Been thinking of making a post like this for some time, apologies if some of this is not completely relevant: this community seems more like it’s about Reddit the platform/product than Reddit the social “thing”, but I’m sure a lot of people have similar experiences to mine. Maybe on some instances more than others.
Here’s the one of the last comments I wrote as a regular Reddit user, on the eve of the blackout (almost a year ago to the day), under a post titled “Will your participation in Reddit change”:
My comment
I will keep searching Google for Reddit help threads, but as a cultural and news aggregator I think this is the end for me. Maybe I will check it every so often. On desktop. On the old site. Until they sunset that too.
I wouldn’t be against using the first party app if it wasn’t so awful to use.
It’s a massive shame that we’ve all collectively agreed that Reddit is the de facto way to create open communities online. There were so many forums that could fill the void left by Reddit for things like tech and art and they’ve all shut down in the past decade.
I try not to be too negative about the evolution and constant growth of the userbase of the site and of the internet as a whole, but I’ve really felt like things are moving in a direction I can’t even be cautiously optimistic about lately.
I think of all the mod tools that will be defunct. The commonly cited example is that people who comment excessively on adult subs are automatically barred from commenting on the teenagers subreddit. Sure the admins can whip up functionality to do this, but this site was built on custom tools and custom CSS and all that. I think the API was one among the many secret sauces that give Reddit this staying power. These sites and forums I talked about - I used to hop from one to the next year after year. Until I found Reddit a decade ago.
I like that I choose my subs and that I don’t get algorithmically ordered sludge designed to game the algorithm on my homepage. Yes the sensibilities of the lowest common denominator redditors are gamed by people posting, but that’s (in my opinion) acceptable.
Frankly if they kept the old Reddit Gold pricing (4 bucks per month/30 annual) and gated unrestricted API access behind it I would have been inclined to finally give Reddit money. I use it a lot, I don’t mind paying now that I can afford it. But something about how it’s all going down really doesn’t fill me with confidence.
I’ve been trying to write a post about this for a while now, but I haven’t felt like it was relevant. Thanks for asking here
Reading through this is a bit funny, in retrospect, seeing how Reddit-centric my understanding of the internet had become at the time. I am happy to report that I have checked the home page maybe a half dozen times since the blackout, instead of once or twice a week like I expected. I suppose the disgusting state of the heavily astroturfed worldnews sub was a big part of it as well: for me Reddit was the one big online platform where the average visible user didn’t seem to be very misinformed about Palestine (at least not by default), and it was frankly very sad to see where it got in the past few months.
I do miss Reddit, I haven’t been able to replace it outright. I’m from Lebanon, and Lebanese Twitter is (if you can imagine it) even more of a toxic cesspool than regular Twitter. I’m not on Facebook (also cesspool here), I’m not on Instagram - my point is I don’t get anything about my country on ostensibly user-curated social media. /r/Lebanon was very far from perfect, but it was nice to get a trickle of local news with users who were more in line with my own politics. The local news outlets focus on a lot of irrelevant crap, the sub’s news feed was a bit more interesting.
One thing I loved about that subreddit was that users with more mainstream views in my country (eg. transphobia-as-default) were allowed to spout their bullshit in the subreddit with little mod pushback (if it’s just JAQing off etc, not harrassing people obviously). Then the regulars would dogpile on that user’s post - very refreshing! And very validating I would imagine for anyone who is used to hearing this shit everyday.
I was applying to be a mod to help keep the sub moving, at one point, but hey. Maybe that headache was never worth it. Still, I felt like I lost one of my online homes.
More generally, I have enjoyed my first year on Lemmy, although the experience has been lacking in many ways. For one, while Reddit has a reputation as a meme cemetery, the memes here are generally a bit moldier. But that’s okay. The fact that there’s fewer posts I think isn’t necessarily a bad thing either, I think we all preferred Reddit’s slightly slower homepage in 2013 than the one we left in 2023, that would regurgitate more and more from the bottom of the barrel if you were willing to keep scrolling.
