Lemmy isn’t “too extreme,” a very small subset of Lemmings are just fucking insufferable.
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I mean, tankies are kinda worse.
Edit: seems this post is controversial! Let me clarify.
Tankies are definitely worse. 🥂
There is a lot of political and other “adult” discourse. Not extreme, but more exhausting for a person wanting memes, gifs, and lols. I imagine the median age here is higher than that of Reddit. Can’t confirm, but it certainly conducts itself with less…“juvenility”…or some word.
I find the political discourse, at least on some topics, very juvenile on Lemmy. You know, screeching about how billionaires aren’t people but parasites and need to die, hundreds of upvotes. That’s some edgy, frustrated teenager bullshit. Or at least it should be, guess some people never got the memo about inalienable rights, equal treatment, vigilantism and how two wrongs don’t make a right.
Seriously, this thirst for blood is disturbing and if it isn’t just venting then, well, look how the French Revolution turned on people. That wasn’t very poggers.
There’s also this idea that everybody who isn’t 100% on board needs to be defooed and marked, preferably as a fascist. Which plays into the hands of the actual fascists because the non-fascists hate each other too much to collectively tell them to fuck off, despite their differences.
There, that’s my venting done for today.
Some Lemmings are extremely right. That is the norm on any other social media too. Luckily they were often contained on a specific instance. What I noticed tho is that at least in my german bubble the view is very, very left. That’s noticeable especially as the consensus of eg. !ich_iel@feddit.de seems to be extremely pro towards protestors of the last generation, which are often criticised in my real life bubble for their actions as they’re seen as too extreme. Could be that my RL bubble is just much more right than I perceive it to be, even after blending out some individuals.
The ich_iel community existed as sub on fuggid too, it was never as left tho. I guess there are much less older and therefore theoretically less tech savvy as well as statistically conservative folks people on Lemmy in general. Conservatives would probably care about new, better platforms anyway.
See its this shit that drives me nuts.
How did you get so hateful. Same bafflement I get with hard right wing people. I figure its the same forces being applied
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?
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.
I really enjoyed reading this. Do you have a blog or something? Have a good one.
yes you can find it at /u/BlemboTheThird@lemmy.ca
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.
Actually refered to exactly that with my vague one-liner :D
To be taken seriously offline I necessarily have to make well reasoned and researched arguments.
Lemmy is where I come to blow off steam and just berate my ideological opponents because they genuinely are losers.
It is not a place for nuanced debate.
It is not a place for nuanced debate.
Why not? Compared to other social media it’s way better equipped for reasoned debate, with an easy-to-read layout designed for mountains of text and ease of linking sources. Maybe c/memes isn’t the right place but considering how serious the rest of this thread is I’m pretty sure my spiel was worth it.
Maybe the people in my social circle are just a lower caliber than yours, but I can’t remember the last time I got asked to source an opinion irl. Most of my friends already agree with me. Hell, offline, most people aren’t willing to discuss politics at all. Even saying you have opinions on politics is basically a faux pas…
It’s not a place for nuanced debate because I have no idea who I’m talking to.
I’d rather devote my time to having those nuanced conversations in real life (which I do) than trying to convince an American online through a meme community that gun bans would reduce school shootings for example.
Unless you’re a lib in the workplace then you can say whatever bullshit hot takes you want, since everyone will agree with you anyway.
just berate my ideological opponents because they genuinely are losers
Im astonished at how closed-minded and brainwashed you seem. Maybe actually think about why you would fight for a opinion that is not based on “well reasoned and researched arguments”… It really seems like youre arguing for another person’s opinion rather than having your own.
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!
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.
Yeah… but that’s what the internet is. You’re connected to different people with different points of view, but you’re also connected to assholes. Just don’t take it personally, they don’t know you and you don’t know them.
I think people misremember when discussions could be blunt without being abusive, because they didn’t recognize and appreciate sensible small-forum moderation. I don’t want oversight that forbids people from using a list of no-no words. I want human beings to skim a conversation and judge when people are causing problems.
In real-life interactions, there are legitimate occasions for being rude. Civility is an ideal. It’s not a death cult. You don’t pledge your honor to never calling someone an asshole. You just try to avoid dealing with assholes.
If a forum does not want strife between users, the mods better be proactive in removing fascists, trolls, bigots, and other dehumanizing forces.
If mods don’t remove that crap, but demand everyone play nice with those assholes - the forum exists for the benefit of those assholes. Everyone else is an unwitting victim for them to play with. And any moderation against accurately and reasonably saying ‘fuck off, abusive liar’ is acting as cover and force multiplication for abusive liars.
