I seriously cannot have any degree of nuanced conversation here.
Like I get it, we all know capitalism is bad, but it feels like every time I or anyone go towards discussing the steps that need to be taken to address current looming problems in the short term, someone has to jump in and shut it down with "capitalism bad >:[ " and tear down any idea presented because its not complete and total destruction of the current economic model.
The result just feels like an echo chamber where no actual solutions get presented other than someone posting whole ass dissertations on their 33-step (where 30/33 steps are about as vague as “we’ll just handle it”) plan to fully convert the world to an anarchist commune.
Edit: I still vastly prefer Lemmy and the fediverse and a whole, my complaint here is that many of you are TOO INTENSE. You blow up small scale discussion.
I can’t agree with this more if I tried! Well said.
It is quite often that responses seem to come from school age children who just discovered [insert edgy counter-culture ideology], and all of their responses and world views revolve around a rudimentary desire for that ideological utopia, with very little consideration given to sociology or economics. I suppose that is actually who’s responding a lot of the time. All real world considerations are discarded, and any issues you identify are perceived as stupid/shill/Trumper/dummy/capitalist drivel with zero consideration given.
That’s precisely it. It’s manufactured outrage created by kids trying to look Worldly. The same about when on when I was in school- and it was every bit as cringy.
Makes sense. [email protected] is getting a bit more active lately, might be a community for that age range
Theres truth to this but I think the general sentiment is archaic and overblown to the point it’s almost anachronistic.
It used to be that cohorts would grow more conservative as they aged - trying to keep everything like they know, essentially. This was true when we built societies that allowed generations to prosper.
We don’t see that seismic shift in millennials or the older zoomers. We see the opposite. Millennials onward are actively moving further left, not just appearing further left because the Overton window has shifted. If anything, the window shifting, casting those in the center as “left”, hasn’t pulled the left to center, but the other way around. It’s pushed the center to be more open to the lefts ideas. The left still convulses at the centers ideas, trust me (like student loans).
This is one of those opinions that everyone likes to assume is part of the silent majority but there’s just not that as much evidence to back up the confidence in which it’s announced - which, remember this, is 100% the main tactic of those in the center. This is the “end of history”, everything’s figured out, inability to see beyond themselves that makes leftists say neoliberalism (the prevailing media world view, center-right) is a cult or that liberalism is a mental illness -the former I agree with, the latter I do not.
Once this tone is dropped, its a mine field of red flags representing the death of nuance, that we’ve reached the limits of their rationality and critical thinking.
Just like breaking thru the rights MAGA cult, breaking the centers techno authoritarianism is like explaining 3D to Flatlanders. And if that sounds like gobbledygook to you, you’ve either been completely sheltered (and in that case, buckle up, things are waaaay worse than you were told growing up) or you’re fully indoctrinated into either ideologue. Blinders on. Kamakazi away.
Agreed, often if you check the post history of folks like that you’ll see that they’re still in school.
I do notice and kinda agree that some users here are great at arguing about theory, but can’t see beyond that for practical application.
I completely agree. However, I also think its better than ‘most’ internet places.
There is a down-vote brigade around any kind of criticism of a knee jerk reaction people are having to a headline. I think because of the current political climate, nuance around responsibility for the state of things simply isn’t suffered, which I do understand the sentiment. However, I’ve also been pleasantly surprised at the number of 3+ deep comment threads, which seems to be about where the nuance appears.
Its really the knee jerk downvoters and one line commenters who do actually lack critical thinking skills, but this isn’t unique to lemmy. Its all over, hackernews has them too, there is simply a larger effort to ‘appear smart’ on hn than lemmy. Lemmy is more casual, which is fine. This is a space for casual discussion, and hot takes are fine and should be welcome.
I’ll use a political example, such as my concern around how much water carrying I see for groups like congressional Democrats. If you push back on something coming from NYT as being a ‘Democratic win’, you’ll be very quickly downvoted below 50%. However, I don’t think the lack of nuance is because of lemmy or the demographic here. I think its from a place of real fear around what might happen if the US loses its democracy to fascism that is generally palpable across the internet and offline as well. People are materially very afraid, and reacting without nuance right now, and I think the fear is justified. However, if we want to find solutions, we need to maintain a clear head and keep discussions happening. Its open forums like Lemmy where opinions are made and nuanced developed; there needs to be space for that.
This same point can be extended to issues around global war, climate change, the rise of global fascism, the usurping of generations of potential by the oligarchical class, any of the innumerable ills we are currently staring down the barrel of. Its a stressful time and people are rightfully scared and worried. Scared worried people don’t do nuance. They react. Up for things they think they agree with, down for things they don’t. No nuance.
Largely I agree with the point, but I don’t think its a lemmy thing in the current climate.
