Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
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Getting mad at the people here just to have fun is about as useful as the people that come here just to stir up trouble. If people aren't having fun here, people aren't going to join or stay.
I post daily animal content. Anyone just scrolling can just scroll and click on cute animal and move on with life. But for those that want to read the posts, you will find ample opportunities of all varieties to get involved. As much as I'd like it to be different, everyone on here has their own reasons they can't or won't get involved, but a couple might. It's gotten me to work at a rescue for 2 years now, and one or 2 others have DMed me saying they got involved with places I've helped them find, and a handful more have done things to make their homes more suitable to bring back animals or donated to places doing amazing rescue work. It's not changing the world, but it hasn't been pointless.
We've got some communities that I think are great, like Dull Men's Club. Again, everyday activities, but it's people doing small acts to make something better than it was. I'd love to have activists here teaching folks how to unionize, set up aid programs, etc, but the pool of those folks is very small. The news and politics communities we have do seem to be full of a number of very outspoken and angry people. It turns me off to participating in most threads. It's not surrounding one's self in an echo chamber or safe space, but most of us deal with enough IRL obnoxious people to want to do it more here. I read the article if it's interesting and skip the comments. I'd probably like talking about a lot of the events with people here, but not if the same handful of obnoxious people are going to insert themselves into every thread, but that is what happens in a public forum. Until someone creates and mods better communities and has the patience to be trashed daily in Power Trippin Mods because it's effectually impossible to ban people, this is what we're going to have.
It's sad I can't recommend Lemmy to most people I know. I think about not posting here anymore from time to time, but the platform is a good size for me to handle my audience, and there are a ton of really great users here. My content doesn't pull in the angry crowd typically either. But as a whole, we got a lot of anger, misplaced or not, being the first things new folks are going to see. I'm not huge into the memes or comics a lot of the time, but people generally are going to react much more positively to that than more anarchy/communist rage posts.
the problem is the angry commies, etc. are the most prolific and aggressive users. if your funny meme gets any decent traction... they come storming in because they see an opportunity to push their propaganda and bully people.
not a day goes by here where I am not told I am an ignorant capitalist facist, or worse. often in a community or post that has nothing to do with any of that.
Oh, I hear you. I just scolded all the bloodthirsty folks on the post of the hunter getting killed by the elephants. I await that massive downvoting, nevermind I'm one of the few (only?) wildlife rescue people on this platform. The dude seemed innocent and law abiding and well liked in the local community where he was savagely killed and people here are cheering.
It's also getting pretty sketchy with all the Israel comments. I've always been pro-Palestine, but every day the comments seem to be a little less anti-Israel colonialism and more to the Jews secretly run the world and all Jews support zionism side of things. There is so much gatekeeping in the news and political groups here. I really hesitate to participate anymore, which is a shame compared to how things felt at the API Exodus.
I felt pretty far left before I joined up here. I might still be. I was interested in anarchism and communism before spending so much time here. Now I'm not anti that stuff, but yeah, I don't need to hear any more about it right now. I'll keep doing my own thing over here and I'm fine being unaffiliated with a label on what my beliefs are.
Everyone was so scared of being a bad mod, but mods are what keep us from getting to where good users move out because the ones that chase them out while not technically breaking community rules do their thing. It's a thankless job, and that's why I have no desire to be one, but I am forever greatful for good mods.
Yeah, on certain hot topic issues there is no clarity or perspective, just blind rage and hate. And if you try to inject and perspective or context on them, well you get threatened, reported, and your comments will be removed.
My issue is that there were Nazis in my park recently holding a rally. A lot. Last year they were on over passes. Marching in streets. Women are arrested in democratic countries now for things that we thought were personal rights. People are disappeared by the government and people cheer it on.
So I like cat pictures and having fun. But is that what leftist should be focused on right now?
I'm asking to find out where people are with all this. Is lemmy a last bastion in a digital world that is mostly captured by right leaning billionaires who will inevitably come for us or are we just going to have fun or like 5 more years and then when its much worse go "oh fuck yea would have been cool to fight back when we had the tools and time."
I'm just worried we're giving a limited window of opportunity that is quickly closing.
I largely agree with you, which is why I decided to participate in this post. I felt you were just losing the focus a bit from the frustration you came in with and from some of the people arguing with you here.
Like you said, I'd love to see more community building and the growth of actual movements here, but I don't know if that can be done on a generalist platform. I've got 6000+ subscribers here, and like I said, I'd say maybe a dozen of those users have actually been moved to do something. I don't begrudge the ones that are just "cute pic!" and move on with their day. If this was a comment section on www.progressiveleftycauses.com, I could be mad, but that's not what this is. I think it's important to maintain realistic expectations for a social platform. Everybody can easily jump in with a joke or a complaint, but getting strangers to do stuff is really hard. Hell, I can't even get most people to actually reply with "Great pic!" It just is what it is.
There's still nothing stopping you or I from pushing out agendas here. But that also goes for the jokers and the party crashers. I do agree that this platform may lose the inertia to become a practical haven for progressive causes as its major purpose, but it can always still support some of that.
