Sure, there are always outliers and you can correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s just the overall impression I have.
(I wasn’t sure if !asklemmy@lemmy.world or this community would fit better for this kind of question, but I assume it fits here.)
I’m here because I DON’T want to have to read fucked up opinions. People here are mostly nice compared to mainstream platforms.
I’m all for difference of opinion, but not when one of those opinions is “we should oppress LGBT people” for example. 10-15 years ago, I’d have been more receptive to discussing opposing opinions, but shit has changed. A lot of those opposing opinions are now simply unacceptable to even entertain, because they’ve become a real, actual threat to my well-being. People aren’t discussing tax policy anymore, they are discussing imposing states of emergency to do some kind of purge on undesirables.
Some people call it an echo chamber, I just call it chilling and having fun with like-minded people. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s what forums have always been.
People here are mostly nice compared to mainstream platforms.
Try disagreeing with the hive mind. Anyone can be nice to someone who echo’s their own opinion. The real niceness of a person is revealed when they can show civility to people they disagree with (I’m not talking about LGBTQ oppressors or Nazis…there’s a huge spectrum of opinions that aren’t extreme).
I’m on BlueSky on top of IceShrimp because anything better than Twitter is good to use at this point.
Let’s see how downvoted I get.
I’m also on BlueSky as well as Mastodon, because BlueSky has the momentum right now, and critical mass is important.
In that same vein, I wish you’d treat LW as you do any other instance. We’re not hostile to other instances, and I think there’s a healthy balance right now. It doesn’t hurt Lemmy to have a bigger, more mainstream instance. I think defederation solely for the sake of defederation does hurt Lemmy.
I don’t know. I am still as opinionated and difficult as I ever was on Reddit, but I also turn it around, display civility, and cede points far more often here. Maybe I’m becoming better, but I think it’s just a better situation overall.
I’ve received way more bitter and raged out responses here than I’ve ever received on Reddit for very lukewarm vanilla takes. I’m not saying Lemmy is full of extremists but there is a user base here that is all or nothing. My guess is it’s age related though.
The version of someone you invite in the door determines the initial trajectory of how that person will act in the community. You can invite in the leading edge of someone’s developing kindness or invite in the ossifying mass of their nature that is threatening to turn hateful and uncaring. No one instance of invitation to a new person (however that may happen, formally or informally) pushes the needle far either way within any one particular person (though sometimes it can radically do so) but the overall integrated effect is a moderate shift of the an entire community towards the better or worse version of the community members. When this effect is used for good people often describe the resulting community space as a community that accepts them for who they are or more succintly is a genuinely safe space.
Of course, every interaction is in an invitation in some small way, it doesn’t just happen once.
Yeah, I don’t think anyone would ask you “Are you okay with sitting at the bar with nazis?” yet plenty will happily judge you for saying “I’d rather not have to deal with MAGAts and their opinions”
Sorry but if your opinion is “trans people aren’t people” or “blacks need to know their place” then your opinion is shit and no the fuck I don’t have to listen to it
But another question, “are you ok with sitting at the bar with nazis, but they’re wearing red shirts with a hammer and sickle on them and espousing the same propensity for murder?”
Lemmy is fine with murder and genocide so long as you wear the right shirt while doing it.
Source: .ml, grad, hexbear.
I agree, which is why I recently kicked a MAGA guy out of my D&D group that meets at my house. I had tolerated him up to then because he generally acted decent and was a good player. But after the election I decided I just don’t feel like extending my hospitality to that anymore.
But on the flip side when I hear a phrase like, “uncomfortable with trans people” my first reaction is, “What makes you uncomfortable?” instead of, “Fuck you you fucking bigoted fuck!” For that moral imperfection in my character I’ve received name-calling and at least one ban. Whatever. People have irrational fears and I’m not going to exile them to the desert because their “eww” reflex isn’t pristine.
Honestly the tankie takes justifying atrocities is nearly as bad as the conservative takes justifying the same.
Nah. Tankies are wrong, but they’re also powerless. Conservatives actually have power though, and are extremely dangerous.
Normally I’d say it was a weakness but the right has significantly departed from reality in most countries for way too long now. It’s incredibly rare to find a right-winger who can be present in a discussion without spewing a whole lot of vile conspiracy hate fascist bullshit.
So I find their absence refreshing, desirable and a strength of Lemmy.
I find the same on the left wing. Everytime I put out a slightly right wing position I get attacked and a ton of down votes.
Every time anyone mentions on Lemmy right wing positions it is with only to attack a strawman version that is very removed from what most right wing people think/do.
Downvotes can’t actually hurt you.