I’ve toyed with opening a Lebanon community here on dbzer0, having opened one on FMHY that nobody used. But it wouldn’t be the same, and I wouldn’t know how to populate it. I posted maybe 2 non-question posts on Reddit in my decade+ of being a regular user, but I wrote tons of comments. It also helped keep my English sharper, I think.
I’ve reactivated my old Instagram account and it’s pretty ass out there. The ad/post ratio is just egregious, and they’ll just serve you random posts from random pages. I want to see my friends goddamn it, isn’t this what your platform is supposed to be for? For those of you who don’t know, the app will also send you a notification once or twice a day suggesting you look at “today’s top reels”. I have never watched a reel of my own will, fuck off.
Point being, the main platforms people use online haven’t been up my alley. I can only hope the zoomer dumbphone pushback keeps expanding, and that social media starts being seen as something for older generations. Wishful thinking?
This is just a post about enshittification, everyone’s favorite word, but every time I think about it for more than 2 minutes I can’t help but miss a simpler internet. Some part of me was hoping it would kickstart me “growing out” of spending this much time online per day (not everyone spends a ton of time online), but it hasn’t.
Also every time I ask something longer than 20 words on Discord some middle schooler will reply “yap”, even in the channels designated for questions. Discord has had its uses (yes I know there’s privacy concerns), but it’s hardly a replacement for Reddit, or forums. Both of which are/were searchable. But enough yapping from me.
Thoughts? How has the exodus been for you? Is this how Digg users felt?
The only thing I miss is /r/listentothis. I would open rif and vanced in split mode on my phone and sort by hot/month. I could then easily start playing a song on my TV and continually add songs to the que. Now they changed it so that posts with a YouTube video didn’t even give you a YouTube link. It embeds the video in the Reddit post so you have to go into the post and then click play in order to open the video in YouTube. Way too many steps and I’ve never been able to figure out a way to quickly get a list of links to create a playlist on YouTube or VLC.
I feel similarly often, but I think it has started to push me towards growing out of spending so much time online. Lemmy definitely has not filled the same niche reddit did, in some ways it’s better but I am often disappointed what I see here as well. Even things like youtube I have started to watch less lately. It all is just starting to feel like hyper processed slop, like what am I really getting out of this thing I feel attached to?
The only social I really still enjoy lately is mastodon and that’s because it’s possible to make real connections with people there, it’s not about making viral posts that tons of people see. Though clearly I still visit lemmy, I find myself often wondering if it’s worth it.
I feel better consuming less social media, feel healthier. I have read so many books over the last year, just last month I read 16 books though that is an outlier. Not just fiction too, though that is the vast majority, but also pure math books. Smoking a lot less weed, I use to smoke it every day, I was high every day for years and years but now im close to just giving it up completely I think. I have started to exercise and eat better too and I am more willing to just be alone with my thoughts. Sometimes its painful but I think its good for me.
I don’t think it’s all down to just less social media, but it has been helping for sure.
Part of me often feels like if I don’t check social media im like doing something wrong, not participating in the world, like I /need/ to stay informed. But social media isn’t going to save the world, i’m not actually helping anyone or anything by reading and commenting on posts. Its an illusion of participation, a honey pot that just sapps away my time and my mental health and doesn’t give me the things I actually want like real human connection.
Like others, being on Lemmy dragged me away from the constant stream of endless gratification. I still check it a few times a day, at most, but much less than Reddit.
What Reddit still has over Lemmy is a huge database of answers. While many people have left Reddit or moved on, their comments stayed, and that includes many searchable and genuine answers.
It also has more communities. Game devs still use Reddit to host a lite web page (subreddit) for example. While the fediverse has many communities, alot of them are duplicates. Every instance has their own Memes community for example, which pollutes the feed sometimes.
