The fediverse is small, and thats both a blessing and a curse - one of its several blessings is that in a smaller space we all individually have a bigger impact on what the culture of this space is like.
On this comm (and on lemmy broadly) there’s a lot of discussion about how to grow the fediverse, what to improve, but an easy thing you can do for the fediverse is right in front of us-
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Be kind
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Ask people what they think, and why
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Approach folks you disagree with with curiosity rather than hostility (EDIT: no, this is not specifically referring to Nazis. I get it, they’re the first thing that comes to mind. I’m not telling you to approve of Nazis I’m just saying be kind to your fellow lemmites)
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Engage sincerely
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Ask yourself if there’s something nice you can say
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Make this small space worth being in
A platform lives or dies by what’s available on said platform and often we have this conversation in the context of “content” or posts - and we may never have as much content as reddit does. But content and posts aren’t the only thing this kind of platform offers- it also offers people. It offers community, and human interaction.
Culture and community is lemmy and the fediverse’s biggest differentiator, and we all have a role to play in shaping the culture of this space.
The biggest thing you can do to help the fediverse is make it a place worth being.
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Getting better at communication takes time and practice. Depending on where someone is in that journey, a post like this can make a big difference. And I think we can all use a reminder to be kind every so often. So, thanks for taking the time to write this out
Give quiche a chance.
The thing in this post about curiosity isn’t just a lemmy/online thing.
The vast majority of people are mainly interested in themselves. Like - if you have trouble on dates, making friends, getting along at work, anything to do with people in general - approaching them with a sense of sincere curiosity will completely change things overnight.
Get people to talk about themselves, be supportive in your discussions with them, and shut the fuck up wherever possible and suddenly you’re interesting, a good person, kind, whatever - traits you’ve done exactly fuck all to demonstrate, but that people will swear are true because you seem interested in them.
It’s fucking bonkers but it’s true. Curiosity can change your world.
I disagree with your premise.
It should be “The best thing that you can do for humanity is to be kind”.
Seriously. We’re living in a time when fascism is in an upswing and at least one religious leader has publicly called empathy a sin. Kindness and empathy are rebellious acts.
Everyone’s been really nice as long as I don’t touch anything political - then it becomes a fart sniffing smug fest.
The thing that I appreciated most about Lemmy and my transition from Reddit is how cordial everyone has been. Even if a comment is taken out of context, people tend not to jump down each others throat and assume the worst, or make bad faith arguments full of fallacies. I’ve had legitimate back and forths with people, something that basically never happens on Reddit.
I arrived at LEMMY after what I think we very optimistically called the Reddit Collapse. We wish. And I had toe in LEMMY and a few others at Reddit.
Recently with their abusively patronizing redesigning and gamification and just ugly bullshit, I can’t stomach Reddit at all. So LEMMY grows increasingly important, not just to me but to folks who haven’t yet even heard of it.
So, I’ll just say thanks for your post here. I have, I confess, engaged with a couple bullies on LEMMY and I always try to say… I don’t like to do this on LEMMY— and I say that precisely for the reasons you mention.
And as you encourage: I will try to be kinder, even in when feeling… hmm… less than kind.
Well I came here to chew bubblegum and talk shit, and I’m all out of bubblegum.
One my favorite ways to summarize this kind of thinking is with the Bill & Ted quote “Be Excellent To Each Other, and Party On Dudes” (mostly the first half applies to this post though). The part that applies to this post, Keanu Reeves said he interprets as follows:
I think that the sentiment of it is really just be the best person, the best human being you can be, and if you do that, then you can party on and live life to the fullest, but you’re gonna be safe… You’re going to be supported, you’re going to get the gift of giving, you’re going to get the gift of receiving, you’re going to get to the gift of sharing. We’re all just some humans on a rock in space, and so it’s kinda nice to kind of promote that idea of ‘give a little, get a lot’, kind of bring it in for a group hug."
I just hope people won’t turn it into another 4chan
Hey thanks, I appreciate your post :)
I’ll add: “be supportive and helpful if you can, and just shut up if you can’t”.
Fediverse is sometimes suffering from the same kind of people that Linux has - “oh you have a problem? Well, here’s the GitHub repo and a project Wiki, figure it out”.
