I can’t really think of a reason for that as Reddit is hated somewhat equally by “both” sides of the spectrum. It’s just something I find interesting.

345 points
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Not really meaning for this to sound as arrogant as it’s going to, but… Lemmy is almost entirely populated by nerds so far.

Nerds tend to be open to tech, maybe a little smarter overall. You know? You can tell by the grammar, the spelling. It’s a different group here.

Reality is left leaning, and the stupider someone is, in general, the more likely they are to lean right politically. The rest of the right are the really rich, who tend to be up the psychological spectrum toward sociopathic, so of course they would have no time for caring for others’ needs.

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168 points

Reality is left leaning…

It really is. So much of conservatism involves pissing into the wind, and trying to argue against objective truth.

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160 points

Reality is left leaning

I know this was a joke Colbert made, but the truth is the reverse: the left is reality-leaning. It’s truly terrifying to see how divorced from reality the right-wing is, and how gleefully they just keep storming in that direction.

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38 points

To an extent. But whenever there is a political discussion on Hacker News, the lib right response is very, very loud, and I try to remind myself I appreciate Hacker News for its tech news.

I think the culture is just different. Lemmy was started and run by Tankies. Hacker News was started by Y Combinator, which incubates silicon valley startups. They’re going to attract different audiences, or at least different groups of people who will put up with different politics. I can’t claim to be particularly upset about the .ml domains being pulled and the center mass of Lemmy moving away from those instances.

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18 points

What’s a tankie? I keep seeing it.

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39 points
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I had to look it up too. Apparently it’s an authoritarian leftist. Thinks state-socialism was a good thing. As while most leftists are more of the democratic, market, and anarchist varieties.

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8 points

Thinks Stalin was cool and Lenin was correct to break the short lived democracy of the USSR. The rest is details.

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7 points

Basically authoritarian leftists that are caricaturized as worshipping the Soviet Union

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People who cheer when others point out flaws in USA but start screaming when flaws in Russia or China are pointed out.

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20 points

The super rich are usually highly educated but they live in such a homogenous bubble that they’re opinions on the majority of society should be entirely discounted. They usually have a total lack of empathy for people and vote for politicians with the same attitude. I have met some super rich people who try very hard to go against the grain and not fall into that mindset, but something about the need for protecting your money and lifestyle usually promotes an untrustworthy and skeptical view of everyone in their lives including their own family.

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8 points

The political vibe on Lemmy isn’t really a new thing. Reddit had it 15 years ago. Good forums and IRC channels had it before that. It’s been part of the “golden age” of every online social medium

Eventually, teenage edgelords find start taking up too much space. Shortly after that, the far-right turn up to prey on them.

The people who made the platform good in the first place leave and the cycle begins anew.

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8 points

Perfectly summed up.

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18 points

Your username/instance combo is amazing. 10/10

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8 points

That instance is epic lol .uk

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5 points

lol, thanks

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2 points
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Deleted by creator
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1 point
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Nah not all nerds are smart. All nerds have niche interests, though. Arguably simply having an obsessive interest also applies, I’d definitely call the average hardcore sportsball fan a nerd.

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0 points

Theres a difference. While nerds are often book smart, we often have social difficulties.

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2 points

Just cause I’m a nerd dusnt mean I can spell correctly

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1 point

“tens”

“You can tell by the grammar, the spelling”

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0 points
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Deleted by creator
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-1 points

Lol! I am totally a nerd

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-3 points
Removed by mod
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2 points

lol when was it apolitical? As far back as 2010 it was getting mentioned on TV by liberal media for starting the Restoring Truthiness movement.

Your memory is awful, or you haven’t been on it that long and are just making up its history to suit yourself. The earlier days of reddit’s politics were mostly liberal. Although liberals were significantly more awful on social issues back then than they are today.

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-3 points

Do you realise how dehumanising and ignorant you’re being? You’re just using stereotypes of your specific country to generalise everyone you disagree with.