In the last year, I’ve made less than 5 posts on Reddit, mostly asking questions. I don’t browse it, I just end up on it from search results.
I wish the fediverse agreed on unique communities. It’s cool that I can communicate with several different websites, but imagine if there was 5 reddit.com’s and they all made their own memes subreddits. Either you have to subscribe to all of them and get duplicate memes, or you sub to one and miss out of 4x more.
Because those 5 reddits are all divided, so is the potential user base. I’m not saying we should go back to a single website, but rather that each website in the fediverse hosts one major community.
Alternatively, have an instance that merges all the other instances’ communities so that all the meme communities appear as one, and all duplicates are filtered out.
Reddit has been a huge part of me growing up.
Watching the site self-destruct has been… painful.
I still use old because the technical scene here in Lemmy is not as good as Reddit. I unsubscribed from all /r/ in my account except for technical ones. I haven’t used /r/all since RIF broke.
reddit it still useful for small-medium sized communities but large subs are slowly becoming botfests and not worth using at all
Same. I still have RIF on my phone hijacking Reddit links. It’s a nice little interruption as if to say “can you really be arsed with Reddit?” and unless it’s a discussion about an obscure technical problem or something my wife sent me, I always click the back button.
Honestly I spend less time on it and that’s a good thing. I read more news, blogs, use other sites etc
I don’t treat Lemmy like some Omni platform like reddit was, but more of a niche platform like all the others. I don’t use Twitter, Instagram kr anything either.
Reddit is dead and buried, what’s left are bots and teenagers. Those yappy discordians now run the show, most of us 10+ reddit veterans either came to lemmy, or gave up on “the internet”. I’m pretty sure you’re not the only one who considered reddit to be the internet at that point.
Most power users, myself included, spent 5+ hours per day there, at times more so than at their paid careers. Especially the mods (I’ve been moderating 6 subs, two of which had over 1M and 5M users).
I do miss some of those communities. I don’t miss modding. Leaving reddit showed me what ungodly amounts of time I sunk into that platform, now that I had to fill other means to close the gap. With Lemmy it’s 20-30 min a day, often spread out over 5+ sessions since there’s not much to say or see that takes me more than 5 min at a time.
I’ve stayed on some of the moderator discord channels since those are fine folks, and chat with them in the off-topic rooms. Which shows me that reddit has gone off the deep end once and for all. With many decent folks leaving, ads and bots exploding all over the place, only the die hard shitposters and radical opinion leaders stuck around. They might not have had a digg moment, but are going the way of tumblr, which is arguably worse.
What I’m trying to say is that while Lemmy isn’t the arch we wanted it to be, going back isn’t possible either since the harbor burned down.
Personally, I’ve started a PhD just about a year ago at the time I left, and it does plenty of filling the gap in my daily calendar…
on which topic you are doing PhD. just curious cuz I want to do it too.
Faculty of Business, and I’m doing it on Clinical Trial Protocol Development since I work in the medical device industry.
I lucked out in this regard.
I was able to join up on sopuli, a local Finnish instance with a small but active number of users, who post about and occasionally comment on local things in !suomi@sopuli.xyz. It’s still quieter that reddit in that regard, but I do at least get some local news.
I’ve also made a huge effort to bootstrap an active anime community here on lemmy, and luckily I’ve not been alone in that. !anime@ani.social has been growing steadily. Instead of getting my anime fanart on reddit like I used to, I upped my usage of pixiv significantly, and then translated that into several communities and activity on lemmy.
If you can, start actually getting your news from local outlets, and if you actually get into that habit, set up a community for your local area, and start curating articles worth sharing, and posting them there.
My problem with ani.social is that it’s full of moe, and I HATE moeshit with a passion.
That’s too bad, because I’m almost solely responsible for that particular genre of post on the threadiverse, and I don’t plan on stopping.
A “passionate loathing” of a concept sounds like a 100% “you” problem.