I do appreciate that and you're right about losing focus. I get a little bent out of shape over some of the more ignorant comments from people.
I get not wanting to begrudge the "Cute pic" people but everyday I just don't get it. What are people on the left doing. It's just so sad to me to see what it's become that I don't know what future it holds and that sucks. This is a lefty space and its just the realization that this is it. It's what is left and people don't even see it or care. They can't be bothered.
I have a lot of anger from going on any other digital space and seeing outright racism and sexism and just horrible shit that is now so common. And I come to lemmy and people keep promoting the idea of just ignoring things that irk them.
NO action. NO fight. Just block and move on.
Wouldn't that be just what the right would love for us to do? Block them instead of challenging them. It makes me realize the left may be dying not because we did our best and fought and actually tried but instead we willingly gave up and convinced each other to as well.
For me, Lemmy is the last nail in the coffin in a digital frontier that highlights this. I don't even know if people know how bad it is because most people here just block and avoid things they do not like since they are the "cute pic" people.
In a world where numbers and engagement matter most, how do we not partially blame them especially when the "cute pic" people are avoiding the world because they hate the situation but they're just not willing put up with it enough to push back like others.
You also have to remember that there isn't just some single entity of "left". And I don't mean only the ideological divides even, I mean there's tons of different cultures with different political cultures in them. What even "being left" means is wildly different if you compare USA or some random nation elsewhere.
This platform is mostly USAians yes, but not only. Do you mean american leftist unity? Because looking for some sort of general left unity is a lot more complicated than unity inside a single political system
Maybe I watch too many movies, but the more politically active I plan to be, the more my online presence will fall in line with the "cute pic" people. The internet is for cat pics, surveillance, and shouting into the void. Real change needs to happen outside now.
This kind of floors me because I may have said similar years ago, but lately I think the digital space is the most important frontier we have right now. Like everybody is planting their flags on different lands. There's only so much to go around. It's why these tech bros are all spending billions on it. But the left seems to have volunteered to sit out and ignore its importance. I don't know why
Is it? Which lefties? People dogpile on the ML creators all day, every day. Personally, I'm mostly okay with the M and hate the L from my understanding of each. But they still decided to let us all hang out here.
I want change, but I'm nearing 50 and not in great physical shape. There's only so much revolution I can do. I try to educate the public on things I think are important and to try to get them to internalize value in the things that they might want to protect for future generations. Fundraising, logistics, and mobilizing aren't my strengths. I don't know many people that could do that stuff really well. Lots of us are here because we're fairly introverted and are here having these conversations anonymously with strangers. If being revolutionary was easy, we'd either be in a lot less (or a lot more) turmoil than we're in now. Most of us can't make it our whole "thing."
We could and should be doing more to speak to what kind of voices we will or won't tolerate here in the communties though. I'm getting some heat for defending the big game hunter even though I don't agree with what he stood for, but I feel people were pushing a lot of internalized anger at the system onto this random guy who seemingly did nothing ethically wrong. I could have shut up and moved on, but this is a topic I feel I understand more than the average person here and was willing to call them out on their indecent behavior even if it means they're going to hate me or think less of me now. There's plenty of people they could wish harm upon and while I'm not the type to join in, there's a number of people I could name where I wouldn't be sad if they were gone, but this guy seemed fair innocuous in the grand scheme.
Lemmy is far from the last chance we have. Three years ago, 95% of us didn't have this, but we still tried to do our thing somewhere else. Piefed in providing great opportunity for those that still want to interact with Lemmy without some of the baggage. And more apps and forums will continue to pop up. You can always start an old school forum as well with myBB or what have you. That may be a better style of platform for something like what you want to see anyway since it's more specific, but at the same time, it narrows the audience potential greatly. While I don't necessarily support or condemn what cowbee, for example, promotes, I think the way they can appear in tangentially related posts and have a prepared means to unobtrusively yet powerfully share their beliefs to potentially receptive people is a solid example for others looking to do something similar. Keep looking around, see what works and what doesn't, and keep going for what you believe. You can do it here, somewhere else, all of the above, whatever. Be passionate and be helpful and receptive and you will get people to listen to you. It may not be to the extent you want very often, but we gotta take the wins we can get. Stay strong, and try to stay positive.
people here would rather just call each other Nazi over disagreements in leftist doctrine. they are not seriously interested in political activism, or exercising their political rights.
in fact the predominant message I see here is that voting and participating in politics is stupid and pointless. and you encourage others to participate in meanignful ways, like in local politics, where you do have legitimate power, people just call you names and say you are a fascist because any participation is supporting facism, or something.
apparently sitting around pirating stuff on your linux PC and posting about how awesome that makes you is the only way to fix society. throw in a internet debating on why your version of leftism/anarchism/communism is the only good one and all the other ones are closeted facists, and you have about 80% of the predominant lemmy userbase.
But hey I'm a just a fascist who votes, participates in my local community, and uses a windows/mac PC and subscribes to netflix and spotify, so clearly I'm the one who is destroying all that is good with the world. And I also subscribe to universalist humanitarian principles, so I'm an imperialist apologist or something.