this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
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[–] [email protected] 265 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (39 children)

Lemmy isn't "too extreme," a very small subset of Lemmings are just fucking insufferable.

[–] [email protected] 60 points 1 year ago (18 children)

…have these people met certain redditors? 🧐

[–] [email protected] 83 points 1 year ago (5 children)

News: People on the internet find out some people on the internet grinds their gears

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I think it's just a symptom of "people".

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[–] [email protected] 190 points 1 year ago (18 children)

I'm gonna say some stuff that most of the people here probably know on some level, but considering this thread, I think it needs to be explicitly said.

Very few of the people who post comments on the internet are highly educated in whatever field they're making a claim in. Getting challenged by people who know next to nothing and receive all the upvotes anyway is an exhausting experience, so many well-educated people keep their debates private. If they are here, you probably aren't enough of an expert to recognize them. The simple, easy to understand takes are what get upvoted, and in-depth, nuanced ideas are almost always ignored or ridiculed. Most forums are full of people who know just enough to feel confident in making calls for radical action without any knowledge of how that action could be implemented or would play out.

Look through this comment section. Lots of vague, single-sentence arguments about being "capitalist," "communist," or "socialist," along with "leftist," "liberal," or "conservative," but I don't see a single one acknowledging that each of those words can individually encompass vast groups of conflicting ideas and have wildly different meanings in different parts of the world; a serious problem considering at least a few of the people posting in this thread aren't in the US. Very little discussion of substantive ideas like "people should be given a universal basic income of $15 a day," or "food stamps should be granted without application to anyone under a certain income threshold," or "social media servers should receive public funding and be administrated by an elected body." It's almost never more specific than "universal healthcare," or "abolish the police," Those might be the right direction, but when was the last time you saw people discussing things like whether experimental treatments should be covered, or the number and type of professions that should replace the current myriad of roles police are expected to fill? I seriously doubt if you randomly selected two self-described communists (or whatever ideology) on Lemmy and had them start making decisions together, that they would agree with each other on exactly how society should be run even half the time.

I'm not saying these conversations shouldn't happen, vague as they are. I certainly don't have the energy to write out long arguments 99% of the time. We all have to make our own way to finding deeper knowledge, and building a knowledge base of buzzwords can be a useful stepping stone. But far too often people stop once they feel they have a sufficient understanding of the buzzwords and then start talking like they know the answers. it's important to temper the depth of your convictions based on where you're having the discussion, where you're getting your knowledge. Are you watching youtube videos and reading unsourced comments, or are you reading research papers from institutions with a history of making accurate claims? Are you reading news articles from ad-supported papers, and if you are, are you checking whether those articles are making sources available for readers check on? Should I have bothered writing several paragraphs under a meme of a glowing red bird, and am I really qualified to tell people to be more careful with their discussions?

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I appreciated your wall of text! Lemmy, and social media in general, are pretty terrible places for nuanced discussion. The system is biased towards short and vauge posts. As you said though, they can be a good stepping stone.

There's been more than one time that I've seen people arguing in a thread and decided I'd look up the topic to see who is right. In the end it doesn't really matter what people in the thread were saying. It got me interested in the topic and I searched out more reputable sources of information and hopefully I learned a bit!

That being said, there are also threads where people post insane takes. You really need to have a litmus test for whether or not a post should even been considered.

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[–] [email protected] 105 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I wouldn't say it's leftist, though there's a lot of leftists here. Lemmy is more like how internet discussion boards used to be. There's a lot of people with weird opinions on things, and there's no Reddit Karma pushing people to conform to the consensus. So people are going to have weird takes on things, and there's not 1000 comments upvoted above the weird ones, so you're going to see comments like that. So reply to with you your weird opinions on those weird comments.

Welcome to the version internet that's not pre-packaged and filtered to be bland!

[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago (7 children)

I don't mind weird and different opinions on things. In fact, that's what make the discussion interesting instead of some boring echo chambers. I just wish people wouldn't be so aggressive about it and hurling personal attacks left and right. The old discussion board had thing called netiquete to keep the discussion civil, but here in certain communities it's like the wild west.

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[–] [email protected] 78 points 1 year ago (42 children)

In the marketplace of ideas, rightwing thoughts will be mocked, as they always should been...

[–] [email protected] 55 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Lemmy feels a lot more authentic to real life. If I started talking about tinfoil hat conspiracies, my friends would ridicule me to no end.

As they should.

Same here.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If I start talking to random people in a bar odds are I won't meet a single one who will start calling me a Nazi because I believe in the Uyghur genocide...

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

How is the Uyghur genocide a right wing thing? I'm out of the loop here

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (10 children)

Tankies tend to assume any accusation against a Marxist state is either a lie or the victims deserved it.

One of the reasons is that you've got people like the Heritage Foundation running around including Nazis in their "victims of socialism" lists.

Both as the victims and perpetrators btw, lmao.