Also, I list literally every moe community I run in each of the sidebars of every community. It’d take you less than a minute to find and block them all.
I like the idea of moe culture in theory, but on Lemmy, Moe is exclusively drawings of unrealistically busty young girls in provocative poses.
It’s gross.
I block and I block, but there’s always a new subforum on the front page.
I have no clue what you mean by “moe culture”. And please look up what “exclusively” means. Your use of the word here is a bit too far beyond hyperbole.
The word “moe” refers to the attachment people feel for fictional characters, and as different people like different characters, it can be felt towards nearly any type of character. Japanese vtuber Oozaru Subaru used to the word describe how she feels about BT, a 40-ton three-story battle-robot from Titanfall 2.
In the case of the moe communities I run, that means neat character art. Various niches of such, depending on the community and explicitly the kind that doesn’t go all the way to porn. Short of that, it includes the full range from completely platonic to full on implications.
What you think is gross could not interest me any less. The idea that arousal is off-limits in art is a view held by the narrow-minded, prudish and boring. It’s as valid a feeling for an artist to set out to evoke, as any other.
Again, I list every community I run in the sidebars of them all, and the last time I set up three new ones was two months ago, but I’m so sorry I didn’t DM the updated list to you for you to block.
Anime and TV discussion threads are what I miss most about reddit.
So long as the anime sub doesn’t overly gatekeep shit near to anime but refuses due to arbitrary FetchFrosh reasons then I’m good.
Stopping shit like Thunderbolt Fantasy or near Chinese /Korean anime from being discussed was absolutely ludicrous. But then they have anime best girl competitions constantly like wtf.
The amount of sidebar bullshittery just gets stupid.
There has been some drama around anime because the largest communities used to be on .ml. But they made bonkers decision to defederate ani.social, which then caused people to make new communities on ani.social in order move away from .ml entirely, in response.
The discussions over !dungeonmeshi@ani.social are likely some of the most active, but the anime community also has them, though not every series has enough watchers to get comments.
For animemes !animemes@ani.social is the most active, ATM.
I too miss reddit sometimes. Mostly because it had such a large userbase that there was always something interesting to find/read. If you had the right subreddits it was a very nice and friendly place. I like the fediverse (I’m on mbin) but there are still some hurdles to take. Such as finding nice magazines not on your home server. There are some lists and stuff, but I just want to search in the search bar of the site and find them. Also, there is still a 20 year gap of information. If you have a question it is most likely already asked at reddit. So searching on DuckDuckGo or Reddit will almost certainly give you an answer. Searching on the fediverse won’t give you the same hitrate. Especially for more non-mainstream subjects. For instance: I have a specific kind of motorcycle, the magazine on the fediverse is dead. Not one post, no activity (so that’s my fault as well). On reddit, there a couple of thousand threads. I just recently decided I wanted to interact more on the fediverse (hence this reply) to put in my effort to keep the fediverse alive, active and growing. I just need to find some subjects to start a relevant and interesting new thread.
I don’t think lemmy/mbin/etc. will be as popular since it’s too much trouble for the non-techies. I do think mastodon/misskey/etc. is quite active and interesting. It’s better then twitter. And since I follow the right people I really like pixelfed instead of instagram. I think those are better, but it is an adjustment. Since you have to put in the work to find the right people to follow. And while I dislike the instagram algorithm, it did offer some very good, high quality photography. But I think it’s going the facebook way. Facebook in it’s early days was a great way to see what your friends and family where up to. Now it’s just old memes, stupid jokes, fake news and advertisements. Instagram is becoming that as well.
I miss the sheer size of the site only because I can no longer find my niche. If I want to talk or read about a specific anime unveiling, there’s maybe a few communities on Lemmy but they’re completely dead. Reddit had the benefit of having a single sub for X thing be modestly active instead of as many communities as you like but nobody keeps up with them.