Personally, I’m fine with saying unpopular things and getting downvoted for it. Mods removing a disallowed viewpoint is something different.
Every time anyone mentions on Lemmy right wing positions it is with only to attack a strawman version
It would help if you would be more precise. You are using a “feels like” statement here, which I have to disagree with b/c it is objectively false: all it would take would be to find a singular example wherein it was not true, at which point “every time” is shown to be invalid.
But often that does occur, yes. Sometimes our choice of wording can impede rather than aid in understanding?
And I say this as someone who seems to be more often misunderstood than not, go figure :-|.
Please… this is a serious display of availability bias.
Let’s face it: the demographic here is just a hyper concentrated version of Reddit, which itself is mostly middle-upper class tweenagers from affluent countries. They get online and get convinced that everyone is just like them.
The average person that hangs out on Reddit-like forums absolutely does not represent the population at large, and any “right-winger who can be present in a discussion without spewing a whole lot of vile conspiracy hate fascist bullshit” has learned that there is no way one can have a reasonable exchange of ideas in any forum like this.
Your points about social bubbles and echo chambers are true, but experiencing the displeasure of having to routinely interact with rightwingers in person verifies that they have fully-fledged conviction in their “vile conspiracy hate fascist bullshit”. They can’t have a reasonable exchange of ideas because they bring nothing reasonable or empathetic to the table.
There are many right wingers here, not conservatives. Liberals are right wing, and lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works are mainly liberal instances.
What rimu was mainly talking about are conservatives, or even far right users. So he wasn’t criticizing the whole right wing, he just used the term right wing to refer to those.
I know it’s comfortable to sit and call anything slightly right of ultra socialism as ‘right wing’ but a spectrum exists.
To conflate republican evangelical dominionist Christians with liberals is peak hubris.
There is a saying: ‘when you’re a hammer, every problem is a nail’. When you reduce everything to class warfare you’re not engaging in an effective discourse to reduce harm in the world. You’re just pontificating on the merits of socialism, which yea, we all agree are neat. But so what? You think folding everyone else into a basket gives you credence or helps the discourse in any way?
I don’t care so much about the range of political views, just the quantity of them.
Too many people on Lemmy make their political ideology their entire identity, and it’s just freaking exhausting.
Can we not just be people talking to other people about cool stuff? I just get sick of political ideologies masquerading as people.
Then please stop by !dull_mens_club@lemmy.world
Not sure if you’re there, but there’s !casualconversation@lemm.ee too
There needs to be a lemmy.norm or some shit.
Just photoshop requests, memes, hobbies and dumb “askreddit” shit.
Discuss.Online seems that way.
Perhaps lemmy.today although that barely has any local content.
lemmy.ca? It does have a politicalmemes@lemmy.ca but other stuff too:-).
It is interesting to me that the people who are PASSIONATELY concerned about the plight of poor people in the third world, spend so much time pushing the solution of not voting for Kamala Harris, and so little time pushing support for charity work, NGOs in the United States, supporting the rare tiny handful of politicians who actually do care about human rights, or similar things. I think the amount of content I saw from them before the election that was dealing exclusively with the importance of not supporting Democrats probably outnumbered the other stuff by about 10:1. I guess as long as we make enough Kamala Harris memes, the Palestinians will be saved. Who knew?
Well, it worked out in the last election, I can’t wait for everything to get better for everyone in Gaza. That’s definitely what’s going to happen now, right?
Did you even look at the votes in the election? Not enough people voted third party to make a difference in the results of the election. But sure, try to blame people that oppose the genocide in gaza. Sure…
People that shy away from this stuff are almost always rich people that are intentionally unsympathetic to the plight of poor people.
[citation needed]
If you lose your shit when you hear about politics, you simply don’t care about helping others. Period.
Now listen here whippersnapper I’ve been around too long to not know that it is, in fact, helpful for your praxis to touch grass. Declare it political if you want, but don’t bloody talk about politics while doing it.
Read Clausewitz: Absolute war is impossible because for a people to turn all its efforts to war, it would have to give up the things that it is fighting to defend. War being nothing but the continuation of politics by other means, this also applies to politics.
It is you, here, who is trying to make politics an absolute war, you’re the one barging into a bar where people are singing the people’s songs and dancing the people’s dances and say “up, to arms! what are you dancing, what are you singing, you need to fight for your right to sing and dance!”.
In short: Your praxis boils down to party pooping. Don’t be a party pooper. Party with the people, then go back to your politics as others go back to their looms and mills.
People that shy away from this stuff are almost always rich people that are intentionally unsympathetic to the plight of poor people.