This place is becoming very Reddit, if you post anything that deviates from someone’s beliefs they call you names and insult your intelligence. So many people can’t have a debate or discussion without jumping to personal attacks and hate. It’s really disheartening. I love political debate but there’s no such thing anymore, only name calling
Speaking past each other is IMO the biggest source of friction and division on the fediverse.
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“Tankies”
The irony with this is that Lemmy was founded by communists and it follows a lot of communist principles.
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The basic problem is thinking that conquering somebody is natural, inevitable, or good.
oh yes i forgot about canada and greenland somehow, sorry
actually i meant in general, like apart from the current situation with trump.
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I mean
It’s been happening for the 99.9% of human existence
proof?
i’m asking because i suspect that might be a fallacy; i remember reading somewhere that 10k years ago the first wars happened, before then war practically didn’t exist because war requires a minimum amount of organization and that just wasn’t there before.
There was organized violence deployed by groups of humans against other groups of humans long, long before anything we would recognize as warfare. Particularly brutal violence too, because the objective was not to conquer other people (something which only makes sense once agriculture is the dominant mode of sustinence), but to either drive off or exterminate a rival group so you can use their territory for yourself.
And we don’t even need to talk about people here: we have records of chimpanzees fighting small scale wars of harassment and extermination against neighboring groups.
Pre-modern, pre-civilization, pre-aggriculture, pre-you-name-it human life was far more violent than what we deal with today.
We aren’t chimpanzees. As persistence hunters, our kinds of territorial disputes would have been very different and early humans were likely very nomadic rather than settling into territories that fight. In times of scarcity we’d just move on to different lands.
Which, notably, is why humans spread over the entire planet. We aren’t really built to be fighters.
No one is saying we are chimps, but we share lots of mammalian behavior
For example, did you know chimpanzees engage on guerrilla wars, torture and , weirdly enough, prisoner exchanges?
But that’s besides the point, I think they were just pointing out how standardized is that behavior in the animal kingdom, not excusing it
Doesn’t make it right. This is a civilized age and we must forever push for progress.
No one said it was
Fair enough
You can’t say fairer than that, oh drat!
We also didn’t have modern medicine for 99.9% of human existence. Want to return to that?
Who said that?
Basic history told me that?
Here, check under modern - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine
Okay, you are being purposely obtuse, thanks for clarifying
Same with smallpox.
And we’re capable of better now.
The main thing is the bigotry and making marginalized people feel unwelcome and unsafe. Having trans people and Nazis existing in the same space isn’t really tenable, in practice, most marginalized people would rather be in a space where their existence and basic rights aren’t up for debate and where they won’t receive slurs and threats of violence. So the question is, who would you rather have in your community, oppressor or oppressed?
Of course, this person applies this standard blindly by including “tankies” as “right-wingers.” She’s just abusing a valid argument by using it to dismiss any perspective she doesn’t like, left or right, bigoted or accepting, bad faith or good faith, as “right-wing.”
In America, right wingers support the republicans who have a verified track record of taking rights away, cheating elections and straight up lying. By refusing the see any other point of view, they reject open mindedness. They are unyielding in their beliefs and that is dangerous. It’s whats led to the current affairs of the USA. Theyve been swindled for years. The thing I hate most of all is there core principle is hate. They hate minorities, immigrants, foreigners and gays. They always have some justification for it. "Gays are cross dressing and confusing my children. Gays are indecent. Minorities are abusing social programs. Jewish people are running criminal cabals. (Etc. etc.)
You’ll have the “oh well I don’t support THAT part of my political party but shrug nothing we can do 🙂” publicans but don’t do anything or even CRITICIZE it. And those that try to refute these points either outright deny that its true or use whataboutism.
I will end this by saying I have right winger friends who are radicalizing away from me and I’m trying my hardest to show them that core beliefs of comraderie and compassion is far superior to the kool aid they’re being forced fed by all major social media companies.
actually let me think about it again:
IMO that somebody’s always hateful is typically a sign of enormous psychological/emotional stress. so that tells me these people have a lot of problems, and probably don’t know how to deal with the world. i wonder what education would do to them.