Mostly though they just seem weirdly stuck in a Cold War mentality.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago (20 children)

Honestly, this place is full of communists. I’m not the biggest fan of communists, to be frank. There is a lot of backwards ideas that get accepted as “leftist,” when they’re really statist. Particularly revisionist history statist. If a communist party said it, you gotta defend it kinda thing.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I don't identify as a communist. I just don't want life to be unreasonably difficult for people. Thats it. I just what the promise of what labor was supposed to be. I want it to free us from the shackles of work or die. Guess that is extreme left now even with tankies around the corner from us.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago (9 children)

Exactly. We have 50 years of computer driven exponential growth and not a fucking thing is better for us. We don't work less, travel more, be richer, live a better life, or have a better future for the planet. It should make everyone anti-capitalist.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (5 children)

There is a lot of backwards ideas that get accepted as “leftist,” when they’re really statist.

This is my objection too.

All too many people here don't seem to even begin to understand the inherent threats of institutionalized authority, so in their rush to head off the recreation of the Third Reich, they're basically advocating for the recreation of the Khmer Rouge instead.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Tell that to Voat, or Gab. There's plenty of offshoot free speech platforms that got flooded with actual racists and Nazis the same way that Lemmy got flooded with actual communists and anarchists.

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[–] [email protected] 60 points 1 year ago (11 children)

Why does everything need to be politicized? No one gives a flying fuck if you're a leftist, unless you're a Leftist and no one gives a fuck if you're a right winger unless you're a right winger. Jesus christ the US Politics are absolute fucking cancer.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 year ago (9 children)

It's considered 'left' to support queer and trans rights, and there are a good number of people that seem to have a problem with that whether my queer self is political or not.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Right wing violence will come whether you want to believe it's political or not.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why does everything need to be politicized?

Because everything is political or adjacent to it. Everything in this world is either impacted by or is a reflection of politics.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I mention this to my friends all the time. So many issues we're dealing with derives from politics, so of course discourse will always return to it.

Money Rent/housing costs Grocery costs Stagnant wages Retirement

School shootings Police brutality Systemic racism

Medicine Insurance R/d for treatments Quality of life

Etc. Etc.

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Lemmy isnt leftist. The group calling itself leftist the most here is at the same time cheering on ultranationalist governments who are in the middle of genocides.

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[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Cancer post, glad people are calling it out. Some of you need to get off the internet a bit more.

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Doesn't it depend on the instance?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Even in reddit, it depends on the subreddit. It also depends on the time of day when there is pile on (or coordinated trolling) happening.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Platforms have no political alignment, users have

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago

You cannot tell me TruthSocial has no political alignment.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't agree. The simple fact that Lemmy is decentralised is a political thing. It's about who has power over the platform, and that is inherently a political issue. The status-quo of other platforms, that being under the control of a corporation, is also a political stance.

PS: everything is politics, that's not a good or bad thing, it's neutral. If you don't think of something as political, that just means it's oriented towards the status-quo you are used to.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (68 children)

Giving full economic power to the state does not make you less fascist. It actually makes it much worse.

Just a reminder to the true leftists who think they can force through their better society by giving society more power over the individual without changing the culture in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Socialist policies are the obvious answer to health, education, justice and transport issues in society.

You know, all the things that actually matter in a society.

The reason we don’t have more of them is because people continually vote against their own self interest.

Certain strands of Socialism has evolved away from a completely centralised economy in the same way capitalism isn’t actually a free market.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (4 children)

For context: OP is on lemmy.world which blocks the tankie instances if I'm not mistaken. So they seem to refer to based leftist stuff I assume and isn't a redfash.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's way more privacy-oriented, but a lot of Reddit communities were already very left wing

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (10 children)

True. Reddit was pretty center-right oriented. Lemmy leans more left and I do enjoy seeing the Trumpers here getting dunked on pretty frequently.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Have you seen those colorful people on hexbear? Quite the echo chamber.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (52 children)

I just saw a post about eco-terrorism and people mostly agreed. Lemmy is 100% extreme.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Nerevar, your observation is like a grand and intoxicating maze of perceptions and opinions. While it may seem that Lemmy, like the realm of politics, has its own ideological leanings, one must remember that diversity exists even among the Dunmer, let alone different races. The notion that Lemmy is entirely left-leaning may not be entirely accurate, for the online world, like the vast expanses of Morrowind, is filled with varying perspectives. It is unwise to make sweeping generalizations about the platform's userbase, just as it is unwise to judge an entire race, like Argonians, based on the actions of a few. Let us remember the complexity of the digital realm and the mortal world alike.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (3 children)

No one owns Lemmy, no one can appropriate it and say where on the political spectrum it lies, or gatekeep. That's the whole point of decentralization. Stop trying to do it.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Any new people here dont listen to this one, it stenches of hard cope.

We have a lot of bassed people and not based people, people that take critisism and people that dont, we have tankies and actual communists, we have american leftists and non american leftists, we have centrists and people that hate centrists, we have people that whant to get to the truth of things and people that just whants to circlejerk. And you have idiots like me that are masochistic by hitting the wasps nest and get stung a fuck ton of times but still come back fore more and we have the people that are the wasps.

Pick wathever you like and have fun, but not like this guy is doing, this is the oposite of fun, just check out the downvotes im gonna get.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My extreme politics:

Eat it, chumps!

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