Which we should see as an excellent radicalization and growth opportunity!
It can be exhausting explaining ourselves again and again, always met with the same accusations and assumptions born from the mythos spun by our enemies.
However, we must remember these people are people, and many people change their minds given enough information, delivered with firm respect. For every belligerent person who appears like they wouldn’t change their mind for anything, there are 10 people quietly lurking who are more on-the-fence. Even those who regurgitate insults and contempt may change their mind when the stars align!
These people are not our enemies, they are victims to the greatest campaign of dishonesty in human history! It is our duty to draw out the poison and deliver the medicine!
I know many comrades here have very difficult lives and do not have the patience or energy to deal with such people. Please do not exhaust yourself interacting with liberals, and allow comrades with more energy to deal with them.
Radicalizing online is not the end-all be-all, but at this point in the psychological war for those within the Anglosphere, every victory is invaluable!!!
Welcome!
The dunking culture is primarily useful as a tactic against bad faith actors, an attempt to alleviate the effort assymetry associated with engaging with them. It takes very little effort to spew nonsense and rile people up, and 10 times as much effort to kindly and carefully refute the nonsense.
Especially in an ecosystem where accuracy and kindess is less important for “winning” an argument than coming off as more confident (see the effectiveness of wojack memes in calcifying opinion) or popular, it’s a necessary evil to be able to respond to such actors without wasting too much time. Relevant is Sartre’s analysis of antisemites:
Now all that being said, not all of us are as good as “turning it off” as we need to be. But despite that my experience with Hexbear is that there’s a ton of users there very capable of good faith disagreement and discussion.
Generally if you engage in good faith, most of us should as well. Most of us were in a similar position to you at one point.
Oh don’t worry, I understand the dunking(*) culture, it’s just that sometimes the barbs are so snide and buried beneath 3 layers of irony I literally don’t know what the message is supposed to be. Maybe this isn’t “dunking” how you guys mean it- more for me to figure out. But I refer to the trolling, biting, insincere remarks that are used as return fire to vitriolic remarks, events, or policies that you take offense to. All bad faith, as you say, or deserving of ridicule from your POV.
(*) Edit to add: I do/did not understand the dunking culture, I should I have said I understand the trolling culture. I thought they were more synonymous, but now I know it is not a full venn diagram overlap. Dunking may or may not include trolling, and not all trolling by this community is considered dunking.
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Don’t take it as a slight or anything that needs to be explained - any online community ought to have that, IMO. Otherwise it’s no fun :)
Im having trouble understanding this comment, am I just tired?
Ehh I am definitely tired so maybe I worded it poorly, and/or our tiredness combined is interfering with getting my point across.
I meant to acknowledge that you guys have this term dunking, which I’ve definitely heard people say irl (general mainstream slang in parts of USA) and it seems to reference general trolling behavior in the same way, but I acknowledge that I may not be using the term exactly how this community does.
And I am familiar with modern internet trolling and humor which often relies on a lot of in-jokes, references, etc with layers of irony and sarcasm which are indecipherable to outsiders. But not sure if that is entirely synonymous with this community’s usage
Hopefully that helps clarify?
I would disagree slighly. We definitely do a little trolling from time to time, but that is not what dunking is.
Dunking is ripping on someone for having terrible politics, advocating for terrible politics, or otherwise. It is doing so in a way that shames the person but more than that is a public spectacle. That is important to enforce acceptable norms. It should be quite clear by now on Lemmy that if you’re federated with Hexbear and you do a transphobia you’d better be ready to be swarmed by LOTS of angry communists. Thats community protection online, without it you get communities that grow nazi problems. In addition to that, the spectacle of the dunking often includes reference to why the politics are terrible, links with other types of bad politics, these things are all interlinked as they are a part of the interdependent system of globalized neoliberal capitalism, which itself is supported on layers of classism, deep histories of racial tensions, homophobia, transphobia, and one of the most OG layers patriarchy. It provides opportunities for us to tie these disparate pieces together, and thats not to mention the inevitable effort post as one of us just cant stand it any longer and has to write a book on the subject.
But most importantly, its how we can get some catharsis. Its been said by many a leftist that its harder to face the world once you know. The suffering is just so blinding. Its a horrible world full of horrible systems that force people to do horrible things and I’m usually powerless to stop it, but I can make that liberal feel bad about it and since they support what this world is and does, and they’re daring to do it in front of me, it feels great. In a grand and twisted sort of way its kind of like yelling at customer service, kind of. They’re only like this because capitalism melted their brains, the poor fellas. I used to be worse than most of these libs so I know they could come around, but when I was that way I deserved it.
That was more than I intended to write lol