The thing is, hate has varying degrees. There is: slight disregard up to boiling rage. But the root is the same. They hate those that are different and the higher ups need a Boogeyman to point their capitalistism caused depression to.
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If you know what you are arguing and argue with tankies/Nazis in good faith, nine times out of ten they will eventually lose their temper and make fools of themselves. There is no need to be hostile to begin with, they just defeat themselves basically because their ideologies are totally flawed (kinda like in real life).
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It is not to validate them, it is to discredit them and provide red flags to would-be readers how dangerous their ideas are.
It makes them feel validated, they’re not capable of self reflection
From my experience it hurts more than helps to engage with fascists/right wingers because you give them a platform.
They should be contained on twitter and truth socal until they learn that it’s not ok to kill minorities or they decide they want to get shot.
they’re not capable of self reflection
You missed the part where I said it is for the readers, not the cultists. It is not about convincing these ideologues, it is to warn the readers why the ideas of these cultists are bad.
If you look at their past interactions with “tankies”, they’re all the opposite of what you say they should be: it’s the “tankie” calmly and reasonably making their points while SoftestSaphic immediately descends into an incoherent raging tantrum.
That is a very specific interpretation of what I meant by this post.
To be perfectly honest, I really wasn’t making the point you should approve of nazis. Just that maybe it’s worth putting effort into being kind to one another…
For example, I constantly see leftists online biting eachother’s heads off (including on lemmy) for having slightly different left-wing ideology. Its not like “approach people you disagree with with curiosity” means specifically actual neonazis, and approaching someone with curiosity doesn’t mean telling people “your idea is correct and you’re right for thinking it”
It means trying to understand it. You can dislike someone and still gain from better understanding their worldview. Even if you think it’s harmful. Even if you think it’s illogical. Even if you think they’re wrong. Curiousity isn’t tacit approval.
If you want to think about it cynically you can consider it creating allies and knowing your enemy.
All of that ignoring the fact that if you look around, this platform is almost exclusively left wing 😅 even if it includes folks left of center I don’t agree with, like tankies and neoliberals (who yes, I know, are only left with respect of the US overton window. Thats where I’m from 🤷♂️)
I understand we disagree on certain things, that’s okay, these are just my thoughts on the subject, and it’s a profoundly important one, so I can appreciate why people would have different strongly held beliefs on it. Hope you have a good one :)
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I can understand your anger, I’m in the same boat, but I really wasn’t asking you to do that :( I was asking you to be kind to the people here. That you share this space with.
I wish I had left this list of examples in the original post where I had them at first
- Compliment people’s art and ask about their process
- Teach people about something you’re knowledgeable on
- Give constructive criticism on peoples projects when it’s welcome
- Thank people for posting things you’re glad you got to see, tell them you enjoyed it
- Tell people you’re glad they’re here
- Tell people you hope they have a good day
I moved them to a comment because I have a bad habit of being really long winded and I wanted people to actually read the whole post, but I think moving them and leaving “try to approach people you disagree with with curiosity rather than hostility” prompted a lot of folks to interpret what I was saying as “tell the Nazis who want to debate your humanity that all their views are swell, actually”
What I meant is exactly what didn’t happen in our interaction with eachother. I’m a queer leftist whose humanity is debated by the right. You don’t completely agree with me and that’s okay, but I’m not deserving of your hostility.
We may not see things exactly the same way but I care just as much about combating fascism as you do; everyone I love save for some of my family is a minority with a target on their back in the eyes of the current administration.
I wish I could have made it more clear what I meant. I’ve gotten lots of comments more or less insinuating that I’m encouraging we all complicit in the rise of fascism. And it’s not a big percentage, but I’m still a human being who hears 12 people forcefully telling me that, and it doesn’t feel great.
That’s not what I’m advocating. I’m advocating that when you don’t completely see eye to eye with someone, you ask them what they mean (and also lots of other things, like giving compliments and telling folks you appreciate their post, etc. etc. ect., but I feel like how to handle disagreement is the specific idea in question).
WE don’t see exactly eye to eye. You and other commenters here don’t see exactly eye to eye. And that’s okay. Being willing to talk with them or me about what they think and why doesn’t help the Nazis.
