Welcome to the Internet? It's not just Lemmy lol
Agree. Reddit was the same thing if not worse. Nuance is [apparently] dead and if you do not explain everything from the dawn of Man to cover your thought, people pick the comment apart like carrion as if you've never thought about anything deeply before. They might even gloss over things you did say and attempt to invalidate or discredit your post because only they hold the Truth of the Internet handed down from the Elders. It can be a bit frustrating.
Did you even consider vegans don’t eat decaying flesh? You cant just hold everyone to your standards. I’m not even going to bother reading the rest of what you wrote because you're so fundamentally wrong already that I'm confident i can stop there and not miss anything of substance.
It is quite often that responses seem to come from school age children who just discovered [insert edgy counter-culture ideology], and all of their responses and world views revolve around a rudimentary desire for that ideological utopia, with very little consideration given to sociology or economics. I suppose that is actually who's responding a lot of the time. All real world considerations are discarded, and any issues you identify are perceived as stupid/shill/Trumper/dummy/capitalist drivel with zero consideration given.
I do notice and kinda agree that some users here are great at arguing about theory, but can't see beyond that for practical application.
Agreed, often if you check the post history of folks like that you'll see that they're still in school.
I find Lemmy significantly worse than reddit was in this regard. The number of times I've had my different (not unpopular outside of lemmy) opinion met immediately with personal insults is way higher here in the few months I've been here than my years with reddit.
I've just been learning not to engage on any of the lemmy propaganda areas, and that leaves me with a lot less active communities.
I agree, and attribute that to the kind of people who would boycott Reddit forever, where the largest part of the lemmy population seems to originate from.
As much as I roll my eyes at the overuse of the term, lemmy is mostly comprised of the "woke"est of the reddit population.
People who make their politics their personality appear at both ends of the spectrum.
Sure, but have you tried using Linux, going vegan and guillotining billionaires?
You forgot Firefox, you absolute monster!
Like I get it, we all know capitalism is bad, but it feels like every time I or anyone go towards discussing the steps that need to be taken to address current looming problems in the short term, someone has to jump in and shut it down with "capitalism bad >:[ " and tear down any idea presented because its not complete and total destruction of the current economic model.
That is literally why my instance finally defederated from .ml Every 3rd comment from someone there was exactly that regardless of what community you were in. It was exhausting. Lemmygrad and Hexbear were already blocked here, and once the .ml peanut gallery was gone, it was like "wow, this is kind of enjoyable again".
Do I miss a few FOSS communities that were more active there than their counterparts elsewhere? Yeah, a little. But, overall, the experience is just so much better after they were blocked. It's not even that I really disagree with them on everything, it's just....STFU already, stop brigading, and maybe say something constructive for once.
Hexbear were already blocked
Yeah things were so, so much worse before that happened. I finally blocked the whole instance in my client so I didn't tear out all my remaining hair.
I feel like many people here are literally unreasonable. Any person with any faith at all is an idiot, all enlightened atheists are superior... FuckCars seems to be leaking and anyone who has to drive for their job is hated on... Linux is the only option, you should never, ever use Windows for anything... etc...
Like, not everything is black and white! The real world is shades of grey and often requires compromise. But the loudest voices here seem to be extremists that slap down any comment that isn't 100% what they believe in. It's exhausting...
I mean, to be fair, it is the internet.
a large portion of people on it are, in fact, idiots.
Thats the price we paid when the internet went from a nerd toy in the mid/late 90s, to essential utility in the aughts.
As a nerd who was on the internet in the 90s I can assure you that was no filter against idiots.
Lemmy is the other side of the same coin as reddit unfortunately. Im part of the problem myself, its hard not to vent here sometimes even though it is inappropriate.
I dunno man, I didn't come here looking to contribute to or find a plan to fix the world. I came here to doom scroll and look at memes.
This is my big problem with online spaces. Yes it's great to demand that everything should be different, but I've spun on this planet for a few decades and all I can say is change happens slowly.
We're still dealing with the fallout from slavery and it ended over a century ago. A decade ago I fought for gay marriage and I thought we won, but it's still being contested.
Keep fighting for change, but know that we need to focus on small victories. Places like the US are not going to give up capitalism in the next year. Or the next decade. Or century. What we can do however is push for strong regulation, housing, and rights.
Nuance here is important, and I agree dropping the "everything bad is bad" talk is key. We all know it's bad, but a country is a big ship, and a big ship takes a very long time to turn around.
I actually appreciate the flow of opinions and information from people with other viewpoints and political opinions. Yeah people can be too intense like you say. I've really enjoyed learning about politics from a communist's perspective. I was sort of blown away by people who disliked liberals but their talking points weren't those of the American right wing. They were leftist communists, and their viewpoints are really fascinating. I've really gone into the rabbit hole learning about class warfare and historical actions of communist countries. If people are trying to spread their viewpoints they should be able to make compelling arguments to support the things they advocate for. I'd be happy to digest more communist information/propaganda/marketing it's really well thought out stuff.
