Are We Collectively Depressed?

This post is inspired a little bit by Ava’s sunday, 6th april 2025 where she shared how her RSS feeds have been dry and how the internet (including – but not limited to – Bearblog) is feeling stale lately. I thought this was just me feeling down or something, but this was a symptom of me disconnecting completely except for RSS and Bearblog and a little bit of Mastodon here and there, and not really keeping up with what’s happening.

So much is happening so fast, I doubt I’d be able to keep up even if you pumped me full of 24h news. Whether watching the news is informative at all is a discussion for another day. Then it dawned on me that people are probably busy protesting in the US right now, or just busy processing their social security being cut, and most likely just lost their job. And it’s not just US Americans who are affected.

As I was scrolling through the trending page, I stumbled upon i am leaving canada by Sergei this morning. It’s a goodbye post on how he is leaving Canada partly because the cost of living is about to skyrocket thanks to Trump’s tariffs. Later I read about the foreigner scientists who pulled their research fearing deportation, and brewed a little on what this means for us here in Europe as well. Lives have been and are still being disrupted in the worst ways possible.

I fear that the worst is yet to come, especially the repercussions of the tariffs, so those could be the reason for the lack of output lately. And just to be clear here, I’m not complaining that there’s little entertainment for me; I’m using the lack of entertainment for usually steady streams to reflect on what’s happening and how people are responding to it.

Especially in my corner of the world, it feels odd just to be. Nothing bad or deeply disruptive has taken place here and yet you can tell that something is wrong. Like something bad is in the air and the mood is dead. Maybe it’s just me or maybe people are truly scared for what’s to come.

Imagine if all the energy spent to destroy life down to its core on this planet was spent on doing the opposite: regenerating it and making sure all beings not survive, but thrive! Ugh, what a pipe dream this is 🤦🏻‍♂️.

Edited later during the day to add

I had read Is Anyone Else Tired of the Internet? by Brandon even before Ava’s post and maybe it’s posts like Brandon’s or mine that further drive the collective vibes down. It also doesn’t help that Ignorance is [truly] Bliss and many feel nostalgic for a time of quiet and solitude.