I agree. We need to grow Lemmy. Not sure how to attract more users.
Let’s take an ad out on Reddit!
I’m very likely the only siren enthusiast on Lemmy. Even if I opened my own community about them, I doubt anyone would care enough to use it. On Reddit, there is a small but very active sub for siren enthusiasts, although lack of moderation has led to it being overrun by obnoxious kids.
I just post siren stuff on relevant communities here, but they’re not explicitly for that kind of thing and I worry sometimes that I’m annoying people with my hobbies.
You post away. Don’t stress about others not being interested. Some will be, some won’t. The more posting that happens, the more posting will happen. It’s a positive feedback loop and it’s how Reddit grew to it’s current size.
You make a very good point. The ball has to start rolling somewhere, right?
yup, if you can make just one post per day, even if it just to the void, it will be there, with recent posts, in case anyone else interested in the subject moves to lemmy
I actually miss Reddit, I miss it when it was actually a useful site where you can engage with users on specific topics that barely anyone in my country gives a shit about. I left Reddit on 1 July 2023 (the day API access for third party apps got shut down), and after 11 months, I’m still not looking back. Lemmy really is my new home now, I’m called “Resol van Lemmy” for a reason. Let’s be honest, Reddit nowadays is basically some buffalo trying to take a huge dump on a birthday cake, an incredible website that ended up being ruined by a bunch of shitty business decisions. I’m gonna say it again, fuck spez. He is not was Reddit is about, we Redditors are what Reddit is about. I don’t even care anymore, fuck him. Lemmy might potentially be as good as Reddit one day, but I suspect that this day is quite far away from today, but I (and my fellow Lemminos/Lemmings/Lemurs/whatever) am working to make that day closer than ever.
I was on Reddit for almost ten years, still feels weird to leave it. But it’s like leaving a marriage or long term relationship - you are not leaving that person you were first with, you are leaving the person they became. Reddit today isn’t the Reddit it was even a year ago.
The place got infested with Boomers reporting people non-stop, the major Karma accounts that contributed so much almost all left. There are niche subs like the fountain pen subs, tipofmyjoystick, and a few others that I wish would move here. Sadly I think those places will be lost.
This is exactly how I feel.
Looking back now that it’s been almost a year, it feels like not a ton has changed for me with Lemmy specifically. I’m still generally not interested in the global feed (I wasn’t often with Reddit’s either) and mostly just poke around it in from time to time to see if my home instance has a community I should be contributing to. !games@lemmy.world is solid and probably the most “Reddit-like” out of the communities I follow. I’m still trying to help grow a couple smaller ones, but I guess at least it’s good that there’s still activity after a year?
The other places I’ve tried have been more interesting, in both good and bad ways. I first started in the Fediverse with Kbin, and it’s far worse than it was a year ago. Squabbles seemed interesting for a little while until it got gross, and Tildes wasn’t for me. I’m still getting my feet wet with Mastodon after finally giving up on Bluesky, and I’ve completely left Twitter behind. Leaving there feels good, but the best thing the exodus did for me was push me more into Discord. I’m very active there and joined on as a mod for my favorite server. I’ve started using the platform professionally as well.
Unfortunately, after recently discovering Revanced can patch Sync (my previous favorite Reddit app) into functionality again, I’ve been on Reddit a little bit more. I still haven’t contributed posts or comments since I left, but sometimes I’ll have to go on as part of my Discord duties. It also really doesn’t help that NSFW Reddit is indispensable. A year later, I haven’t found anything that comes close in that aspect.
This is a minor point but on Instagram if you press the logo in the top left you can pick Following and it shows you a chronological timeline of only those accounts you actually follow. Instead of the usual shitshow set of reels.
I miss it daily.