[citation needed]
Lol, say you are a westerner liberal without saying you are a westerner liberal
I find it highly interesting how in the replies to your message people are proving you right:-).
But fwiw, I do want to push back a little on my own irt your phrasing: perhaps it is not so much the intensity of someone’s views as the degree of welcomingness extended to people of all walks. Non-intuitively to some: this REQUIRES that we kick out people engaging in bad faith. However, once that’s done, shouldn’t we extend a welcoming hand to all who come in good faith?
Tbh I may not be expressing myself well there… so I’ll try with more extreme language: Nazis are bad, and thereby the Alt-Right that extends a welcoming hand to neo-nazis are bad, but centrists and liberals (both of whom would be called right-wing by many people internationally) should be made to feel welcomed? So breadth of political views - so long as delivered in good faith - not that the breadth is the thing desired, but rather the allowance for PEOPLE to come in and talk, if they want, regardless of their political views. The focus here is on the people - the tolerance is just the means to that good end (and this only works if we are intolerant to specifically those who are themselves intolerant).
I find it highly interesting how in the replies to your message people are proving you right:-).
Lol, what replies? I guess I’ve already blocked most/all the people I was referring to (or they’re on .ml which I don’t federate with for pretty much this exact reason)
[The rest of it]
When, out of nowhere, people put other people into boxes, ascribe a political label to them, and put words in their mouths without knowing anything about them, it is a HUGE turn off to me as far as interactions go.
e.g. A comment that’s taken out of context and the reply is basically, “Hurr, durr, that’s such an enlightened centrist thing to say. Guess you’re okay with a little fascism, huh, lib?”. That’s pretty fucking cringe and going to make me immediately block the person saying it (and I have and will continue to do so). Like, if that’s how their mind works, taking things out of context, jumping to conclusions, and projecting labels out of nowhere: I got nothing for them.
I’m not here with an agenda, I’m not trying to spread my beliefs, I’m not trying to convert anyone to anything (except maybe Linux lol), etc. I just wanna share and talk about cool shit.
And you know there’s someone reading this thinking (and possibly commenting) that the fact I haven’t announced myself to the room as a raging leftie means I must be a nazi in disguise. (Nope. Just someone who’s not here for political shit). My political beliefs and leanings are my own, and if they’re not apparent from my post/comment history, then whoever’s judging me just hasn’t paid attention.
As for how I treat people, as long as they’re clearly operating in good faith and with a good attitude, I welcome them until such time they’ve veered outside of civility or proven to be a troll, actual Nazi, or otherwise.
Exactly. Judgement is such hard work - best to avoid it when possible, but if necessary, not shy away from it either. Although in the latter case some WORK needs to be put in, if the desire is to do it correctly.
So many people claiming “bUt i WaS BaNNeD foR beInG ToO FrIenDlY, i’M ReaLlY sUcH a nIcE gUy”, when it is patently obvious to anyone who looks that that is not the case.
Mostly mixed. The way i think it’s a weakness is because I’m an anti authoritarian leftist, and i’d like a stronger anarchist/libertarian community on lemmy. Despite hexbear/lemmygrad/lemmy thriving, Solarpunk and dbzer0 feel a little lacking community wise. I’d also like a diverse political community, in general.
Another con is that if you even just disagree with a [bastard] moderator, they’ll immediately ban you. Happens on lemmy.world with being anti-zionist, happens on lemmy.ml under the guise of ‘rule 1’ for literally just criticizing a mod such as dessalines.
But i also think it’s a pro due to the lack of far-right content on lemmy. I remember on reddit casually seeing disgusting content, such as blatant racism (Such as arabs being called sand n-rs, Or racism against asians/immigrants in general on r/canada + r/europe) and most of that is obscure on lemmy.
I’m not denying that the Lemmy community doesn’t have problems, Lord no. But it’s much better than most other platforms.
Haha ML loves to ban you for even the slightest challenge of their views.
Don’t even need to challenge it. Just criticize a mod, and you’re banished to the void lmao
The type of anarchism that says, “You must agree with my anarchism, and if you have some incorrect view, I’ll use my powers to remove you from the space” is not actually anarchism. It’s actually strikingly reminiscent of how the Russian implementation of communism had nothing to do with worker-led socialism that it was branded as. They implemented freedom by declaring themselves the arbiters of what were the allowed types of freedom and ruthlessly repressing anything else, which isn’t how it works.
