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Lately I've been feeling that a lot of the people are much more jaded and cynical these days than in the past (not too far in the past. I mean like around 3-5 years in the past). I see more people going "humanity sucks" and such just in this year alone and not just on Internet but in real life too. Things that are positive are barely even mentioned or quickly forgotten while the negative things (such as controversy entries and such) are talked to death.

Has it always been like this or is it only happening now? I clearly don't know that much.

Apologies for making a bad post but I can't type long posts well enough. I hope this will satisfy people.

Strange, because i feel the opposite since "being an ironic shitposter" losing it's charm. Atleast in here…

I see more people going “humanity sucks” and such just in this year alone and not just on Internet but in real life too.

We have a bad combination of a lot of change happening and never before imagined levels of coverage and information.

The current hypothesis for things like Brexit and Trump is that people are upset that neoliberalism, the current status quo, the mainstream beliefs, doesn't seem to be working. With terrorism on the rise, and economic uncertainty abounding, people want to try something else.

Plus, we still have racial tensions in many parts of the world. Canada's relations to Natives and U.S.'s relations to African-Americans are still strained, for example. As history can attest, racial tensions just don't turn out well.

Mix this together with the ability to learn basically anything happening all around the world at any time, and it looks like things are going to hell.

They aren't.

As much as it may feel like it's not, the world is better than it was two centuries ago, and that was better than it was two centuries ago, and so on and so forth.

Things that make you angry are great for the internet. Controversies draw pageviews. Flamewars draw revenue.

I love KYM, but ever since it moved to more "whatever's popular on the internet", it's relied on this fact:

Things that make you angry and irritated and, in the long run, cynical gets money.

The issues with the internet are present similarly in other forms of media, but to a bit of a lesser extent.

In light of all the sadness and evil you're bombarded with so that they make more money, nobody can blame you or anyone else for feeling cynical.

Has it always been like this or is it only happening now?

I'm not sure myself, but I wouldn't at all be surprised if the internet was just making things worse. Back in the days of "yellow journalism" it was probably similar, but not as bad.

TL;DR remember what you see is an exaggeration of the negative aspects of the world around you. Keep an eye on the things that are actually practical to your life, and what's happening around you, not on the internet. That's not to say you shouldn't read the news or learn about current events and controversies, but rather that those shouldn't dictate how you see the world.

Yes. Because people can now see and learn more about the ugly side of all the stuff they like, people have become more negative and cynical in general.

I joined this site two years ago, and I would say there were a lot more friendly and helpful users around. People that were willing to strike up a conversation just for the sake of socializing and being friendly.

And while a few of them are still around, a find a lot of them have stopped posting and have gone inactive.
In their stead, I see a lot of self degeneration, playful bashing, and sarcastic banter that seems to originate from riff-raff and just permeate a good portion of the community. Riff-Raff isn't exactly harmful, but it doesn't really promote any positivity, any community input.

Things like the weekly photoshop contests are good because they encourage users to be creative and share their work. Forum roleplay games (nowadays far less frequent than they were years ago) can be really fun and bring a lot of friends together, as well as making new friends.

Know Your Meme is, well, a memesite. This isn't the first place you look for when discussing politics, anime, gaming, etc. Hell, even the "memes" are treated differently. Dankness, meta commentary, news coverage, the latest controversy… The days of rage comics and advice animals are gone, probably for the best. I get it, this site is about documenting internet phenomena. The forums are a place to discuss the goings about of the internet. And I have to agree, without doubt, that so much of the internet is engulfed in an air of cynicism and pessimism.

What I think is the internet as entertainment has a lot to do with distracting and killing time. People are becoming more specific with what they find funny and interesting. And because of that, they are more reluctant when seeing something new or broad. People want to find their niche market and fit into that. A good sum of the internet's attitude can be described as… tired, weary, drained. And because of that, they become cynics. Entertainment is odd and it has changed and will change.

Here, a peek at current self degeneration, cyncism, and humor, which is rather popular.

If my ranting and inconcise thoughts weren't enough for you, let me just suggest this video, a worthwhile watch, even if it is 23 minutes.

No, you're just 3-5 years older. Your outlook on life tends to get shittier as you're more personally responsible for controlling it. Newspapers have always pushed controversy and scandals and the worst news, they have never been faith-in-humanity-restored single topic tumblr blogs. Gossip was arguably worse when we couldn't Google a fact to call each other out for removing context, but humans have always preferred to talk about those juicy rumors instead of what wonderful contribution Patty from down the street made to the world last Tuesday. We like to hate on people, we just do.

There are probably a lot more vocal pessimists today because it used to be socially unacceptable to bitch in public. We went from an era of activism to slacktivism, BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE turned into HOW FUCKING DARE YOU NOT CHANGE YOURSELF TO BE WHAT I HAVE DECIDED IS CORRECT FOR THE CURRENT YEAR YOU SHOULD BE IN JAIL I'M GETTING YOU FIRED FOR THIS. So maybe in that way we're a little more cynical. Everybody's a racist bigot who's out to literally kill everyone else. Thanks Obama.

I think people just feel like their voices aren't being heard.

The Regressive left is demanding change instantly that will not happen they have the media largely on their side and they just keep demanding more.

Everyone else that tries to speak instantly gets shut down if it isn't a part of their ideas. So when people feel like nothing they do matters and their opinions aren't as valued as other people, they feel trapped and become cynical towards the world.

Also with internet culture, memes last like a week. Any idea or message you try to spread or any outrage you see can last like a week and be forgotten. Think about how quickly the internet passed over the Dallas Shootings. Felt like it mattered for 4 days then everyone forgot about it.

People feel like in real life they can't say anything or their opinions aren't valid because they have to walk on egg shells or risk having a horde of angry Regressive-leftists come in to call them a sexist, homophobic, racist, bigot. While on the internet anything that happens outside of it gets blown away like it never happened. Internet feels like it goes through a weeks worth of time for every real day.

The answer might be very simple. Cynicism's prevalence increases with age, and you usually have contact (are friends with, interact and such) with people around your age. The world isn't necessarily becoming more cynical – the age group in which you belong does.

You can find books that describe the worrisome rise of cynicism made centuries ago, and the situations there are extreme even for our times. I won't deny that there might have been a global rise in the recent years; however, I believe that what mostly changed is your own perception of the surroundings and environment.