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these utterly dreary, hopeless people dead-set on trying to infect others with despair are genuinely my least favorite part of social media. at least an actively-offensive troll is displaying some recognizable spark of human vitality.

there is a massive difference between someone who personally feels horrible and hopeless - and rest assured I’ve felt that way many times before - but doesn’t actively try to inflict this feeling on others, versus someone who deals with their own misery by trying to make everyone else miserable.

How can you tell the difference on social media? If you’re going into random strangers mentions to tell them they’re doomed, we’re ALL doomed, and everyone should give up now? You are a classic Doomer Typhoid Mary specimen.

Low tolerance for the doomers, for sure.

I try to point depressed people (hi hi you are my people) to resources like Joanna Macy who make working skillfully with grief and despair an active practice point. There are many flavors of tools out there. Knowing we could have better can lead to getting stuck in the awful of not being there.

I always ask folks to remember the guy in the war movie who's like "oh man we're fucked now, we're so screwed, we're all gonna die!!" and remember how nobody likes that guy. And also how he's usually not around at the end of the movie.