topic. There I will actually use Local as default.

At least on my Kbin instance, going in All and Local opens me up to doom-and-gloom “big corporation and alt-right bad” news and outrage bait.

I agree wholeheartedly with “big corporation and alt-right bad” and that they’re the cause of too many of the world’s big serious problems. I’d also rather spend my time on Kbin enjoying what I see instead of getting mad. I can already find out what horrible thing a corporation or alt-right politician has done from the regular news, without the understandable but exhausting comment chain of outrage.

Even without an algorithm shoving it down your throat, outrage bait will rise to popular status on its own. Unfortunately, getting mad at and feeling superior to the idiotsincars, choosingbeggars, etc. is kind of crack to our brains. I’m no exception, which is why I have to only look at /sub. I have to keep it out of sight, because if it’s in my feed, I’ll click on it and get mad too.

So how do I find new stuff? There’s a lot of communities out there whose purpose is to advertise other communities. I subscribe to those.

Waiting for the next episode on some stupid show could be the one thing motivating a person to keep living till tomorrow instead of killing themselves today. Just being able to promise yourself that you’ll stay alive till tomorrow (and repeating that promise daily) is important for suicidal people. If some dumb show on a dumb streaming service is the thing that motivates them enough, then so be it.

Also, small joys like entertainment help take peoples’ minds off their problems, both “real problems” and “first world problems.” It might not be nearly as helpful as a cash injection or whatever would directly solve their problem, but it can serve as a temporary comfort. If your problem is something you’ve already done your best to solve, or that you can’t solve (maybe you have a painful terminal disease, no family who cares to visit, the hospital won’t allow euthanasia, and you’re too physically weak at that point to do anything to commit suicide), then all you can do at that point is do something to take your mind off your suffering.

Streaming isn’t quite essential, no, but I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s a completely useless luxury. It’s something people with serious problems might lament the loss of easy access to!

I’d also like to think that making the lives of people who don’t have serious problems a little bit worse is still an issue. People are allowed to be mad about their day-to-day problems that aren’t nearly as serious as slavery or genocide. Yes, thinking that your stubbed toe or annoying commute or raised prices on streaming services is more important than slavery or genocide is a problem. But I don’t see how anyone in this article or in this discussion is trying to assert that their problems are more important or should gain attention at the expense of attention to the more important problems. And people will naturally focus on the problems that impact them, even if they’re small.

kbin.cafe. According to my instance, I’m your first downvoter, which is clearly not true judging by the replies to you.

Username checks out. I just checked out that instance because of the name, even though I have no intent of using Mastodon because I never liked Twitter. It’s like the perfect name for a Pokémon-themed Mastodon instance.

The problem is users like me who set to Subscribed and end up seeing All without ever choosing to navigate there. I fully understand that if I choose to look at All I can get blasted with anything, including things I don’t like. My entire problem is that I didn’t choose this. I opted out of it and am forced to see it anyways, which is how I became aware that not everyone is lucky enough to just have memes.

Tried with cleared cache and private mode, still happens. Will try with different browser when I get to my computer.

EDIT: Tried on my computer, no dice. Thanks anyways!

That’s odd, maybe your instance fixed it. I have accounts on two Lemmy instances. I just logged myself into those instances and they both ignored the fact that I have it set to Subscribed. Not to All.

Not everyone is lucky enough to have their All be memes, and even still some memes I just don’t feel like seeing, or whose point are “lol thing bad.” Even if I agree with you that Thing is Bad I don’t want to see it.

This is exactly what I do! Unfortunately, when I first log into Lemmy or Kbin, despite me having my settings set to show me only subscribed stuff by default, it totally ignores that setting (and what communities I’ve blocked) and just shows me the equivalent of /all on kbin or on that Lemmy server. You can get back to only seeing subscribed things by refreshing, but at that point the damage has been done, the NSFW has already popped up on your screen and you have to refresh to take it away. Seems just in the realm of “annoying” except for the fact that some people also have their defaults set to subscribed in an effort to avoid ragebait or triggering content.

There’s a codeberg issue for this on kbin already, so just have to wait for it to be addressed. Not sure if Lemmy has an equivalent issue on their GitHub (or whatever they use) yet.

I do not have the same problem as OP. Probably because when I made my accounts, if there was an option to disable NSFW (or not enable NSFW) I made sure to have NSFW disabled/not enabled.