A vulgar explanation of how someone’s incorrect is often good-faith participation. Infuriating bullshit in televisable language is not.
That’s a great point about moderation, plenty of forums outside of just banning would have mods post in the thread and say ‘knock that shit off, try to be nicer’ or whatever to discourage a toxic atmosphere.
There can be appropriate times for a range of civility like you said so having nuance is important, but I’ve rarely seen a forum outside of something like Stormfront afraid to ban Nazis or racists without question, unlike some big venues today that try to be ‘tolerant’ or ‘free speech absolutists’.
I’d understand if it were the kind of ‘fuck off, abusive liar’, but more often than not it’s about something so minor, certainly not worth the extra negativity added to the community.
Exactly. It’s not “Leftist”, it’s just NOT fully of Nazis, and that’s how far our standards have slipped.
Thats a huge downplay of what the actual Nazis did if you refer to right-leaning people as that.
In the marketplace of ideas, rightwing thoughts will be mocked, as they always should been…
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.
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…
True, I’d expect pretty wild conspiracies like flat earth and chemtrails to be laughed at here, but a disturbing number of lemmings and even progressives in general follow a set of less outlandish - but more insidious - conspiracies that usually fall into the “collusion and malice” type. I could say that General Motors et al. killed most of the US passenger rail and streetcar systems, and most people here would accept that as a fact. Case closed, capitalism is evil and should be abolished, every bad thing is cause by someone with I’ll intentions making it worse.
I, however, tend to be suspicious of those sorts of takes in general. Returning to the alleged “streetcar conspiracy”I’ve actually done quite a lot of research into this and can decidedly say that the primary cause of the decline of mass transit in the US was… There were at least 5 primary causes, none of which were shadowy groups deliberately working to destroy it. Rather it was killed by a changing urban environment, failures to adapt to modal shifts, legacy streetcar systems just generally sucking, and local governments taking transit for granted and assuming that they can hold streetcar companies to exacting standards while expecting them to remain solvent, all while not considering it their problem.
I could go on, and can send some sources and references (maybe not direct links though) if you’d like to learn more. But my main point is that far too many people assume there’s a nefarious actor pulling the strings the whole time when it’s usually several factors lining up all the holes in the Swiss cheese and creating a negative externality we still talk about to this day.
There (usually) isn’t a conspiracy, and if there is it’s unlikely to be anywhere near as all-encompassing as you think. People say there is because it gives them someone to blame, helps channel their anger at something tangible, and just makes a good story.
And there are no conservative ideas that aren’t tinfoil hat conspiracies, I guess
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.
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.
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.
This. When I was younger I considered myself pretty centrist, generally people would agree. My views never really changed, but the Overton window has shot so far right I now get called a commie (I guess here I’m a tankie? Still dunno wtf that’s about except a slur for ‘left of Biden’) because I think a 40 hour work week should put a basic roof over your head, whether an efficency on your own or a roomie in a nicer spot.
Not extreme left but it’s socialist and isn’t consistent with American ideals. You can bitch about that shit if you want but we’re in the decay phase after a gluttonous society and you think the answer is communism? You do, you think everyone and everything should be “fair” but life and this country don’t work like that.
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.
Define ‘full of communists’… cause it sounds like such an american phrase and perspective. To me, it’s just a more leftwing centered space. The real communists are a minority. At least on the biggest Lemmy servers.
Go for a walk in Hexbear and Lemmygrad communities, these are Lemmy’s communists…
Lol I’m not crying “SOCIALISM!” because someone recommended taking care of poor people. And maybe it’s just the communities on lemm.ee, maybe it’s because I interact with the communities more because I can’t bite my tongue. But I come across way more communist communities than anything else. Your instance matters. I see a lot of communist communities. As an anarchist, the prevalence of communism on lemmy is troubling to me because I see huge flaws in the thinking and i want to see the left not follow down a doomed hierarchical road that has proven to be a failure over and over and over again.
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.
It’s because when you have a new platform, a lot of your first users will be the worst kinds of people to exist on the internet. It’s why “”“free speech absolutist”“” spaces quickly devolve into nazi hellscapes that repel all but the most equally toxic and revolting people unless they cut their claim to absolute free speech.
Ah, Voat. Come for the freedom of speech, decide not to stay because ABSOLUTE freedom of speech inevitably becomes racist.
There aren’t a lot of anarchists here, going by the anarchist communities I’ve seen.
A heel dragging regressive policy opinion should always be met as such. The world will never go back to the Wild West with gun laws, whites owning everything, women are property etc; to have a political viewpoint desiring these things and feel that it is correct is laughable.
