I came here around the time the rif app shut down, and the general vibe I get from this place is much more negative than when I joined. Is Lemmy growing more toxic or is it just my imagination?
I came here around the time the rif app shut down, and the general vibe I get from this place is much more negative than when I joined. Is Lemmy growing more toxic or is it just my imagination?
Lemmy users are much more entrenched ideologically than an average layman. We all have strong opinions and it can get pretty heated. I avoid posting inflammatory posturing if I’m self aware enough. But I’m just as human and fallible as the rest.
And they think the real world is reflective of what we talk about here. It’s truly bizarre. I’m terminally online, unemployed ATM, but I still get there’s an outside world.
Take all the Trump voter hate for example. Do they not truly understand how under and misinformed most Americans are? Watch Mamdami interview Trump voters in NYC. Not ONE was what we picture as MAGA.
Also, since Trump 1.0, people refuse to talk politics. We’re at a party last month and talking about my new, weird, .22 rifle. I started to bring up a thing in the Big Beautiful Bill that was on-topic and the only thing I find decent in it. “NO. We’re not talking politics.” “I’m NOT. I’m talking about one thing I think is cool and will help gun owners.” Jesus. Now we gotta dance on eggshells.
Um, that’s exactly why we are pissed off at them. It’s easier than ever to be informed yet people act like it’s harder, somehow. Pretty fucking enraging.
In my experience, no one but trumpers refuse to talk politics. And it’s because they want to remain actively ignorant. Can’t have anyone revealing the giant holes in their fucked worldview. You might turn them trans, after all.
Yeah, the total destruction of community and third-places is I think the #1 cause of the division of political discourse, but second is that people refuse to engage with other human beings on the topic. They watch TV or browse online, and they get one extremely biased view of the world. They don’t share it with other people where they could get other points of view.
It used to be people would get the paper and talk about it with each other, but that’s taboo now. You take it to an online community who all agree with you. There’s a reason why the infamous Thanksgiving family gathering caused strife. It’s because people were actually having discussions and disagreements. Disagreement is healthy, but people seem allergic to it now.
Well, many of us are on the spectrum whether that be ADD, ADHD, Asperger’s, or some other form of autism. Helps us to be highly technical and computer savvy, doesn’t help so much with attempting to reframe “right and wrong,” for most of us.
Unfortunately the very entrenchment, ideologically speaking, that these particular “character traits” cause most of us to have, are being celebrated as “immunity to propaganda” in the media. The reality is that we have an innate sense of right and wrong, and that shit can get skewed all over the place in your formative years. The only remedy I have seen for this is the person intentionally exposing themselves to other cultures.