(Like I said I’m really long winded 🙃 sorry for the wall of text, I know it’s not even the first one I’ve replied with to you specifically 😅)
It’s specifically the “don’t call people Russian trolls/bots”
There are a lot of Right wingers sympathetic to fascist countries right now, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a troll farm or a regular person pushing hateful ideology it’s harmful and unacceptable either way.
Personally I don’t see calling people Russian bots/trolls or accepting harmful behaviour as the only available options.
I don’t think the former is at all productive or helps anything, and the latter is completely unacceptable. But those aren’t our only options when we decide how we want to engage with people we disagree with
and again, fascists are not the only people with whom disagreements happen on lemmy. We’re literally disagreeing right now, if you called me a Russian bot I think that would be silly and unproductive. That’s literally my whole point. Not everyone you disagree with is arguing in bad faith 🤷♂️
If we keep letting Nazis into the bar it becomes a Nazi bar
This is a good principle to learn as to not accidentally validate people with invalid worldviews.
I’m very familiar with and agree with the Nazi bar metaphor, and said as much in one of my very first comments I made in the discussion under this post. At no point have I advocated letting Lemmy be a Nazi bar. And we don’t exactly have many fascists here compared to other platforms, Lemmy is almost exclusively leftists.
Being kind to your fellow lemmites is not making this platform a Nazi safe haven, it just makes it a social space actually worth spending time in.
Yeah that’s a much too enlightened take for these parts it’ll never fly.
Anger and fear are blinding if you let them be, especially if they’re intensely justified.
Unfortunately we live in times where they’re very justified. I don’t begrudge people for reacting in anger or fear, I’m doing my best not to do exactly the same :(
Take care my friend.
As so often, the answer is found in scripture:
One day Mal-2 asked the messenger spirit Saint Gulik to approach the Goddess and request Her presence for some desperate advice. Shortly afterwards the radio came on by itself, and an ethereal female Voice said YES?
“O! Eris! Blessed Mother of Man! Queen of Chaos! Daughter of Discord! Concubine of Confusion! O! Exquisite Lady, I beseech You to lift a heavy burden from my heart!”
WHAT BOTHERS YOU, MAL? YOU DON’T SOUND WELL.
“I am filled with fear and tormented with terrible visions of pain. Everywhere people are hurting one another, the planet is rampant with injustices, whole societies plunder groups of their own people, mothers imprison sons, children perish while brothers war. O, woe.”
WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH THAT, IF IT IS WHAT YOU WANT TO DO?
“But nobody wants it! Everybody hates it.”
OH. WELL, THEN STOP.
At which moment She turned herself into an aspirin commercial and left The Polyfather stranded alone with his species.
Answer. I said answer. Not solution. Too much aspirin and your blood thins out and you need to move to Transylvania.
That took my brain a hot minute to process lol. Is that actually from something or did you just invent it on the spot? 😅
“I am filled with fear and tormented with terrible visions of pain. Everywhere people are hurting one another, the planet is rampant with injustices, whole societies plunder groups of their own people, mothers imprison sons, children perish while brothers war. O, woe.”
"But nobody wants it! Everybody hates it.
"OH. WELL, THEN STOP.
Unironically wisdom we should all learn from. I can’t stop for other people but I can at least choose how I act, and whether I contribute to that pain suffering and discord.
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If you’re out there suggesting political stances can be adequately expressed along a single line, then you’re not doing much better I’m afraid. Engage with the nuance, friend, it’ll build understanding and be better for all of us.
‘Left’/‘Right’ need to go, they’re losing any meaning they once had - instead: “What’s your policy on X”? “How do you feel about Y?” “Do you agree with Z’s policy on A, B & C, and why?”.
Curiosity, followed by grounded opinion, over tribalism.
Now excuse me while I go and try to practice what I just preached 😅
that’s what i’ve been saying for a while now. like a healthy organism that has both left and right hands, society too shall have both right and left people in it. that is not a problem. what is the problem is that these different parts are not communicating clearly enough and it’s causing dysfunction of society.
Which one of your hands has the ideology that hinges on erasing the other? And which one wants affordable Healthcare?
