The hexbear folks were the worst. Like, putting all of their political opinions aside, they would just swarm posts and flood it with low quality buzzwords and memes and every formatting option to be as visually obnoxious as possible.

I don’t know if I blocked them, they blocked me, or if my instance defederated from then, but holy shit my Lemmy experience got so much better when I stopped seeing their shit everywhere.

Hey I comment from time to time, that’s contributing! Kind of!

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth”

At least I think that’s from the sermon on the mount. Raised Christian, but I’ve been a self identifying atheist for about 15 years at this point.

Rumble isn’t any better. It’s where my dad gets his COVID conspiracy material after folks got kicked off other platforms.

Sometimes people ignore consequences because they simply haven’t thought through the consequences. That’s a very normal human thing. Laying it out this way can persuade some people.

Some people might even become consequentialist when shown the consequences they hadn’t fully considered before.

Bold of you to claim most millennials understand how a computer works.

True, it’s a misapplication of the original thought experiment.

But it also kind of lays bare the consequences of choosing “the moral high ground” over an outcomes-based approach to morality. And I think that is still a useful thing.

Same

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These days at least we have streaming services. If you can get them hooked on the good stuff (eg Bluey) or the tolerable stuff (eg Octonauts) you can (mostly) get away from the worst stuff (Cocomelon and it’s million somehow even more cheaply made derivatives).

I think the big thing is that Lemmy isn’t nearly as monetizable as other social media. What that means to me is that if we do grow, it’ll be largely organic. It’ll be at a pace where the culture won’t change overnight. If we get big enough to have real issues, we can meaningfully splinter to more manageable sizes, or moderate shit stains into instances with no reach beyond themselves.

In short, so long as we maintain interoperability standards, I think we will have all the tools needed to keep things from enshittification. We might just grow out of pure longevity as other social media enterprises slowly but surely kill themselves.

But that could be wishful thinking. Who knows!

Long hard fight.

We take our Ws where we can get them.

Interesting. Can’t say that would ever work for my circumstances, but I at least get where you’re coming from a bit better. Thanks!

So like… do you play the game with no sound? Does your gaming partner hear everything coming through your speakers into your phone’s microphone?

I’m just struggling to understand how that could be a good experience for anyone, including you. Am I just missing something?

Edit: oh, I missed the wireless earphone on one side thing. Is that for your phone or for the game?

You want to… be on the phone for video game chat?

I cannot fathom this mindset.

The whole point is that the rate of people doing that is increasing, meaning there’s likely something driving that uptick.

Like, if you saw the murder rate jump 20% year over year, “people have always done murder” doesn’t really explain that rise, y’know?

Edit: something, not someone

I think I actually agree with you overall.

My comment above was more trying to express what I think “small talk” means to the people who always complain about small talk, maybe. Unsure. Slightly elevated atm.

I’m not entirely sure what counts as small talk. When I think of it, it’s usually conversation between strangers or acquaintances where neither party knows the safe topics, the topics to be avoided, or even the general preferences of the other. It’s all testing water stuff.

I think that’s what people actually mean when they say they hate small talk. They hate the awkwardness of not yet knowing enough about their interlocutor to know they won’t accidentally upset anyone. Or they don’t have the skill to navigate that social space to avoid negative consequences. It can feel downright dangerous in some circumstances.

And that’s tough. Because the socialites think it’s a skill issue, which it often is. And unfortunately if you don’t learn that skill growing up, the social consequences of being bad at small talk only get bigger and more dangerous, which prevents folks from being able to practice freely.

I dunno. Just my $.02 I guess.

Biden and soon Harris are, to my understanding, the most progressive presidents we’ve had in the US. Why are they moving (slowly) left over time?

And yes, those Nordics. To my understanding it’s not just social culture forming those coalitions, but an actual government system that allows for such coalition building. I would like the same or similar systems, sure.

Fascism and racism are systemic, nobody is disagreeing with you about that?

Anyway, that’s as much energy as I’m willing to spend on someone who does not converse in good faith. Stay safe out there.

Cloak and dagger? It’s literally just applying for positions of lower power to help influence systems to open the gates for higher levels of power. It’s… normal everyday shit.

If there were “enough” socialists we’d either have a valid third party or we’d be able to democratically take over DNC primaries. So far that hasn’t materialized.

Given there are other countries, like the Nordic countries, that have achieved greater quality of life for their people through democratic socialist means… yeah I’d much prefer that approach than a full on revolution led by some vanguard and the horrendous amount of risk that entails.

Local politicians > work way into DNC primary machine > work to change how the primaries work > reduce ability for $ and top brass to pave way in primaries for their chosen people > get candidates we actually want winning primaries. It’s a long game.

If you’re asking me how to get Kamala Harris herself to change course on all this immediately, I have no idea. But witholding your vote isn’t going to sway things, either. Even if we got every leftist in the country to not vote in solidarity - that wouldn’t be enough. There’s not enough of us yet. That’s the reality of working within a democracy, you need enough people organized to vote. But you need time and an actual strategy WELL BEFORE THIS STAGE OF THE ELECTION CYCLE. All that would do now is spoil the election, give it to Trump, and that very well may end democracy in the US as we know it.

Regarding “guaranteed leftist votes” you must consider that the opposite also applies. Why would Kamala Harris care about your views if you’re never going to vote for her? (Maybe you would if she vowed to save Palestine and forego allyship with Israel until they stop genociding, though, which is fair. But a lot of folks out here making these arguments are not doing so in good faith.)