There have been a lot of messed up things going on in the news recently, which of course gets everyone freaked out and riled up, which encourages more horrible stuff, which riles everyone up even more, ad infinitum.  Things aren't great right now, and I get that.

But I feel like recently people are scouring the news for the most horrible stories and making absolutely sure to post every single one of them here on VGChartz.  I don't know if it's out of genuine interest or if people are just point farming because those posts always get lots of replies.  Either way, it's turning this into a place I don't want to visit.  I try to keep off of social media and stay away from this kind of stuff as a whole, but we're at a point where it's literally impossible to scan the hot topics without seeing something depressing.

This is obivously not against the rules, but I personally can't handle it much longer, and if it continues I'll be forced to leave the site permanently.  I don't know if anyone else feels this way, but I just want to come and talk about video games and have a good time.  That's why I came here in the first place.  But now it's getting just as bad as Facebook.

Anyone else feel this way, or am I just too sensitive?

No point burying your head in the sand. I'm glad this site has an active off topic section

You can do that? Not saying I will, but that could be useful in the future.

I agree with Arlo.

Yeah, that's not why I'm here, either, especially not when many of the threads are someone taking a story and then twisting it to their own interpretation.

Unfortunately, there isn't much you can do without turning off General Discussion, because that's where most of them are at, not in Politics.

It doesn't bother me, those threads tend to show people's true colors.

Negative news tends to attract the most attention whether it be on the local/worldwide news or a gaming forum. Some even love putting focus on the negative when it suits them and some do it just for lulz.

One thing on this forum that does irk me at times are those that focus on negative news outside their faveorite system but willingly go out of their way to post negative news of other systems on a weekly basis. I know other sites can be guilty of it but I've noticed it just being the general unfiltered, unregulated thing on VGC, well it eventually gets regulated when shit hits the fan or becomes too obvious to handle. 

We need to be able to talk about the issues that are going on in our world. If they don't get talked about, good or bad (even though we focus on the bad a lot), we still need to discuss them. Even though I, personally, don't comment much on these real world topics, I do understand why users are posting these threads. However, now I just have my own moment of silence, pray, and go on with my life.

If I were to draw all my energy into these topics about killings, and racial tensions, and terrorists, I would be a miserable ball of depression. I tend to focus on the task I have at hand and not focus on the bad all the time. Notice that the good news thread that somebody started didn't last that long but the ones with bad news blow up. There is a reason. The bad news needs to be addressed because they revolve around issues that need to be fixed.

I understand how you feel. I know you're the kind of guy who has his head screwed on straight. Don't read too much into it.

Is that a new feature? I would have been using that all this time, had I known.

The Problem is that you get banned pretty easily here if you just post regularly and go a little off-topic, but as a thread creator you have immunity for almost everything doesnt matter how stupid your opinion and how baiting your thread is. The thread gets just closed in the worst case scenario.
This is probably one of the main reason why you see people making such threads because if they would talk about issues like that in a different thread it would be counted as bating, off-topic, derail >ban