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.
Lemmy’s been a lot better than reddit for this in my experience. On reddit you couldn’t even get a sentence out.
Are you really qualified? Who knows, but you make a really good point
I really enjoyed reading this. Do you have a blog or something? Have a good one.
yes you can find it at /u/[email protected]
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…
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.
The word “lib” is so vague now, that it has lost meaning.
Some people use it with the original meaning, but most just call anyone who isn’t right wing a lib.
Buzzwords, as the original commenter said.
Same for “right wing” and “fascist” and every other piece of shit insult ya’ll use in daily discourse.
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.
If you actually have a group of peers that consistently challenge each other and have scholarly debate, congrats. You’re in a very small minority. You personally not having a use for arguing online doesn’t mean it’s useless. I know plenty of Americans who have been convinced that gun control is important by things they’ve seen online.
Very few people in this thread are kidding around. It’s worth pointing out that most of the things they are saying are extremely shallow.
Why should you only have discussions with people you know?
If you only have these discussions with people you know, more than likely, they are in your ideological bubble. You are just creating your own echo chamber. We may be randos on the internet, but we could be next to you on the subway or your cubicle. Most of us here probably like to debate somewhat.
I never said I only have discussions with people I know.
I actively have political conversations in real life on actual policy issues with a broad range of people.
Have you never campaigned before?
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.
That’s not healthy.
Lemmy isn’t “too extreme,” a very small subset of Lemmings are just fucking insufferable.
…have these people met certain redditors? 🧐
News: People on the internet find out some people on the internet grinds their gears
Tune in at 6 to hear our top story: “Water, is it really wet?”. Findings from top scientist may surprise you. 🤔
I’m still figuring out if I can just straight up block people from certain servers
Only individually
I mean, tankies are kinda worse.
Edit: seems this post is controversial! Let me clarify.
Tankies are definitely worse. 🥂
Meh, both extremes are as insufferable
No, they aren’t.
Tankies are mostly just delusional victims of troll farms.
Fascists are… fascists.
No, I meant exactly what I said:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/insufferable
We were federated with them for a couple of days and their constant spam of insults and images makes them insufferable.
Fine, you find obnoxious dorks just as bad as genocidal fascists. I stand corrected.
From a governmental point of view, both extremes are responsible for multiple genocides so I’m not even sure which is which in your comment 🤔
And I’m talking about Lemmy’s tankies vs Reddit’s alt-right, since that’s what the conversation was about in the first place.
Fascists are… also delusional victims of Russian troll farms.
Honestly I find it kinda mindblowing how similar lemmygrad and hexbear are to /r/t_d.
They’re trying their darndest to drag the left into the mud. They’re pushing the same rhetoric as trumpers trying to brainwash young people Jordan Peterson style. The Russian government has a vested interest in destabilizing the US and trying to push people to violence and ‘revolt’ because that would take down the only threat to them. At least most of us aren’t so stupid to believe these people are in any way representing the left, the LGBT or minorities. I was looking for an LGBT friendly community and was so saddened to find out what it really was… trying to radicalize vulnerable groups. Shame on them. Fucking shame.
One is obnoxious, the other actively genocidal.
Considering them equally bad is a self report.
So we’re just pretending genocides weren’t committed by both sides?
I think it’s just a symptom of “people”.
I see Roy I upvote
I actually hope more middle ground right leaning people migrate.
Why are people downvoting this? We know that’s necessary.
…libs?
Lol yea maybe they’re just more libs
We call this the “Centrist pull” to get people to the right.
It’s like the carnival of flaming demon knife throwers insisting that throwing flaming chainsaws at your family every day is “extremism”, and just throwing knives at them is normal.
lol fat chance, keep dreaming idiot
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
You have my respect.
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.
Cancer post, glad people are calling it out. Some of you need to get off the internet a bit more.
Please lead by example
Doesn’t it depend on the instance?
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.
Does it not depend on the bio people their respective breakfast? And their current room temp? And the robots temp (unironically)
Any generalisation is
Fuck leftists.
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.
Right? You can connect to assholes of that’s your thing, and I can connect to warm clams. No judging
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’ve seen several subreddits insist that politely-stated fascism is better discourse than calling out fascists. In one case, with ‘so you’re a fascist’ being treated as an intolerable insult… even though being a fascist was apparently fine… and that guy was absofuckinglutely a fascist.
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.
Only meaning matters.
You have to evaluate claims.
But that’s never what happens, when rules demand “civility.” They don’t actually enforce positivity. They just punish people who are honest toward minimally-cautious assholes. Quite often without spending one moment looking at the other side of the conversation.
Reports cannot be handled correctly in a vacuum. Context is necessary. Otherwise ‘you are wrong’ is undecidable.
It’s like a generation grew up not knowing what trolling is. It’s not harsh language. It’s being an infuriating douchebag, in a way that people understandably tell you you’re an infuriating douchebag. And for all the forums I’ve seen where trolling and getting trolled are equally forbidden, every god-damn one of them treats ‘shut up, troll’ worse than being a fucking troll. Even if it is those exact G-rated words.
Right? I’m just relieved, I can be myself here… I’ve said so many things here that would have gotten insta-ban on Reddit
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.
deleted by creator
Lol lemmy is just as corrupt as reddit. I’ve seen so many agendas on both sides pushed lately it’s hilarious you think this is only leftys.
Have you seen those colorful people on hexbear? Quite the echo chamber.
Unnecessary.
True. Reddit was pretty center-right oriented. Lemmy leans more left and I do enjoy seeing the Trumpers here getting dunked on pretty frequently.
Reddit was pretty center-right oriented.
lmao
Do you doubt that? What is your idea of the left? What is seen as ‘left’ or even what conservatives call ‘the radical left’ in the US would likely be seen as center or center-right globally.
Go on then, how would you describe it overall?
I haven’t seen any of that but I’ve seen a shit ton of owning the libs bullshit.
Garbo post. What is meant by “actually” leftist? Does Reddit make any claims to being leftist that it’s failing to back up? Why does your source of memes and internet titties need to align with your views in every way? Are you incapable of existing outside of an echo chamber?
Be a centrist or GTFO
Reddit was leftist not long ago. Not really leftist, just a bit left leaning. In my communities that changed drastically from 2020 and on. When I stopped using it a couple of months ago, my favourite subs were already mainly right wing.
What subreddits were your favorites? Genuinely curious because as a moderately right leaning person all I see is extremely leftist, and even moderately left leaning people are ostracized from Reddit.
Had me till the end. Its people even slightly right leaning who are ostracized.
You are on Lemmy.world pal, I left that instance because it’s too neo liberal and right leaning for my taste… Are you by any chance a american because unless you post in Lemmy.ml all the time I can’t really imagine that from a european perspective! If you count the facists from Hexbear and Lemmingrad that you instance defederated from as left (which they really aren’t by the original definition of the left/right devide) it might be but I think unless you try to spill neo liberal garbage the backlash will probably be limited tbh!
