Does the CITME forum negatively affect your mental health?

[SomeoneSomewheree]

Personally, yes, it does.

To see people day in and day out try and justify a genocide does affect my mental health so I try to stay away at times.

I have also noticed it is the same handful of posters on both sides arguing, neither convincing the other.

I have unfortunately witnessed at times anti-semitic and anti-Palestinian comments, which are not pleasant to read.

Does it affect you? It is not always a pleasant place whatever your stance is on the conflict.

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.

That is true.

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.

I try to consume a variety of sources and I am seeing more people (even those who broadly support Israel) concede that it is a genocide. I struggle to understand how some posters are still in denial.

The situation in Gaza is awful and it horrifies me that Palestinian children are being starved and killed.

I am like you - I come on when I can stomach it. I can only commend those posters who have been posting despite some of the awful posts defending and minimising the genocide.

Too late for a bite. Night x

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.

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

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

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.

Why are you all still reading it then?

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.

Its certainly been an eye opener.

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.

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.

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!

lol - straight talking from dailydebris.

You are correct of course - when you feel it affecting your mood, it's time to do something else. Go for a walk, meet a friend, look at videos of Labrador puppies, or maybe that's just me.

I avoid it.

I face enough antisemitism and anti-Israel bile in my day to day life. I don’t need it online as well.

The amount of antisemitic propaganda that’s out there is staggering and depressing.

What people fail to realise when they’re throwing their baseless theories around and reposting their pro-terror memes is that it translates into actual harm to British Jews. Before the anti-Israel campaign ramped up after October 7, my experiences of antisemitism were thankfully few (aside from the long shadow of the Holocaust and Farhud that hangs over my family as it does every Jewish family in multifarious ways). But since then there have been too many incidents to name. I’ve mentioned them on here before, to a chorus of scorn and disbelief. I cannot imagine a Black or Muslim poster having their experiences of bigotry and violence denied so readily.

Of course, the upshot of this is that I’ve started the process of movie to Israel. An active war zone seems safer than the UK.

The hostile environment affecting Jewish and Muslim friends and colleagues impacts me in real life on a day to day basis. I listen and do what I can to create a safe space.

They have a point.

We are more effective coming from a place of strength. Everyone should know their limits.

I think I've read one or two of the instances you mention. They were pretty awful. I'm truly sorry for what you've experienced. Once you see it you can't unsee it. It's shameful. Wishing you all the best.

It doesn’t impact my mental health, I have much bigger things going on that do that. But to see so many people denying what is happening is infuriating.

They definitely do have a point I agree.

It is thoroughly disappointing and horrifying to read comments such as 'sick of the hostages, sick of Oct 7th, sick of hamas. Next!'

This board does not affect my mental health it makes me more determined to keep rebutting some of the awful stuff we see posted here, the testimony from doctors as if it's gospel yet a quick look in the sm reveals their pro gaza agenda.

The conflict is horrific I feel great sympathy for innocents on both sides suffering. Hamas need to go though that is the only way forward.

I think there would not be a CITME forum if it was another Muslim nation at war with the Gaza.