but I’m just not interested in such low-effort crap. Me, I’m here for the original spirit of the community, but I guess many are not? Fine.

With you on that.

Obviously breaks RULE #1, and to a lesser extent, RULES #2 and #3.

People can do mistakes. They can unintentionally post stuff that breaks the rules and don’t even realize it. A bit like they can upvote something just because the enjoy it, not even realizing the content goes against the rules. To be honest, I don’t understand why you think that post you mentioned breaks rule2?

And YET people here upvote that low-effort crap? Okay, got it. Fine. Big part of why I’m going to need a long vacation from this project.

As an old dude myself (maybe older than you are? Nearing my 60s) I would be tempted to remind you that you can’t control people’s behavior and probably should not be willing to or you risk losing your sanity. Some people can be dumber than an old wet rag, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.

I quite regularly mention my rather painful first encounter with the Fediverse. It was on Lemmy, but that could apply anywhere on the Fediverse. To put it mildly, I was disappointed and quite frustrated with the shit ton of low effort posts and even shittier politics, when not outright pure hatred, I was served by default. Had I not quickly discovered and learned to use the filtering and blocking tools I would have ran away from the Fediverse, to never come back… like I ran away from Twitter, which is saying a lot in regards to what my default first experience was around here.

(To anyone wondering, no, this is not me being judgmental on anyone. This just me stating that I have clear expectations regarding what I’m willing to spend my time reading and, a lot more importantly to me, what I’m not willing to waste my time with, aka no shitty politics, no low efforts posts.)

When I first found this community I hesitated to join as I really have little interest in memes but quickly realized this had nothing to do with memes, nothing, and that each new post was even quite stimulating and surprising. I joined and did not regret it even though not every single post was a hit with me.

Now do I sound bitchy and uncool upon all that? Absolutely, fluffing-yes. But damn it, I thought I’d tried.

I like most of what you posted. I also don’t like some of the pictures posted by some other contributors and I agree with you: they are not in the spirit of the community. But like I was saying, they can honestly be mistaken and hopefully they can learn.

Why don’t I post myself? I’m not much of a comics person. I’m a huge fan of ‘Asterix’ (which is French so it won’t play well with an English speaking community), ‘Calvin & Hobbes’, ‘Peanuts’ (to some extend) and of ‘Corto Maltese’ but most of what I read are text-based books. Many of the comics I used to enjoy as a child would undoubtedly have been able to contribute some content around here, but since I have kept none of them…

So, thx a lot for what you did. Including this last message, that could hopefully trigger a healthy discussion. I’m not giving up on the idea of reading more of your contributions sometimes in the future.