Underestimating your “rivals” never goes well, as reality is often more complex than “we empathetic genuises they dumb psychos”

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2 points
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If anyone is basing their morals specifically just to go against their “rivals”, I would seriously question that person’s ethics, empathy, and reasoning skills. I’m absolutely serious about that. I would not trust that person in real life.

I would also have little sympathy for anyone who makes their own life worse just to get one in on their “rivals”. You should always think how a new law might expand in 5-10 years, and not just focus on the current emotions.

If someone who you considered to be a truly terrible person got into power next, would you feel comfortable with those groundwork protections being seen as changeable? Would you be ok with that terrible person having that level of say over your life, knowing that they would get away with it?

If you hypothetically start messing with things like your country’s ground-level human rights, it’s likely to only be a matter of time until everyone is effected by it in unpleasant ways. Everyone thinks these changes will magically stop before it hits them, but I would strongly recommend for these people to brush up on history again. How has that gone in the past?

Politics shouldn’t be some lame “gotcha” game because politics effect the real lives of many people. If anyone wants to do “gotcha” games, there are many places for those that won’t possibly end with someone dead. That “someone” may be a stranger today, but it could be your child, spouse, or best friend next time.

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-4 points

Ah, I forgot you’re probably American.

Then forget about what I said, you’re ruled by a party with two colors, two letters and stupid followers

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-17 points
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Deleted by creator
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11 points

It’s not the tech nerds funding the right wing; it’s the venture capitalists

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5 points
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7 points

…I am not funding the right wing. I am building a better world one line of code and one circuit at a time.

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2 points
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Deleted by creator
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5 points

Get off the wrong internet spaces and you’ll start meeting the right kinds of nerds.

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1 point
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-5 points
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3 points
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0 points

Just very, very rightist.

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183 points

There’s been tons of right-leaning Reddit alternatives before, but they always quickly devolved into Nazi spaces.

Lemmy was the first one that I’m aware of, which told Nazis to fuck off right from the beginning.

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72 points

They just have their own instance and are defederated by some but not all, which is the best solution as it means they stick to their part of the fediverse instead of hijacking subs that weren’t right leaning in the first place.

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20 points

Yeah, right-wingers flock to “safe-spaces” as much as the far-left does. Lemmy doesn’t have the tools to make a single community isolated like they could on Reddit, so they have to go to their own instances and end up defederated.

The main differences between left-wing and right-wing communities is that the right-wing ones quickly deteriorate towards a lot of hate related things. This leads them to being isolated from the rest. The left wingers are mostly tolerable and are just over zealous in preaching things like forcing everyone to use pronouns, lmao.

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6 points

And everybody wins!

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3 points

Gotta act like we’re in kindergarten for them 🤷

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20 points

That’s the important bit. The creators of Lemmy needed to be hard leftist to keep it from being taken over by right wingers before it could become popular. Now it’s big enough that the community isn’t as leftist as the creators, but will still reject turning into another voat.

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14 points

Unfettered echo chamber of right wing ideals will always devolve into fascist authoritarian and nazism

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3 points

Surprise surprise, echo chambers devolve into more extreme versions of the original views

That’s literally just how echo works

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2 points

https://youtu.be/-MkRuV0aCcI

The new Lemmy anthem?

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-4 points

I’m sorry but what is considered to be “Nazi” in this platform? I’ve seen even socialists being called Nazis

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10 points

I do not speak for this platform, but what I mean with Nazis here, are people who support the exclusion, inhumane treatment or exploitation of arbitrary groups of people, generally for the Nazi’s (perceived) benefit and in spite of basic morals.

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-3 points

And what would exclusion, inhumane treatment and exploitation mean? It’s key to clearly define the concepts before applying the label to someone, as if they stay undefined everyone can have the label applied

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1 point

I’ve never had a productive conversation that started with “please define what counts as a Nazi for me”.

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1 point

No argument there. But given that they mostly popup in the context of “I think all nazis…”-circlejerks, that’s kinda to be expected.

