How do you recover from seeing something awful on the Internet?

genuinely playing tetris afterwards has been found to help with recovery from traumatic experiences

Serious answer: I remind myself it's normal to be shocked by some stuff people do/create. I check the content against my ethics, and try to decide if I'm being uptight or if it really is messed up. If it's something that isn't unethical/harmful but I just don't like, then I remind myself that not everyone needs to share my tastes.

If it's genuinely terrible I allow myself to feel the anger/sorrow for a bit, try not to let it become excessive, and congratulate myself on having limits that fit my ethics. I remind myself that good people exist and they are the ones I want to support, emulate, and engage with. As others have mentioned, distraction can also help. Video games, music, socializing - whatever will move your train of thought along.

I became desensitized thanks to copious gore at 13 😂

Eyebleach:

Oh man I remember rotten.com

Nothing is shocking anymore

Gardening, Hiking, Watching nature's beauty without humans.

Time. But even then, it will pop into your head to say hi every now and then.

I saw my first truly horrible Internet thing two decades ago, and it hasn't gone away. Sorry.

1. back button
2. use the mantra "I clicked on this, I chose this, I clicked on this, I chose this" a bit.
3. you receive +1 to personal responsibility

This is a good question, though. Seeing horrible things on the internet can affect you. Anywhere from getting wigged out to full out trauma is possible.

Personally, if I come across something like that, it’s a good cue to take a quick break from screens. Go for a walk. Eat if you’re hungry. Drink if you’re thirsty. Spend quality time with your pets or plants if you have any. Pay attention to how you’re feeling and do what might be necessary to make you feel good and healthy. In that state, it’s easier to bring yourself back to the here and now. Look around you and appreciate your life. Seeing how real and raw those things are can give a person perspective, but if you overexpose yourself or ruminate on them, it can fuck you up a little bit. Even if you’re “desensitized.”

If you’re lucky enough where things like that aren’t a regular part of your life (as it is for most of us here), use it as a lesson in not just taking care of yourself, but also of others and society as a whole. There are fucked up people in the world, yes. Sometimes the bad guys win and terrible or disturbing things happen, yes. It’s best to maintain pride in knowing you’re not trying to contribute to that problem, in whatever little way you can.

And if you can’t seem to shake it, get some therapy. Not just for that one thing, but, it may be likely you’re slipping into rumination or worldviews that make it difficult to handle depression. Therapy is great, for real. Shop around and find a therapist you like.

Keep thinking about it until it's not weird anymore

I got exposed to CSAM on Twitter over a decade ago. I'm still haunted by it, and anyone who does that deserves the worst things.

I once saw a car accident on a freeway that involved burning bodies within the cab of the vehicle. Nothing I’ve seen online compares to that. Maybe I’ve just avoided the worst of the worst online, but nothing has been that graphic.

Make a joke in the comments.

Playing guitar, or doing something else where I can't be thinking about it in the background such as Tetris as the other person mentioned, or reading a book

See something else not awful on the internet to forget about that awful thing.

If genuinely disturbing, therapy can help.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Eyebleach/

is there a lemmy equivalent?

I whip it out

Watch something worst

Bob Ross videos are on youtube

Just don't dwell on it. But you'll probably think of it from time to time.

So it goes.

I guess, remember that whatever it is didn't happen to several billion other people. It can be hard to switch off empathy.

Also understand that the human brain is a complex thing, and if parts of it are physically broken or missing, the person might not be able to control of what they're doing.

(A) It's probably fake.

(b) O_o ... That's enough Internet for today. Tapping out. (Proceed to stoned state, or volunteer at a soup kitchen)

(3) SO YOU WANT TO JOUST, HEY?

Ignorance is a bliss.

I once worked in a questionable industry, where there was no such thing as NSFW (nor NSFL). My coworkers and I would have competitions to see who could freak each other out the most; this was back in the goatsie, 2g1c, and bme pain olympics days. 🤮

It’s not my thing, but at the same time it doesn’t affect me much anymore. Though, as all things evolve over time, things probably have only gotten worse.

I have never seen something awful, aside from.perhaps a Trump speech.

Bearing witness to human atrocity is a duty IMO. If thats what you mean?

https://eyebleach.me/

sleep

I go with Fancy Fox Gaming's chill game music compilations on YT.

Its calm music from various rpgs and farming sim kind of games. SNES era sounds, roughly.

I know some shit is unavoidable. But I really do think about clicking on links that seem questionable to me. I try to prevent but also know this is an imperfect strategy.

Drugs.

Idk, just moving on with your day and giving it time usually works for me.

Just get a job and work till you make back the ten bucks…

scarred for life, but you just focus on other things

Honestly consider which kind of antidote would work best, for that specific kind of poisonous-meaning.

Just a couple of examples, to "prime the pump", as it were..

IF the poison were white-supremacist evil, THEN the antidote might be that guy .. Daryl is his name, perhaps, who deliberately makes friends with KKK people, & gets them to honestly change.

( if there ever was an example of what the ultra-woke socialist felon Yehoshua "Jesus" benJoseph meant, in his relationships with people, this guy is demonstrating it. : )

IF the poison is the psychopathic machiavellianism of for-profit-corporations, THEN the antidote might be that investigative journalism exists, & deliberately reading "The Elements of Journalism" ( 4th edition, now, I think ), & helping to get other citizens-of-our-world competent in understanding journalism, & how it is the immune-system our world needs, right now.

IF the poison is child-abuse .. THEN .. this one's difficult: it hurts too deep, doesn't it? .. then .. simultaneously protection for children ( like that operation which liberated a whole bunch of girls from a trafficking-ring, the other year, or like help-lines for children, so they've got a lifeline to call, or like organizations/people who systematically make-accountable the perpetrators, reducing the number of them who are out ), those ( individual & institutional ) who force-the-perpetrators into visibility, thus "removing their accommodation", to be .. diplomatic .. about it, or lobbying for better legislation, or making-certain that therapy is both available and successful for survivors of abuse ( some "charities" just purport to do good, & obliterate opportunity while consuming resources padding their administration's ass by design, & torpedoing those scum would improve our world, markedly )

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Anyways, you need to discern which antidote you need to be applying, & you need to understand that some lives get caught in stuff sooo horrific that even witnessing it can mangle a life..

That is the actual current condition of our world, our ocean-of-lives.

To alter our world, our world's ocean-of-lives, we need to deliberately turn the tide, and that means forcing the tide to go against the way that DarkHexad, the 6 dimensions of human evil that I've found so-far, wants:

DarkHexad: Narcissism / Machiavellianism / Sociopathy-Psychopathy / Nihilism / Sadism / Systemic-Dishonesty.

Countering ANY of these dimensions from remaining in authority on our world is good, countering the entanglement network of multiple-dimensions, together, is better, but!..

Remember Stephen R. Covey's principle!

IF your Circle of Concern is too big, THEN it is draining you, making you helpless!

IF you deliberately & strategically reduce your Circle of Concern, .. THEN .. your Circle of Influence will, as you recover, grow!

And you have your balance to earn: my balance isn't relevant to your condition, neither is your balance relevant to how I'm managing, etc.

Each is independent of others, & the whole "I'm this-way therefore you ought be, too" herd-bullying has no actual validity.

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I hope that you find stable balance, & I hope that someday you become able to directly & significantly counter whatever harm/evil it is you witnessed.

Salut, Namaste, & Kaizen.

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