In general, I think it’s a myth that if you disagree with liberal orthodoxy on lemmy.world, you’ll be banned. Plenty of people on lemmy.world constantly criticize the liberal orthodoxy and it’s fine. The people purporting the myth are either:
- Being flaming cocks and then claiming they were banned for their factual beliefs when they get banned, when that wasn’t the issue
- Or else trying to make themselves feel better about the censorship of liberals that happens on their own instances, by claiming lemmy.world is doing the same to their “side” when they aren’t.
The occasional whining about how unfair it is that you can’t post anti-Israel stories on lemmy.world, for example, is nothing to do with reality, but is instead a disguised yearning for a space where you can’t post pro-Israel stories, and the mods will enforce that political viewpoint using their powers so the speaker can feel comfortable because all they see is things that they already agree with.
I’ve skimmed the lemmy.world modlog, and it seems you seem to be right. That was a bad example.
But my point was moreso on the stubbornness of mods. For example, if i suggest that China is bad on lemmy.ml, that’ll get me a ban under the guise of “rule 1”. Why? it’s not against the rules, it’s not bigoted or racist.
If i write controversial, or even bigoted comments, then that’s another story. I was criticizing power tripping mods that ban users if they personally disagree with them, instead of actually break the rules
Yeah, those mods are bad, and they definitely exist including unapologetically on the tankie instances. I was just saying that the mirror-image bad mod, who will delete anything anti-Israel, is almost entirely a self-serving myth by a selected group that likes to pretend.
It’s a weakness. We need more anti-authoritarians here for sure. And even conservatives if nothing else so they can represent their own opinions rather than just laughing at straw-man versions of what neolibs want to say they think. I have moments I hate it here but there’s nowhere good to go and I guess I add a little diversity.
I disagree with the conservatives part. Their ideology does not deserve a place at the adults’ table. It is far too bent on undermining democracy, equity, and egalitarian society.
EDIT: To clarify, this is elementary “Paradox of Tolerance”. Those that wish to undermine democracy in an equitable society cannot be tolerated without making an end to democracy inevitable. Not all opinions are created equal. For example: “I think trans people should receive additional state-funded support.” and “I think that trans people should be murdered and/or the state should cultivate an environment amplifying their likelihood to commit suicide.” (the prevailing view expressed by the far-right through their actions and legislation) are opinions that should not be given equal treatment.
Saying, “I don’t like what they say so they shouldn’t have a voice” sounds a lot like undermining democracy to me. Them living in conservative echo chambers doesn’t increase dialog or challenge their beliefs either. Divided media and divided opinions are the tools to take down a nation. Supporting this kind of division strikes me as an example of the main kind of foreign interference this country is crumbling because of. If that was your goal, I guess congratulations?
I’m sorry but libertarians and ancaps are just proto-feudalists that may like to smoke weed.
i’d like a stronger anarchist/libertarian community on lemmy.
That’s one thing that I’ve been both disappointed and surprised to not see.
The anarchist community on Reddit is fairly large, but not very anarchist. There’s a very strong authoritarian bent to their claimed anarchism. I had hopes that the nature of this place would invite a community that was anarchist not only in name but in spirit, but I’ve seen surprisingly little sign of that, or even really of anarchism at all.
db0 is real anarchists, as far as I can tell. Because they are not overbearing about it, it’s harder to be aware of them.
I think by definition, it’s easier to be aware of the “official” self-identified anarchist communities than the ones that are just doing their own thing.
I assumed that they were at least anarchism-adjacent - it’s pretty much a prerequisite for the bulk of their focus.
I hadn’t really looked into their political posting much though, and yeah - even with just a cursory glance, it’s promising.
And I hadn’t thought about that distinction between people who simply hold a position and people who “officially” wear the label in the context of anarchism (though I’ve noted it often with atheists), but yeah, there’s undoubtedly some truth there.
Thanks for the heads-up.
Absolutely yes. Anarchists on reddit were largely only anarchist by name, and we don’t even have a proper community here. And anarchist communities on instances such as lemmy.ml are even worse, to be honest. Most political representation on lemmy is for authoritarian leftists, where’s the love for anarchy :(
Echo chambers are never good, no matter the politics. Just reading this comment thread is proof. Some of these comments are fucking ridiculous.
Half of Lemmy working to ensure that we never get any diversity of opinions or anymore normal people lol
Oh no, the poor right whingers aren’t being represented here.
Oh wait, good. Fuck ‘em.
They still have to suffer from shiti health insurance…
But sure let’s make sure nobody but a good neo libs “allies” are permitted here champ
Weird seeing you again, and seeing you say this, after you quickly resorted to name-calling over a disagreement in another thread just 20 minutes ago. Do you really not think that you’re a member of the half you refer to? I’m not so sure you actually want “diversity of opinions” or “normal people” if that’s been your response so far.
