Does the CITME forum negatively affect your mental health?

Oh fgs.

If it harms your mental health why on earth do it at all?

Admittedly its often frustrating when others don't even try to understand where opposing points of view could come from. And it takes me away from more constructive things sometimes.

But damaging to mental health? Get off it then!

I almost never participate on this topic, because it barely seems like genuine discussion/commentary at all. It is one of those subjects where pretty much everything you see posted seems to be a manifestation of the dynamics of social media discourse, and only incidentally about the actual matters on hand.

It feels like the obsessive online conversations around, for example, high-profile missing persons cases. It just breeds and responds to its own momentum, turning endlessly on the needs of posters to feel involved, to justify the stances they have already committed themselves to and to perform their adherence to whatever perspective they have taken.

It's better for anyone's mental health to avoid all the energy it takes to participate in this dynamic. Or, if you can't avoid it, to take in to a different topic, like whether or not Harry and Meghan are bad people. Then at least you don't have tens of thousands of starving, dead and injured Gazans standing behind your shoulders as you chat.

It affects my mental health when I see a pile on by commentators. Obviously it's fine for people to have different opinions and debate them like reasonable people debate issues. But my heart falls when I see multiple people joining in like a feeding frenzy to attack one person who has expressed an opinion the group disagree with.

This behaviour would be called bullying if it wasn't happening online, where apparently it's ok. Though it isn't ok morally which is why it upsets me. It's very reminiscent of being back at school with the bullies and their followers who wouldn't start an attack but enjoy the opportunity to join in.

Solidarity to anyone who has experienced it. When things get personal it's nothing to do with the war in Gaza anymore and all to do with their own issues.

Its certainly been an eye opener.

Yes it has mine a bit, because it had opened to my eyes that people walk the same streets as me and my family who excuse barbaric terrorist atrocities, hate a minority group who have given much to this world for reasons they can’t conscious explain because it’s so inbred, and are completely gullible and stupid.

They can try to hide it but it’s very visible.

Hence the thousands of threads on this topic.

Why are you all still reading it then?

It affects me, too. I'm tired of the constant detailing and deflection that's allowed to happen in these threads. I'm tired of the blatant racism against the Palestinians. And there's the gaslighting. We are expected to ignore the evidence of our eyes and ears (and the evidence presented by multiple human rights organisations). It's depressing.

Yes, listening to people trying to justify starving children to death really does make me despair.

Please do not give up and just personally and privately despair. Solidarity communities are out there! You are not alone!

Yes, it does. I avoid it (well, clearly not enough) for this precise reason.
I too struggle so much with seeing otherwise reasonable people justify or directly deny the genocide.
But it's an issue I avoid to talk about in any areas of my real life too. I can't bear the horror.

Too late for a bite. Night x

The forum itself does not (I post and read here when I feel I can stomach it and stay away when I cannot) - the situation per se very much does.

But, yes, seeing people regularly say what I consider dehumanising things about people I count among my closest friends is painful.

It's undoubtedly unpleasant, but I'm aware that either most of it is propaganda or the individual doesn't know the full picture about what's going on in the background, or is choosing to ignore it. It's largely pointless posting here, but some posters do post useful information and news.