I like your point about a place of fear. I did an edit to clarify that I still think the Fediverse beats other social media and my complaint is a criticism coming from a place of love. It’s very hard to continue wanting to engage in low-level discussion around issue when I know someone is about to take it over with either some grand (in scale, not concept) statement about the issue, or abject defeatism.
It’s becoming way more difficult to introduce nuanced news to a mass audience.
People aren’t informed outside of their own bubble. I’m self aware enough to seek out all sides of the story. Even if it means I have to learn an opposing viewpoint.
I hate having content suggested and ‘curated’ for me on every single platform. It’s a divisive echo chamber.
In fact I agree with your “echo chamber” comments, by design the servers and communities foster a group of like-minded individuals and the moderation is enforcing the same kind of thinking and rules.
At the same time, I find it more possible to get nuanced takes, back and forth discussion that isn’t just troll bait or shouting matches here on Lemmy than elsewhere. People approach some topics with more curiousity, are a bit more willing to admit they are wrong/corrected about something and listen to each other’s perspectives. Productive communication is a two way street. There’s still a group of jerks, trolls and bad actors, but it’s a monumental effort to moderate them away and they’re virtually inevitable in any populated anonymous online space.
I don’t really mind if something is downvoted for being unpopular unless it’s an obvious troll/flamer. That includes people that talk about capitalism’s benefits. I know there are cases of missed references or sarcasm, I am a proponent of /s to avoid misunderstanding for that reason.
What sort of thing would you like to have a nuanced discussion on?
Really just the half steps and the means to make progress towards a better system that works for the benefit of the majority, y’know, socialism. It’s a bottom up discussion that always gets taken over by the top-down people who can only ever talk about the whole shebang.
There are no satisfactory “answers” on how to make progress. Because the only actual answers are painfully and slowly. By educating and convincing others. So it always boils down to impatient revolutionaries trying to do it by force. Fundamentally failing, and setting everyone back again and again.
Even Marx phrased it as “evolution” not revolution. And like you said it starts from the bottom up. Revolution has only made the educated and ignorant alike fearfully clutch to capitalism. Because the ideology of the revolutionaries is a lateral move. That wouldn’t actually make things better. And would see a lot of people needlessly killed.
The one, possibly best thing we could do. Is for interested, individuals to start pooling their money to buy land. Then build high density, communal housing and sustainable communities. Dedicated towards proving socialist/small c communist principles. Ideally with people able to help replicate such communities. Where there will be no Lords of any sort. And rent will be the cost of what is needed to maintain housing. Not someone’s luxury. The funds to get started would be the biggest hurdle. But once people see there’s nothing to actually fear. And for younger generations, lots to gain. You’d see a lot of people warm up to the idea.
I mean you’re right, but I found the same on other platforms.
I think being contrarian just feels like engagement. When you’re taking a shit beating on some commenter about how bad capitalism is a quick hit.
I think the format of most social media encourages this type of simple pre-thought positions on things.
My exact thought. This isn’t a lemmy thing, it’s an internet thing.
I really don’t have much of the experience OP is talking about either, but that’s largely due to the feed I’ve curated. Either that or I’m the problem lol. But in general, I tend to have pretty good interactions for the most part, unless I’m feeling feisty and start something.
I’m on /all constantly, and I agree with you. People are fine. I don’t really know where people get the idea to post these things. I think they might browse all, see a bunch of posts from /antiwork, or /fuckcars, or /aboringdystopia, or /linuxmemes, and then complain that they only see those things. It’s probably confirmation bias, and if they used frontpage instead and actually followed spaces they were interested in they wouldn’t have these problems.
To me, it’s like complaining about sex at an orgy. The point of the platform, and reddit, and most other forms of social media, is to curate a feed that suits you. If you don’t do that, it isn’t the platforms fault if it then doesn’t suit you.
I feel like many people here are literally unreasonable. Any person with any faith at all is an idiot, all enlightened atheists are superior… FuckCars seems to be leaking and anyone who has to drive for their job is hated on… Linux is the only option, you should never, ever use Windows for anything… etc…
Like, not everything is black and white! The real world is shades of grey and often requires compromise. But the loudest voices here seem to be extremists that slap down any comment that isn’t 100% what they believe in. It’s exhausting…
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This. I’ve come across more than a few posts discussing solutions to various problems. Said solutions are shallower than a wading pool. Playing devil’s advocate and poking and prodding to invoke some critical thinking is met with downvotes and derision.
It just ain’t worth it.
I mean, to be fair, it is the internet.
a large portion of people on it are, in fact, idiots.
Thats the price we paid when the internet went from a nerd toy in the mid/late 90s, to essential utility in the aughts.
As a nerd who was on the internet in the 90s I can assure you that was no filter against idiots.