The discussions here always are the same, very leftist. There is only one side. Memes here are always overdone. Comics are always politicized. Everything is “eat the rich”, lhgtbq cant do anything wrong and lets not forget: fuck the police. Eating the rich has been tried before guys, several times. It didn’t work. People need leaders and these leaders will always benefit from it. Learn history before you try to make it. Or is it just jealousy?
Just because youre lhgtbq does not automatically mean you’re right or have been wronged. Surely your identity is very important. As is mine. lets find some middle ground, ok?
Police does fuck up, a lot. Do you have a solution instead of “all cops are evil” or is that just a catchy easy thing to say? And that brings me to the next one:
The depth in discussion and the amount of objective (news) subjects here is lacking. Views are often shallow and if they aren’t they are cast in stone. Lemmy is unfortunately not usable for sharing and consuming knowledge. The depth isn’t there, the communities too small and it always devolves into you’re wrong because i say so. Or, if its IT, the knowledge just isn’t there or worse: people are not willing to share it, adding a you f-ing MS simp because why not. And that brings me, again, to the next:
It’s also often a lot less cordial. Instead of discussing the “room” gets divided in friends and enemies. Name calling is normal. Its a lot darker here.
Most of the times I don’t even check responses on my comments : I know what they say. Yeah buddy, fuck you too.
Anyway, its fine. I use it daily. The use case isn’t the same though. And the experience is very different.
I wouldn’t be here without Sync by the way. Without (stuff like) Sync the hassle would just not be worth it.
You refuse to learn LGBTQIA+, yet argue that other people are too simplistic? I mean, even LGBT is easy enough for most people.
ACAB isn’t an attack per-se it’s a commentary on the prevalence of police brutality, nearly ubiquitous, while a large swathe of the public says, “Most of them are good people.” Well then, why are “good people” tolerating the bad? The only logical answer is ACAB until they police their own.
Thank you for once again doing what i was railing about. You’ve proven my point once again. The room is divided, I’m an simplistic asshole and you’re the righteous dude. Congrats. Next stop: I’m a racistic bigot.
Lhgbtwdxyz I don’t care, bud. I really don’t. Do what you like, don’t do what you don’t like. Be who you are. Live life how you want. It is as simple as that. And let me do the same, ok? I will never get all the fuzz. Be gay. Dont be gay. Be bi. Dont be bi. Be nothing: also great. Be everything : good for you. Be the other sex or none at all: it’s your life. I don’t care and neither should you about what I do. Just love people and you choose who. Express yourself however you want. That’s not a new message.
Police : solutions. Not anarchist bullshit. ACAB is bullshit and leads nowhere.
You’re the one polarizing the discussion. You’re literally the only one actually drawing a definite line, thereby excluding the possibility of you crossing it. So, if you aren’t a “racist bigot” why engage in this self-deprecation? Why lament the inability to engage in good-faith discussion, by actively doing the opposite? You could be being “the bigger person” by ignoring any perceived fallacies. Instead, you’re throwing a tantrum by being the most condescending person in the “room”.
It’s not anarchist bullshit. The point of ACAB is to pull attention to the fact that if there were lots of good cops, they should be doing something about all the bad ones. But they aren’t.
Hence the solution needs to be far more drastic than most precincts and politicians are prepared to consider. That’s where ACAB leads.
It is not for the public to invent the solution. That’s literally what leaders and legislators are supposed to be doing. All we can really do is keep rejecting all proposals that won’t actually solve the severely entrenched systematic problem.
Hence: ACAB.
100% my experience on lemmy as well.
empty angry phrases… no actual substance on these issues. and no specifics. no meaningful discussion about how policing should be done… just ‘police are bad and should not exist and crime will magically disappear without them!’
Just because youre lhgtbq does not automatically mean you’re right or have been wronged.
