Recently over the past couple of months, I’ve seen political discussion on every single social media (yes, that includes Lemmy) become a bear fight full of propaganda. Twitter/X is becoming a racist hellhole with people hating Jews, Black people and Muslims for existing whilst Lemmy is quickly fostering extremism. There is no where on the Internet, except for small chat channels, that is normal. What do I mean by normal?
Every single place is an echo chamber. Those inside it will shout that the other place is one, but we all know it. Lies and propaganda are constantly being cycled on Lemmy and the other Fediverse, but nobody bats an eye because “we’re better” and the other side is full of disgusting people. The same thing is happening in conservative spaces. I don’t want to talk about “race wars” “black fatigue” or “Jew bioweapons” nor do I want to talk about mass murder of billionaires and complete social destruction. I just want all of you to be normal.
Tribalism has influenced all of these spaces. In the information age, we have become the dumbest and most extreme political speakers in history. We no longer value the truth of information, just the optics. We sour the airwaves with filth, bringing it into schools, universities and even political administrations. We have madmen destroying the biggest country on Earth whilst people here defend the indefensible.
There is no more love in politics. No more “agreeing to disagree”, no more facts or intelligence. It’s just pure, unfettered hate.
Lemmy’s just the lesser of two evils. Whilst I post here a lot, let me be clear: this place is a shithole. Sure, you guys aren’t as washed and feral as conservatives, but you guys are still washed and feral. You guys infect everything with misplaced social justice, constantly finding to ruin everything on the basis of your apparent prejudice. You can’t wait to bring people down, and never the other way around.
There is no reason to talk about politics on the Internet anymore. Everyone is lying. Everyone has an agenda. Everyone is being a bad person.
I am so tired
Just a reminder: This community has a “No politics” rule.
However, as long as the discussion remains around the meta topic of political discussions, as a general concept, you may carry on.
“agree to disagree”. Wow man. I mean, maybe, that was possible, like 15 years ago. Possibly. But are you taking a look around? Israel committing outright genocide. Russia doing it’s best to do the same. America gearing up the 4th Reich. There is no room for the benefit of the doubt. There exists entire swathes of people ready to see me and my wife hang for our existence. I will not compromise, and you will have to pry that opinion from my cold dead body.
I think most popular online social spaces—here included—are unconducive to the kind of long-term, active effort conversations between individuals that might change someone’s mind. Instead, we gather as many as we can and just start shouting.
Shout it loudly into every medium and hope your fiefdom’s propaganda, however meager, pulls in some people over time. It’s all about that noise, because noise means engagement, and engagement is the de facto cost-effective tool in social media. Honest conversations are high-cost, dubious reward. They’re tiring. Jading. Hardly worth it. So, broadcasting ideas it is.
It’s fundamentally the same method the ruling class has used, and continues effectively using, to influence the world in any scale that actually matters, except they reach hundreds of millions every day while we dozen thousand few shout at each other in a dark alley.
Regarding online behavior, you might consider that Lemmy has largely failed to fix it. I posit that it barely ever tried, but also that it’s an extremely difficult problem because the root cause is us.
EDIT: after being so long winded myself I did go read your whole post XP
I’m going to be real honest and say I didn’t read your whole post, but I get and agree with the sentiment. Only thing I’ll add is that, to a degree, the easy creation of those echo chambers is the point of the fediverse. The point of picking your instance is to find like minded users you align with. This actually, to me, makes it feel more “normal,” like you describe. Your standard text and discord group chats feel homey. To me the word I like is “local”. Which is also the term the fediverse uses for browsing your instance. Just by filtering by local I know I’m seeing content from people I would happily join a voice call with, or even meet in person.
Maybe just browse by local more? Maybe move to a niche instance? Host an instance for your geographic area. Or use mastodon and just follow hashtags. These tools are exactly the point of the fediverse, to give you fine control over your feed and make a social media platform designed to be put down. You’ll see the new posts from people and about things you’re interested in and then you’re done. If you want to go find the toxicity of course it’s there, but that is in fact optional!
What is the adage? “If you let a single nazis into your bar, it is already a nazi bar”? We actually can and should be intolerant of the intolerant, otherwise tolerance will be wiped out. If you aren’t having fun because of the people in your particular echo chamber, find a different one. Healthy echo chambers exist, and I generally refer to that as community. I often call my instance and the board I mod “the comm” when talking about them. I think this more local feeling helps people put their humanity back into social media and actually get to know each other. Anonymity really twists certain people, but to me federated social media helps remind me there’s a human just like me on the other end of the keyboard.
Depends on which channels and groups you join. I have left IG, X, FB etc. the tone is (still) good on Bluesky, mastodon or lemmy… but naturally only if you unsubscribe any channel that’s too political, and if you block people that you find obnoxious. I downvote a lot too. You could now argue that Ive created my own echo chamber, but it isn’t much different from my life in the 80s; you dont have to listen and argue with everyone.
