Positive vibes

[sundancer 44265xp 3]

This subject is part of today’s XLBS that I find is way to important to be hidden behind a paywall.

From the video description:

Dealing With Negativity & Finding The Positive
John is pretty sick of seeing loads of negative stuff about the hobby online and wants some solutions on how to find the positive. Do you have any ways that you go about doing this?

Are there particular creators that you turn to? Do you just try to ignore it and get on with your own hobby away from the screen?

And @brennon fist post on it:

The whole point of this discussion today is to find the positive in the hobby, so let’s try and do that here in the comments. Get stuck in and tell us about all the good, the awesome, the brilliant that gets you sitting down at the tabletop to paint and play.

Let’s not let the negative win and indulge in the awesomeness that makes our hobby so great.

I’ll just copy-pasta my response and then I’m handing the topic off to the rest of the OTT community.

Staying positive in the light of recent things happening (not just here and in our hobby bubble but around the world as a whole) is something I really do struggle with at times. “Just ignore it” is something you can do for something mundane as the hobby but when it comes to things that directly affects peoples lives and potentially threatens them “just ignore it” won’t do. But that is a wider topic and will completely derail everything so I’ll keep that to myself for the moment.
As a general “pro tip” to keep your sanity and remain positive I highly urge you to delete all social media app from your phones. The only thing remaining on my phone are messengers (WA and signal), Emails and PixelFed. No facepage, no youtube, no instagram and especially no X/Twitter. With that done you’ll archive many things and one of them not feeling the constant need to check online what is happening. I make an effort to only look at social media, forums and blog when I am at the table with my PC. [Obviously if you only have your phone and no PC or Laptop you can’t do this as easily but in that case you can have an app that helps you with ‘not looking at them’ in a set time frame]

If you don’t have anything nice to say, say nothing

That is something to live by and I really try to do so. But sometimes things need to be called out. And then the grumpy old man gets the better part of me.
Lastly I’ll do something I tend not to do. I’ll make a pledge. I pledge to try to be a more positive content creator and no fall for clickbait. So if you see me going down that road again: call me out on that. I feel if we keep the creators aware that not everyone wants to see all the rage bait all the time things could change.
That’s it I think. See you lot next week.

[pagan8th 13873xp 3]

I’m not generally an upbeat person, but I’ll do my best. You’re not the only grumpy old man @sundancer

It might sound weird, but what makes me feel good is a walk in the morning. It helps clear my head, wake me up and I find that walking has always helped inspire me with my RPG writing.

[waywarddarkwolf 1225xp 2]

Oh man, don’t hit me with them negative waves so early in the morning…

[sundancer 44265xp 1]

I know that one! @waywarddarkwolf

[zoidpinhead 12790xp 1]

An interesting part of the discussion was about something Guy at Midwinter Minis did on his YouTube channel.  He wanted to test the YT content algorithm and wrote two companion videos intended to be as alike as possible except for their title and focus, one was, “Warhammer is the BEST it’s ever been” and the other, “Warhammer is the WORST it’s ever been”.  The negative one has more than twice as many views and was the most watched video he made last year.  His point is that YouTube is “brainwashing you with negativity”, i.e. that the YT algorithm is pushing negative content at us and perpetuating a negative spiral as creators chase views and put out more negative focused content to match what is most successful/rewarding which the algorithm then adjusts to reflect.  His analysis is here and is well worth a look, and no, it hasn’t changed his intention to make positive content.  It is interesting that even someone like Guy with nearly 500,000 followers on YT can’t actually generate enough payments directly from YT to keep the lights on as a full time content provider, his income is primarily reliant on sponsorship and his Patreons.

I appreciate @sundancer ‘s point about just disconnecting from immediate access to social media.  Personally I have a different way of bypassing the negative waves.  I have set up my accounts to ‘curate’ my experience.  I do this by being very disciplined about what I look at and engage with on social media.  I only look at hobby content, and only engage with positive hobby content.  I also actively discourage content I don’t want to see by using blocking and “Show less of this” options.  This is easier on some platforms than others but even Insta can be made to only show hobby content if you are persistent enough.  This has also worked on Threads and Bluesky and to a lesser extent Facebook.  However, I binned Twitter/X because it was impossible to stop that platform pushing content I didn’t want. YT is also trickier and I’ve taken the suggestion from Gerry to have my Subscriptions page my homepage on YT and turn off Shorts.

We are not powerless.  We can make a difference.  I make my own positive contributions to the communities and platforms I’m on.  I post hobby content in most places I have an account and  make a point of liking as much content that others have posted as possible.  Let’s enjoy hobby together, and enjoy each other’s hobby.

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