Governments and people around the world are actively trying to repress if not outright kill sexual / gender minorities, I do think they’re wronged on a daily basis because their very right to existence is not granted :(
yeah and? I’m not those governments or those people. it has nothing to do with me. and I’m sick of people on lemmy calling me a bigot for thinking lgbt+ are normal people, and not angelic saints that can do no wrong and if I get rear ended by a lgbt+ person I should pay for the damages because clearly I’m at fault for some shitty southern state’s policies. Even though I don’t live in that state and I live in one of the most pro lgbt+ states in the country/world.
lots of folks are oppressed. i was oppressed and beaten by my father because he thought i was gay… where is my lgbt+ oppression badge? oh right… anytime I tell anyone that fact… they tell me to STFU because clearly I’m lying and I’m trying to ‘steal their oppression’ or something… usually by some lgbt+ person who has led a luxurious and privileged life… and whose oppression is mostly that they aren’t rich and famous and clearly I should give them my money to that end…
Yeah buddy fuck you too
Most of the times I don’t even check responses on my comments : I know what they say. Yeah buddy, fuck you too.
Admitting you don’t even engage in the debate isn’t a good look. You act as if you’ve already found the opinion that stands atop the most solid ground, but you’re openly bragging that you refuse to look down.
That’s like feeling the ground beneath you give way, and then thinking not turning to look will allow you to remain standing.
That’s not what i meant. Replies are just more a cesspit over here and often not worth the energy needed to read them.
Often there is no room for debate.
And that’s for sure hurting the platform.
You’re not exactly putting out a “convince me otherwise, I’ll consider what you have to say fairly”-feeling energy yourself.
My experience has been utterly different from yours, in fact your initial comment there is one of the least “cordial” comments I’ve seen. I’d posit you’re seeing a response to the way you write your thoughts. People aren’t interested in engaging with stone walls, but they will try to take a sledgehammer to the ones they think are in the way.
And that’s before I address you suggesting there’s a “middle ground” in the lgbtq+ debate. There is no “middle ground” when it comes treating people like people, and treating them in the way they need. That is, a way that doesn’t make them want to end themselves.
“As is mine” is a harrowing line in your initial comment. You are not under attack. In any way whatsoever. You are not being asked to give up, a, single, thing. The core argument is that people want to exist, and they want to be happy. That costs you nothing, at least in terms of “identity”.
It displays a seriously concerning lack of understanding of the changes that the sane people in the debate want enacted, or more charitably, that you’ve mistaken the insane ones for the ones that are considered reasonable.
If I ask for water so I can live, you don’t respond with “but how much do you really need”. You give me as much as I fucking need.
I will agree that there are lgbtq+ individuals on the fediverse that are far away from reason, because the world has severely damaged them with what they’ve been put through. And there’s more of them here because the fediverse has several corners that caters to them.
Remember, this is the group of people that has the highest suicide rate among any demo. Even among the ones that are alive, a lot of them are not gonna be ok. In response they can have overconsructed coping mechanisms, strenuous relationships with reality, etc. They can go off at the most innocent things because when the whole world feels like an enemy, its easy to assume that every person that gives you trouble, also wishes you dead. Even when they really, really don’t.
Hence you can’t look at these people and interpret all your interactions with them in aggregate. A lot of them are angry, but not really at you specifically. They have very good reason to hate “normal” society, because by default normal society treats them in a way that makes a significant portion of them choose non-existence over bearing it. And then people like you walk in and mention a “middle ground” like this isn’t an immediate matter of life and death, that needs solving ten years ago. Yeah. You’re gonna get some shit thrown your way.
Lgbtq+ people are being hurt all over the world. The ones that aren’t, almost certainly have been, and are still healing. But no-one who is thinking clearly is asking you to take their every word as absolute truth, or throw them a perpetual pity-party. If they are, they are almost certainly among the hurting.
Obviously no-one can demand the whole world treat them with special coddling, but it’s also not at all weird to see people who have been treated unfairly their whole lives, have trouble with finding where the line of “fair” actually lies. Or need a bit of extra kindness because they are in a place where they’ll interpret disdain even when none is intended.