So many people sit here in the safety of Lemmy dunking on Republicans but everyone gets a vote at the end of the day so it’s all for nothing unless you actually change people’s minds.
And changing minds is difficult, and by all accounts requires kindness and understanding rather than blame and dehumanizing.
I get frustrated with how most outspoken people on the left seem to take the easy answer of “they’re evil!” when talking about people who disagree with them
Didn’t bother saving off / making note of where I saw it, but was just browsing the comments of another thread and saw someone saying the only answer to anything slightly conservative is to “ridicule and make fun of them”. This tactic seems to cause middle of the road ish people bunker down instead of being converted, which only contributes to the extremism we see today (at least that’s the way I see it).
Propaganda works yo, you ain’t changing minds yourself. A swell of like minded people could turn some heads, but without proper amplification this isn’t going to happen either. To put it perfectly, those in charge of our media have us over a barrel.
This one is nothing new though and has been happening since the inception of the US and before it in other countries. Separating fact from fiction, reality from propaganda, objective reality from the one we have constructed in our head is an incredible undertaking. It takes a lifetime to do this and no one cares if you accomplish it.
Everyone wants instant gratification nowadays, and that doesn’t go well with changing minds which takes a long-term approach and some tact.
My favorite horseshoe theory going on right now is the far right and the far left joining Thiel in his vision of not having to rule with popular consent. People can’t be convinced so why bother they say. Blinded by the fact that their ideas are unapproachable and moronic
My favorite horseshoe theory going on right now is the far right and the far left joining Thiel in his vision of not having to rule with popular consent.
You clearly actually don’t seem to even grasp even fundamental basic aspects of leftist ideology lol, that is a hilarious statement to a leftist because it makes it obvious you made a billboard showcasing your ignorance all by yourself.
You guys infect everything with misplaced social justice, constantly finding to ruin everything on the basis of your apparent prejudice.
Absolutely agreed on this one. I like Lemmy because there’s no ads and at least mods and admins intentions are honorable. However, amongst the users there’s certainly some hostile, nutty, tribal types around. There’s a variety of topics about which any comments but breathless support for the majority opinion will get you brigaded and downvoted to hell.
I’m not quite ready to agree that we’re the same as a conservative echo-chamber. We don’t do nutty conspiracies like white genocide in south africa for example. We don’t do double standards on the same scale like accepting fancy planes from terrorists.
The only thing special about Is Lemmy is it hasn’t attracted the masses yet. People love to complain there is not enough people here, but coming from Reddit, Dig, Facebook, Myspace, etc I can say more people will just make this place worse.
There is plenty of love but also plenty of hate. There is a reason politics and religion discussion are banned in bars.
As always your take is garbage, but that is the result of GIGO. You are a product of what you see and interact with. You can’t rise above the quagmire of shit we are all in, and that is the point. You are a product of what you are around and putting on the blinders does not help.
We are all stuck in this together, we can’t exist without each other. People much greater than me have already laid all this out. Take a break, step back, and make some room to breathe. We are only here for a short time and the only thing that you can truly moderate is your life for brief moments.
The world is going to take you for a ride whether you like it or not. You will be influenced whether you like it or not. Your life will come crashing down through no fault of your own. Take what little control you have and run with it. Here is wishing a little bit of peace and happiness in your life, good luck and goodbye.
There is plenty of love but also plenty of hate. There is a reason politics and religion discussion are banned in bars.
Do you live in a place where the bars ban politics and religion discussion?
If people bring up politics where it has no place I just block them. I am very generous with the block button. Try me lol
I already ran that experiment. I blocked every user calling for violence or just generally writing mean-spirited comments - and in the end, my feed slowed to a complete halt because I had blocked virtually every active user here.
Nowadays I rely on content filtering based on keywords instead. You’ve got to be a serious jerk to get me to block you - and yeah, there are plenty of those people too.
You can either be ‘political’ or you can have politics done to you.
It’s no accident that political discussion is everywhere. The world is in crisis and a lot of us are not willing to go along to get along. So be tired and check out, but don’t complain when the jackbooted thugs knock on YOUR door.
You get an upvote but I hope you realize you’re in ‘politics’ whether you like it or not. The apathy of the masses is why the authoritarians are alllowed to take over.
This is what I keep telling my family. They’re all right wingers and the political conversations tend to end with “well I just don’t like how much you let it affect you…” (because they can’t refute any of my arguments with informed arguments of their own).
Like, no, I won’t dig my head in the sand “for my own sanity”. To check out, when politics affects every aspect of our lives, is insanity. Especially if you’re a minority living in a pre-authoritarian oligarchy like the US.
I don’t think they’re complaining about the fact that political discussion happens, but rather the quality of it. It’s not far off to say that it usually ends up as either a circlejerk within people’s own bubbles or a complete free-for-all mudslinging match - which, in the entire history of the internet, has never produced anything other than deepening the divide between opposing sides.