What free market? All I have ever known is corporate socialism. Subsidize business with taxpayer dollars. Regulatory capture to prevent competitors from entering the market.
Somehow it’s not socialist when you prop up corporate entities with billion dollar handouts a few times a decade everytime they fuck up but a single mom getting $100 only usable for food because she was let go from her job of 5 years with 10 minutes notice is a communist plot single handedly destroying America.
Hence why our economy is going to shit.
We need to eliminate the corruption and return to free market principles, not add even more buerocracy that only benefits the Oligarchs.
Dipping my dick into a vat of acid is the greatest pleasure to ever exist.
You see all these people out here suffering and still say this? Where in the world can I get what you are taking because I’d love to be able to tune out everything that hard.
It’s not that capitalism doesn’t have flaws. It’s that all the other systems so far have had worse and bigger flaws. Regulated capitalism with welfare is the least bad system by a wide margin.
It’s the best at creating rampant consumerism and waste in the name of fake numbers going up at the cost of human happiness and fulfillment.
If you have a better system for the future, let’s hear it.
And no, a reboot of communism doesn’t count. Fresh ideas please.
What makes you say that? As a random example, leaded gasoline existed for 50 years longer than it should have. We’ve known lead was toxic since the Roman empire, and the only reason it was invented was to increase profits.
Romans died from lead in the aqueducts by the tens of thousands in Pompeii so saying they “knew” is misrepresentative to say the least. They didn’t know why. Do you really need hyperbole to make your point?
Pretty much the whole world used leaded gasoline and capitalist countries were the first to phase it out. US phased it out relatively early compared to others, Japan was afaik the first to outright ban it in 86. My ex-eastern bloc country only fully banned it in 2002.
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.
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.
Guaranteeing that every individual has the same rights independently of their sex, sexual orientation, race, skin color and so on… Shouldn’t be neither left nor right. It just should be. It’s just common sense.
There are plenty of another topic for the left vs right to debate. Leave identity politics out of it and just let people live like they want.
It should be common sense. But it isn’t. The Republican party platform in the US 4 years ago consisted of a single point: banning gay marriage. That was their entire party-wide goal for the last presidential election. No policies on taxes or anything else, just removing rights from people they don’t like.
“Leave identity politics out of it” you do realize the modern Democrat party revolves around playing victim and identity politics? They’re not going to let it go now. Need more victims.
I wouldn’t consider that a left-right issue. China’s government would certainly be classed as leftist, but they engage in LGBTQ oppression. It’s been getting better in some ways recently, but they’re no friends to LGBTQ people.
I usually put such issues somewhere along the line of socially liberal/progressive to social conservative.
Right wing violence will come whether you want to believe it’s political or not.
Yet I see a lot more anti liberal rhetoric on here. Also these people getting off on wanting a civil war… because destabilizing a country always worked great.
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.
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.
School shootings Police brutality Systemic racism
Those are issues that are relevant in YOUR region so why do I have to discuss them? Politics are regional and Lemmy is a worldwide space. The majority of Lemmy is from outside of the USA, yeah we can talk a bit about US politics but not all the damn time.
I find posts like this so confusing. Does politics, i.e.the policies organisations across the world implement to actively change the way the masses live not directly or indirectly affect your life? Whenever someone says something like this I just assume you’re not within a marginalised group because there’s no way you’d make an enlightened centrist post like this otherwise.
It sure does but why do we have to bring up political topics (or rather: US politics) all the time? Whats the point in discussing politics (which are always regional) with people that dont even understand it or care (because I doubt you could give educated opinions on the politics of more than a handful of countries)…
And then people like OP feel entitled to generalize all of the people using Lemmy from all over the world as “Leftists” just because some peoole with certain political views cant stop pushing every debate into a political direction.
Liberals and leftists exist elsewhere outside America. There is nothing about the original post that yells exclusivity to America.
Everything has something to do with politics. People saying “stop shoving politics into everything” just don’t like to he confronted with that fact, when some people are forced to confront that fact outside of political discourse every day. There are literally billions of people in poverty around the world due to the direct actions of some of the most powerful governments the world has ever seen. But you and a few people could not possibly even bear seeing a meme talking about Leftists and Liberals because that’s too political hahaha what the fuck.
Most people (especially in the US) can’t even define what they are IN FAVOR of politically. All they do is denigrate what they think they don’t like, even when it is against their own best interest. Bunch of fucking lemmings we humans are, just waiting to be taken advantage of by the sharks.