When someone who can’t tell an actual enemy apart from someone who is just trying to change their mind on something they are wrong about, it’s better to just make sure they know you aren’t malicious. For someone like that, it’s more important to show them not everyone who disagrees with them about something, also wants them dead. In fact it kind of has to happen in that order. For your point to get through, they first have to trust people enough not to close up and stop listening the second they sense trouble. One way people become like that is when words have been used to hurt them, a lot, and often.
And honestly, reading your wording, you don’t exactly seem innocent on that front. To me, you read either intentionally unkind, or carelessly dismissive.
there is no point in engaging in debate with someone who is not arguing in good faith or thinks insults and harassment are ‘debate’.
Fair enough.
But you can’t know whether someone has a salient point if you don’t at least read, and even more importantly, make the effort to comprehend, what they have to say.
you can if they are spouting cliched nonsense… but also who has the time to waste listening to partisan nutbags whinge and circlejerk?
I’d rather spend my time actively learning about shit in the world by going to the source material rather than listen to idiotic hearsay from some internet nutbags comments. but sadly, I’m in the minority there. most folks get their info from social media now.
Are comprehension and disagreement mutually exclusive to you?
No part of understanding what someone is saying prevents you from then dismissing them if they are full of shit.
But it kind of has to happen in that order. People are not full of shit, because they disagree with you. You disagree with them, when and if they are full of shit.
You can’t be sure someone is wrong, until you can explain why. And yeah, sometimes that’s as easy as going, “well this person is completely insane”.
At the same time, the sane ones, are only going to disagree and engage with you, if they’ve determined that you are full of shit.
Do you have to listen to every nutcase that walks up to pick a fight? Of course not.
But if you do regularly get accosted for holding some view or other, it doesn’t hurt to take a closer look. Even if the people bringing it up with you are being dicks about it.
i could give every homeless person I meet 10 bucks.
doesn’t mean it won’t solve homelessness. and it would leave me with about $250 less each week.
Wait.
Are you suggesting that listening to every person that disagrees with you is like charity? And that while charity works, it still isn’t worth it?
Holy shit. Are you just a horrible person?
Generally, if you believe something untrue, and someone tells you otherwise, they’re the one trying to do you a favour, not the other way around.
And did you not even read what I had to say? Because it’s like you’re retorting an argument I didn’t make.
Do you have to listen to every nutcase that walks up to pick a fight? Of course not.
Uuh. Ok?
Although I disagree that the main problem is politicization, a lot of what you said otherwise concurs with my experience. The depth just isn’t there. Maybe it’s a numbers thing. You’d see many simplistic takes left and right on Reddit too, but given the sheer volume of contributors, more often than not someone would have some true insight to share, a well thought out rebuttal, a reasoned argument, or just some humor to lighten up the conversation, and that would rise to the top. So top comments were usually guaranteed to be worthwhile and low effort comments would become easier to ignore. At least in the better subreddits. Not so much the case on Lemmy. A lot of low effort sarcasm, political slogans, and tribalism in the comments. I do like Lemmy on the whole though, so sticking with it for the time being.
Since the whole API fiasco and losing reddit is fun, I wiped my reddit account, downloaded my comment history and then used a bot to wipe all my comments and posts, doing so got me banned from commenting on a lot of subs, something to do with the speed that the comments were edited at or something. Either way, I don’t really care.
I still use my reddit account for lurking, there are some niche active subs that still have good information/discussion that unfortunately haven’t been picked up elsewhere, but I have those subs opened in old reddit on Firefox and I don’t venture outside of that, and I’ll never contribute or comment again.
I get that I’m contributing to their traffic still, but I was an active member for 12+ years, and I’m still pissed they fucked the entire community to profit from our fucking content. Definitely won’t be contributing to their content again.
“downloaded my comment history”
But… Why?
Cause it’s fun to sometimes go back and see what you were like at that point in time, just like photos