Of course. But they werent screaming about wayfare trafficing children for adrenochrome to liberal democrat pizza basements.
Their stupidity wasnt a threat to society. They were just, for the most part, honest dumb. and they were no where near as numerous as today.
Damn, you got me :(
internet, honestly, took a turn for the worse when social media came about and started game-ifying human interaction with dopamine driven addiction mechanisms like Likes and up/down votes. Which I blame for the starting us down the path of polarization… And not just polarization, but the encouragement of awful behavior in general, Like what you frequently hear about with tiktok “trends”.
Which is why I think the best thing that the internet can do is get the fuck rid of gamification mechanisms like up/down votes.
I agree. I miss the olden days… Forums and static pages with gifs and shit. The golden era. Corps didn’t know much about it and piracy was rampant, information flowed freely.
found new shit via others suggestions, or web rings, cause there was no search engines.
guest books, animated gifs, page hit counters… ah fuck now i’m all sad and nostalgic
I nearly forgot about web rings and guest books. Actually there’s still a comment I made on a webpage that is still active from like 1996
oh man, and geocities and angelfire and aol/irc chat rooms…
fuck I miss those days.
Don’t you think this is kind of a black and white characterization? 😋
I think this is a problem with online social interactions everywhere. Maybe it stems from the lack of empathy people feel for the faceless internet strangers we are interacting with. It remains to be seen whether a large online community can be built around more positive kinds of interactions. If it exists, I have not found it yet.
Absolutely. At work I man a tech desk for a big box store (aka helping people who don’t or can’t understand what email is activate phones), and at home I share responsibility caring for two people who don’t have the mental capacity to shut the refrigerator door when they’re done finding food. That’s…a bigger can of worms than what we’re talking about here, but encountering open-and-shut thoughts on how things ought to be (on here) feels like whiplash compared to how I usually have to think through my actions in a day.
Maybe try [email protected] ? It’s more laid back and nuanced
Thanks, I genuinely appreciate the suggestion! I know that’s how some browse, but not me. I look at what’s in my feed and comment on it. I don’t care if it’s [email protected] or [email protected].
/agree
Hot Take: I honestly don’t know if I’m right or not about this, but it feels like it’s a generational thing, and not just a Lemmy thing.
Thank you for this. Never saw it and he makes a great point.
Wow. This is spot on. Very interesting! Let me add my 2 cents: Capitalism is bad/eat the billionaires.
this really explains a lot, thanks for that video; it definitely changed how i look at some comments and posts.
I have a feeling the comments section here is going to be a case study in irony.
Humans have been trying to make Capitalism “work” for the past 400 years. It. Doesn’t. Work. We’re now at an extinction level event due to just how atrociously bad Capitalism is for the human species (and all species for that matter) .
Is there an /s missing or not? Genuinely hard to tell. Your comment is so fitting to what OP is complaining about.
There’s no /s missing. Just because the op complained doesn’t make the facts less true.
I think we agree on capitalism for the most part, but do you see how OP and others might find your comment unhelpful?
As OP says themselves, yes, they know capitalism is bad. Pointing it out and leading every discussion onto it doesn’t make for a very interesting or nuanced debate.
As others have said, capitalism is here to stay for at least several decades, probably closer to a century. Major societal change is unrealistic on the short term. I think OP (and I think I largely agree) thinks that it would be better to talk more concretely about the small incremental changes we can make to make society better today.
“we’re moving straight towards that iceberg, we’re all going to die!”
“I agree but this reaction is not being helpful. Now help me rearrange these deck chairs…”
I mean, this kinda comes back to OPs complaint again. As I attempt to enter in this discussion with a more nuanced take, you reply to me in a sarcastic tone with a metaphor (that I don’t think fits very well to reality) that seems to imply that either I fully agree with you or I am part of the problem or at least not doing anything helpful.
Surely you realize that these topics are complicated and there’s not a black/white dichotomy? Can you understand how OP and others might find comments like that off-putting, as you either need to fully agree or you’re part of the problem?
I also don’t think this stance or attitude is helping your case actually. If you want to convince people to action, this is not the way to do it. This just puts them off and pushes them away.
Not every post I make is meant to be a convincing call to action. Not every situation is going to be helped at this. I surmised that this thread - full of smug centrists pointing out how we “have to be realistic” and downvoting everyone pointing out that being this way has led us directly to a climate apocalypse - is not going to be worth the effort.
(that I don’t think fits very well to reality)
I think it’s the most apt analogy there is. There, the only possible solution would have been an effective mutiny, to wrest the wheel from the captain and sail to safer waters, and damn the journey time or company profits. Much like the only solution we have right now it to wrest the “wheel” of society from the rich an d damn company profits.
