This post is as much for me as it is for all of you. I’m doing some live self reflection and criticism here.
I’ve been growing more and more frustrated with “Lemmy is becoming Reddit!” or more accurately, “the people from Reddit are bringing their bad habits and toxicity over to Lemmy.” But upon closer inspection, it’s mostly one instance that has by far the biggest problem with this and act by far the most like Reddit. Think you all know which instance I’m talking about. I’ve been finding myself writing paragraph or even multi paragraph responses to random people’s hot takes which they probably spent two seconds thinking through before posting, and I have been deleting them because I realized that I don’t fucking care and it’s not worth my own time, energy, or mental health. And I’m the kind of person where if they respond with some sarcastic meme comment or a further bad take, I literally cannot stop myself from engaging further, writing walls of text addressing in detail every one of their points that they probably won’t read before closing with “ok Tankie” or something.
At some point I had to ask myself, why are you doing this? You’ve just ruined your free time on Lemmy because of someone else’s shit take or toxicity. Fennekin, don’t fucking engage the next time you see something that pisses you off, because you could write a book, complete with links to scientific papers (which I have done in the past), it’s not going to resolve your being pissed off and who the hell do you think you’re trying to actually convince with a detailed response when there is clearly a hive mind that’s the genetic clone of the one from Reddit? If I think I actually have a good chance of convincing them or others that might see my comment, then yeah I will still totally write a wall of text to that effort. But in the vast majority of times this is far from the case, and I can more effectively spend my time elsewhere, like maybe actually engaging in discussions with more rational people where they could potentially be convinced by me and I could also potentially be convinced by them. To say that every single non-socialist is like the average Reddit lib would be totally wrong of course, as would be saying there is nothing we can learn from non-socialists, but I actually need to go out and look for those more rational and open minded people, which there are plenty of. Even if I’m not in a debate those people are generally more pleasant to interact with.
If you can go in and debate those people and maintain your own sanity and baseline mood, I applaud you. But I can’t. So I’m just not going to engage at all. That does not actually mean I’m going to start removing my access to lib content by blocking it or anything, I still think it’s important as a socialist to at least be aware of the takes of the opposition. And like I said in a comment just an hour or so ago, I’m confident enough in my beliefs and ideologies that I’m by no means threatened by these people, quite the opposite in fact, which is why I compulsively try to correct them and respond to them. No more of that, I need to keep myself happy first, or if not happy then at least not pissed off whenever I go on Lemmy.
Lemmy world is considering defederating from us due to the “same reasons” as Hexbear. They will go on the wall of shame, they couldn’t handle our facts. But on the upside you’ll see much fewer libs 😁
Also remember that you speak mostly for the audience. You talk to one person in a debate, but plenty of people listen and that’s where the real reach is. We have actually already brought some people over with our arguments, as I’ve seen in comments and account requests. I don’t want to pretend there’s been dozens of people joining over this, but there’s certainly been some.
edit: but you are justified in not engaging with them either.
Not having to see all the .world libs will probably be nice, but it’s kind of unfortunate that it will come at the cost of the many communities that have ended up on there pretty much as a result of it just being the ‘default’ lemmy instance. Definitely shows the dangers of too much centralisation.
Many such cases! You can take the redditor out of out of the redditor.
I know we’re (hexbearians) not technically supposed to do this outside of our own instance, but your general level of anxiety and growing antipathy is why the ‘Chapo Posting Method’ was created.
It’s essentially the online leftist answer to the general question posed by Sartre’s Anti-Semite and Jew. If they are not going to take words and the conversation seriously (and why would they when there is no material incentive to do so, it is just a game of psychological aggrandizement to them) then you are under no obligation to do so. There are rarely any bystanders, and if there are, the point isn’t to convince them that you are right, the point is to convince them that you are funny, because people habitually listen to people they find funny and make them laugh. And these redditor-types, despite their two second replies ultimately take themselves very seriously so they’re easy marks for this stuff. Never be the nerd in the room.
The old Chapo sub is what really started me on the path to being a communist. If you can have a constant source of memes and shit posts dunking on lines and calling out the obvious failures and lies of capitalism and the west then people will steadily begin to question all the other shit too.
Yeah, im not reading all that tankie. Happy for you, or sorry that happened, i guess.
No but jokes aside yeah I catch myself writing something and deleting it midway when I realize what I’m doing. I think there are cases where interacting with such people is worth the effort in a gamble, you know I’m sure out of all the effortposts you’ve made surely a few fell on receptive ears, even if you didn’t see the fruits of your labor. So as an occasional thing I think it is ultimately productive, the most receptive people will be lurkers silently reading who will take multiple interactions with “tankies” before it amounts into a change. But it definitely is not good to do as a habit.
Sad year, it was the final year of the Soviet Union without Gorbachev as its head
Yeah. I was one of those fortunate lurkers on Reddit to have found this community and ProleWiki.
Same. I was shocked by the amount of people who just gobbled down the Ukraine war propaganda. GenZedong caught my attention because they were pointing out the obvious flaws in the narrative while nobody else was. I lurked there and here for years.
The truth is on our side. As the liberals like to say, reality has a strong leftist bias.
The worst part, for me, is how aware they are that their politicians are corrupted and bad, that their police is killing innocent people, that their media is lying to them… excpet in foreign politics.
There they are always right, same people who are wrong about everything internally.