But nuance is hard and demands empathy which is also hard. I want to be angry-mad and stomp my feet!
What is a tankie?
If you’re familiar with how the word “commie” was used during the cold war, its just an updated version of that, for people who don’t want to sound like crusty boomers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie#Modern_Internet_uses but actually https://www.joewrote.com/p/jfk-files-reveal-the-cia-role-in
The Hungarian Freedom Fighters were [Central Intelligence] Agency sponsored.
Horseshoe theory is horseshit.
- ‘Horseshoe theory’ is nonsense – the far right and far left have little in common
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory#Academic_studies_and_criticism
- Funny thing about Hannah Arendt’s construction of “totalitarianism”: She came from a bourgeois family and so was unsurprisingly anti-communist, and she was funded & promoted by the CIA.
Imperialist Propaganda and the Ideology of the Western Left Intelligentsia: From Anticommunism and Identity Politics to Democratic Illusions and FascismOne of the centerpieces of the cultural cold war was the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), which was revealed in 1966 to be a CIA front. Hugh Wilford, who has researched the topic extensively, described the CCF as nothing short of one of the largest patrons of art and culture in the history of the world. Established in 1950, it promoted on the international scene the work of collaborationist academics such as Raymond Aron and Hannah Arendt over and against their Marxian rivals, including the likes of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.
They have one very important thing in common. They both support the alt-right. Fascists because they want to. Leftist because they’re purists.
They do not support the alt-right. What are you even talking about? “MAGA communists” almost never show up on Lemmy, and when they do they are quickly shown the door. And Marxist are neither “purists,” “idealists,” nor “utopians,” which you’d know if you’d read any Marxist theory.
They support the alt-right by being overly idealistic and failing to partner with liberals and more moderate leftists to make progress.
Divide and be conquered.
Partnering with liberals is idealistic. They always stab you in the back at the first opportunity.
I disagree. Socialists often tactically partner with liberals on shared goals, despite the risks. Knowing that, when forced to choose, liberals have historically sided with fascists, because fascists will never upend capitalism.
It makes tactical sense to partner with liberals in some contexts, like a national liberation struggle, and to put aside lesser contradictions to focus on the principal contradiction. It doesn’t make sense to partner with liberals while under capitalism, especially not within the imperial core. The liberals in congress don’t have a shared goal in stopping fascism.
Look at what you made me do!
I wouldn’t have considered genocide, if you weren’t so idealistic!!
If you had only partnered up with the people who only care about money, we could have returned to the status quo.
Mate, the goal is to be idealistic. No one is perfect, but we want to strive for what’s the best and hope we reach there some day.
Yes, but not at the cost of letting fascists win. Harm reduction is real.
Sure, harm reduction is good. That’s what’s been happening for the past century.
But you give the liberals an inch and they’ll take a mile. They’re only “liberals” as long as they’re making money of others, as soon as something goes wrong they’re first in line asking for government handouts. That’s why the liberals will always prefer fascist over left wing idealists, because they’re opportunists more than anything else. They’ll backstab you and vote in fascists if they think they can make more money with them. That’s exactly what’s happening in the US.
We need new politics where hating on the LGBTQ+, immigrants, women, and putting money over the lives of few isn’t considered a political leaning.
I have read a lot of marxist and anarchist theory. All marxist theories did is to confirm that the anarchists are right.
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You’ve once again shown your empty accusations and insults, contrary to OP’s advice in this post.
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Calling an admin an alt account is a bold play.
I have no problem with them being here, FYI
Why thank you, one of my thousands of no good, bad faith alt accounts.
Proof?
This is an example of what being nice is for the average Lemmy user
Jesus Christ you people can’t even comment without going ballistic at each other over the slightest thing
I wouldn’t call this the “average” Lemmy user, but there is a minority of very loud users who make it seem that way at times.
If we want this to be a pleasant place, users need to report them, and mods & admins—who, I cannot stress enough, do this labor for free or at most peanuts—need to deal with them.
https://join-lemmy.org/docs/code_of_conduct.html
Oh, not them. I suppose they meant among non-right wingers. I always found quite explicit they aren’t welcome here. Not today, not ever.
Don’t apologize.