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166 points

progression tends not to be conservative

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15 points

I’m afraid future will be conservative nevertheless due to the simple fact that they’re the only ones making kids. I’m liberal myself but I don’t have kids and will never have so my traits don’t pass to the next generations. The conservative neighbours with 7 kids on the other hand…

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37 points

Politics being genetic, of course.

What?

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33 points

Politics aren’t genetic.

But they ARE communal. Where you grow decides 90% of what you believe in.

It’s actually why I disagree with the top comment chain that smarter means more left leaning. I think it’s more that left leaning communities have better education standards and lead to smarter generations. Cause and effect reversed.

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8 points

politics aren’t genetic, but they are obviously still inheritable

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0 points

Is that controversial? Look around…

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0 points

If you take in account that they’re raised in their parents’ household it’s not ridiculous

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17 points

I don’t know. I think it depends more on where they grow up and who/what they’re exposed to (in person and online). At the high school I work at, we have a bunch of lgbtq+ teens whose conservative parents have no idea they’re queer or go by a different name. But I also don’t live somewhere like Wyoming with a much higher conservative population. I live in a college town in a (barely) blue county surrounded by red counties in an ultimately very blue state.

I hope we find a way to kill the online radical right pipeline and continue to expose more teens to other ideas, other cultures, and other ways of life, and maybe it won’t matter so much who their parents are.

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5 points

A blue county surrounded by red counties in an ultimately very blue state

Tell me you live in California without telling me you live in California

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-1 points

Only if we can kill the online radical left pipeline too. Too many tankies

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10 points

The thing about that is, if they’re ignorant, their kids will be ignorant too. And what that adds up to is just the same thing we’ve got: a large group of people who are subject to whatever momentary persuasion happens to reach them on any given day, and a political/ruling class that can work with that just fine, so they are taking steps to hamper education sufficiently that this can endure for an indeterminate amount of time before we all burn.

What those large populations do react to, is missing a meal or three. And so far, these aristocrats seem to understand that whatever else they try to pull, they must always service the fundamentals: bread and circuses.

See you at the coliseum.

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10 points

But if that logic held wouldn’t religion tend to increase instead of decrease?

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1 point

Yeah it probably will. We’ll see in the next few decades. Aging population and low birthrates are much bigger problems that most people realize. Increasingly small amount of workers has to cover the living costs of the increasing numbers of retirees.

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8 points

Well by definition right?
Progressive outlook means your open to new ideas, exploring new territory, open to concept that challenge what you think and know, and gives you the ability to push boundaries, make new discoveries and try new things.

Conservative outlook on the other hand means you are content and safe with the familiar, doing things the way they have always been done because its tried and true, however this means if they feel unconfortable or threatened by ideas which are going to change the way the live and how things work which makes them dig their heels in and get defensive.

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3 points

The progressive/conservative axis has nothing to do with the economical left/right, it was only forcefully merged in the USA because they have only two parties.

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2 points

I find it so ironic that the comment above you is literally saying that being progressive means challenging what you [think you] know, but you are being downvoted by (I assume) people who call themselves progressive, without any discussion.

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123 points

Lemmy is much less US-centric than Reddit.

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22 points

I wonder if there are demographics by IP already? TBH most of the threads I’ve been in have felt very US Centric. I also came with the great reddit migration too though.

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6 points
*

On my feed, at least, I have my frontpage set to whatever the kbin equivalent to “all” is. I see lots of other languages beyond English populating - particularly German. The Lemmy instance I chose when I initially made my way to the fediverse operates out of China. They’re chill over there.

I dunno. I think if you’re only finding people discussing the US here, then you’ve probably accidentally pigeonholed yourself based on your own interests. The fediverse is diverse.

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2 points

I mean yeah. Being only English speaking with gringo Spanish doesn’t let me understand memes in German or any of the other various non-english speaking magazines lol.