But I saw you elsewhere engaging in unscientific climate denialism, much like every capitalist apologist has to in order to stave of cognitivie dissonance, so I have no patience to talk to antiscientific people.
Surely you realize that these topics are complicated and there’s not a black/white dichotomy? Can you understand how OP and others might find comments like that off-putting, as you either need to fully agree or you’re part of the problem?
There is no complications in saying that an Anthropogenic extinction is underway and we need to stop the system powering it.
But I saw you elsewhere engaging in unscientific climate denialism, much like every capitalist apologist has to in order to stave of cognitivie dissonance, so I have no patience to talk to antiscientific people.
Where? I’m sorry if I’ve offended you but I am definitely in favour of doing all we can to stop climate change and I am definitely not anti-scientific or in denial about climate change (I fully believe climate change exists and is caused by humans, for the record).
Please, let’s not devolve to name-calling or insults.
You agree this is an extinction level event? You agree capitalism is largely at fault?
Climate change is legitimately a very large threat to the planet and while it likely will not drive humans to extinction, it’s certainly killing lots of nature. So I don’t think calling it “extinction level” is inaccurate.
And yea, capitalism definitely has at least a part of the fault.
But again, these things are complicated and any discussion around them must reflect that with nuance. It’s hard to say if climate change would have happened regardless of capitalism (edit: i.e. climate change could still have happened if we had some other kind of society) - it could be.
Ok. So imagine a world that progressed technologically like we did until the 70s, but it’s some kind of decentralized communism focusing on democracy at work. (Business is worker owned and operated)
In the 70s, do they still suppress the science of climate change?I can’t say for sure, but it seems far less likely to me. Thoughts?
I think I agree with you, it seems less likely, but we can’t know. But also, society is not a choice between A and B. You may as well be hypothesising about what would have happened in an anarchist society, or dictatorial or monarchy or whatever.
I think this kinda falls into what OP is complaining about again. We can’t change what happened before the 1970s. What does it help to theorycraft like we had a time machine? I’m much more interested in what we can do today about tomorrow, and I think that discussion would probably also be a lot more productive.
I am happy we could build a community where there is little nuance on Capitalism. Being a long-term Redditor, A was used to nuance, and whataboutism.
I don’t believe in extremisms, it’s just nice to see.
Did we just have a different post on this topic a couple days ago? I can dig up my reply from the last thread but basically Lemmy and the fediverse is similarly bad for political discourse as the other social platforms because of the (semi)anonymous of social media and the fact we don’t really have the mental bandwidth needed to devote time to have nuanced conversations with strangers.
I find Lemmy significantly worse than reddit was in this regard. The number of times I’ve had my different (not unpopular outside of lemmy) opinion met immediately with personal insults is way higher here in the few months I’ve been here than my years with reddit.
I’ve just been learning not to engage on any of the lemmy propaganda areas, and that leaves me with a lot less active communities.
I agree, and attribute that to the kind of people who would boycott Reddit forever, where the largest part of the lemmy population seems to originate from.
As much as I roll my eyes at the overuse of the term, lemmy is mostly comprised of the "woke"est of the reddit population.
People who make their politics their personality appear at both ends of the spectrum.
I’ve found the same and sadly when I open Lemmy up I see the same half dozen articles still at the top of home. I’ve done back to Reddit on Mobile where there’s still a ton of new content.
Lemmy is less ban happy than reddit, so I don’t mind throwing down in the comments. Do your part, fight against stupidity.
It’s not less ban happy at all.
Reddit will ban you from some subs just for commenting in other subs, no way it’s as bad here
Well, entire instances are banned (defederated), sometimes for barely any reasons. Sooo it’s even worse
I seem to have a knack for pissing off fanboys. There’s no use using logic and reason.
Like I get it, we all know capitalism is bad
Perhaps it’s you who isn’t bringing the nuance
Sure, but have you tried using Linux, going vegan and guillotining billionaires?
You forgot Firefox, you absolute monster!
And FOSS. Don’t forget FOSS
I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as FOSS, is in fact, GNU/OSS, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Open Source Software. OSS is not freedom unto itself, but rather a less free component of a fully functioning GNU/OSS system made more free by the GNU GPL.
Many computer users run a restricted-freedom version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called FOSS, and many of its users are not aware that it is only free as far as it is GPL, developed by the GNU Project.
There really is a GNU, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. GNU is core freedom: the program in the system that allocates copyleft in the legal system. Open source is an essential part of GNU software, but openness is useless by itself; it can only achieve freedom in the presence of copyleft. OSS is normally used in combination with the GNU software, or other GPL software, the whole system is basically GNU with OSS added, or GNU/OSS. All the so-called FOSS distributions are really distributions of GNU/OSS!
I do tend to forget to floss…