In fact I agree with your "echo chamber" comments, by design the servers and communities foster a group of like-minded individuals and the moderation is enforcing the same kind of thinking and rules.
At the same time, I find it more possible to get nuanced takes, back and forth discussion that isn't just troll bait or shouting matches here on Lemmy than elsewhere. People approach some topics with more curiousity, are a bit more willing to admit they are wrong/corrected about something and listen to each other's perspectives. Productive communication is a two way street. There's still a group of jerks, trolls and bad actors, but it's a monumental effort to moderate them away and they're virtually inevitable in any populated anonymous online space.
I don't really mind if something is downvoted for being unpopular unless it's an obvious troll/flamer. That includes people that talk about capitalism's benefits. I know there are cases of missed references or sarcasm, I am a proponent of /s to avoid misunderstanding for that reason.
What sort of thing would you like to have a nuanced discussion on?
Really just the half steps and the means to make progress towards a better system that works for the benefit of the majority, y'know, socialism. It's a bottom up discussion that always gets taken over by the top-down people who can only ever talk about the whole shebang.
Just block lemmygrad.ml and hexbear, all they really add is volume. The quality of basically every thread increases without the chaf, and you will find that there is a larger cross section of opinion on Lemmy than you thought.
I notice there is definitely a lot of bad faith discussions happening, but there's also a lot of us who are autistic lol
It's not a Lemmy thing, it's an internet thing. People have become lazy and instead of discussing things will just vote and move on.
Makes for a very boring and stale world.
I have a feeling the comments section here is going to be a case study in irony.
Whenever I have a broad vague discussion of the world that is subject to significant interpretations and assumptions it creates a lot of friction too. Contraversy is one place where Lemmy's high response rates work against it.
To the people doing "capitalism bad" replies I implore you to check out socialist economists. Fleshed out descriptions of socialism and communism usually discuss emulating the successes of industrial capitalism while mitigating the failures. The idea of armed revolutionary communism is largely a mess that only ever worked in rural environments.
Want deeper discussion? I'm reading "being no one" by Thomas Metzinger. In simplistic terms, it's a scientific book about how you aren't a self, but a constantly running process. I'm very down to discuss it.
Of course, people aren't using Lemmy for that level of discussion generally. They're using it to entertain themselves while shitting, or they're urgently trying to push agendas. That's the internet these days. People geeking on specific subjects into granular detail is on life support in tiny communities.
Yup. That's why I started up a new community:
To quote our pinned thread:
Why did I make this community? Well, mostly in response to the rest of Lemmy and the way many otherwise interesting discussion threads fall apart into downvoting and groupthink.
I don’t like people making baseless accusations and defend people on all sides when people are wrong about their opposition. I hate it when people think they know what others think and project incorrect (and often evil) bullshit on each other. It’s important to maintain solid reasoning and conclusions, not just one or the other.
I hate people being wilfully wrong because their group fetishizes a certain angle of the truth instead of the boring reality of the situation.
Ideas are important and I don’t feel we can get out of the current shitty slump we’re in with political discourse unless we are able to clearly articulate ourselves and discuss the world we’re in.
You (and all of you who feel the way you do) are welcome. You won't always agree with everyone there. That's okay. We talk about it. We're grown-ups.
That isn't a universally unpopular opinion; at least two of us hold it lol.
I may have to ignore all the politics and news communities for a while and focus on more important things like star trek memes.
They also have a reddit-scale visceral hatred for religion lmao
Religion is fucking bad, though: without hyperbole, it is and always has been a scourge on our collective existence.
But religious people aren't always bad and that seems to get lost on here.
Would people hate religion if religion wasn't constantly weaponized against individuals?
I mean you're right, but I found the same on other platforms.
I think being contrarian just feels like engagement. When you're taking a shit beating on some commenter about how bad capitalism is a quick hit.
I think the format of most social media encourages this type of simple pre-thought positions on things.
Nuh-uh doodoo head!
I think this is a general problem with online discussion. You can have more productive discussion about capitalism/socialism/anarchism in a bar in the deep south than you can online. Online people tend to forget there’s another person with a brain on the other side of the conversation (if they even intended to be having a conversation, which people mostly don’t). We know from every day life that people don’t speak carefully in conversation—you really have to be constantly extending the benefit of the doubt. Online no one extends the benefit of the doubt even though we know most comments are off the cuff on the toilet.
There are some neat online tools for structuring discussions like Kialo that I think make some headway in diminishing the effect, but drinking a beer with someone while discussing still works better as far as having an interlocutor who is actually considering what you’re saying and who might actually be willing to shift their own view.
Internet is better equipped for quippy one liners and getting (bastardized) ideas into the zeitgeist.
I discovered Lemmy and Hacker news at roughly the same time, and the difference in comment quality is striking. Obviously HN is a lot more mature platform, and more specialised, but still... People over there are lamenting the quality of their comments and saying they're not what they used to be, but the majority are interesting and constructive
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