English is the defacto lingua franca though. Particularly on the web. The diversity I’ve seen still heavily leans English, and western, which makes plenty of sense.

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0 points

How do you get more languages?

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15 points

Lemmy was initially created by communists.

It’s still in the process of being created, and the communism is a bit less in your face now alongside there being other contributors to the code, but that’s how it started.

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14 points
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Deleted by creator
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-1 points

Are you arguing that Twitter is right wing because it is US-centric, and not because of Musk’s leveraged buyout?

I would argue that US social media platforms are (now) right wing because of aggressive financial attacks meant to break up open social engagement, as this is bad for business and sociopaths looking to exploit people for profit. Reddit was left wing, until it was bought and sold. Same with Twitter.

However my comment was merely rejecting the idea that Lemmy is left wing because it is not US-centric. Lemmy was started by tankies, who say they’re left wing and have some left wing ideologies, but really they’re more authoritarian fascists, and fascism is in fact right wing. However as Lemmy grew it became apparent that this stance would impede its growth - particularly in western markets - so the main devs have tried to minimise their political views and keep the program neutral; now those views are primarily concentrated at lemmygrad.

Lemmy is not US-centric, but that’s not why it’s left wing. Lemmy is left wing because rational empathetic thought is naturally left wing. Lemmy is full of communism because it was started by communists/tankies.

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-2 points

Most of comments on popular communities boil down to “capitalism bad communism only solution”. Very in your face and everywhere

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5 points

Is it? Just look at the comments here - the thought is about political left and right and yet almost everybody is talking about conservatives, that’s a sure sign of Americans.

Plus I bet a good portion of the extreme left here are Americans disillusioned with their government, swinging hard into the other extreme.

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3 points

Thank fuck for that.

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2 points

Prove it, because I only see US-centric posts while browsing /all.

And no, America is not the US.

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3 points

Your ALL is amplifying the highest engagement posts from the largest instances, particularly lemmy.world, which is definitely US-centric due to it being the largest open registration instance during the exodus… Go ahead and switch to your instances LOCAL and see what original content is being posted on sopuli.xyz. Quite a difference. https://sopuli.xyz/?dataType=Post&listingType=Local&page=1&sort=Active

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1 point

The thing is that I don’t have those issues on Lemmy, because I usually browse by /local, both on this server and on beehaw. But I had to block lemmy.world with my user on Kbin due to that problem you were pointing out. And miraculously, I can see content from Kbin, lemmy.ml, blahaj, beehaw sopuli, and so on, because there is no way to browse only local content on Kbin as it can be done on Lemmy.

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1 point

Nice!

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0 points

Really? I’ve only seen US related stuff here

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2 points
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How many of your subscribed communities lie outside of lemmy.world? Very possible you’ve pigeonholed yourself. World almost certainly has a heavy US bias as it was the largest instance with open registration during the exodus.

Lemmy is made up of a ton of instances, many of which have quite limited US-related content. Posts from smaller instances may not rise to the top of World but they do elsewhere. Whereas World posts are going to rise across most instances, due to sheer volume. Where the posts come from is not as indicative of diversity as where the comments and votes come from.

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1 point

Wait there are others apart from world?

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118 points

Reality has a well known left leaning bias.

Conservatives and their politics do not have equal status. In this climate, “both sides” is toxic and suggest each is equally supported and viable. They are not. The right is an incredibly hateful minority end should be treated as such.

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Showerthoughts

!showerthoughts@lemmy.world

Create post

A “Showerthought” is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you’re doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.

Rules

  1. All posts must be showerthoughts
  2. The entire showerthought must be in the title
  3. Avoid politics
    1. NEW RULE as of 5 Nov 2024, trying it out
    2. Political posts often end up being circle jerks (not offering unique perspective) or enflaming (too much work for mods).
    3. Try c/politicaldiscussion, volunteer as a mod here, or start your own community.
  4. Posts must be original/unique
  5. Adhere to Lemmy’s Code of Conduct-----

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