This essay describes the transition as we can readily observe it happening not just in social media on the internet but also in movies & TV & every other aspect of modern life as well. We see sitting members of Congress use the same principles: if you can do something in 5 seconds, and then move on to the next, and the next, and the next, and the next, and so on, then spending 5 hours let alone 5 days, weeks, months, or years on a project becomes downright “bad”. The latter obviously not meaning in an objective sense but rather a return-on-investment (ROI) calculation, if maximizing profits (or upvote karma or whatever) is one’s goal - and for a Congressperson, that very much is their job, to maximize votes or at least pass the threshold to ensure safe re-elections, then switch to expending that political capital to enrich one’s own pockets (oh uh… and help people no, enrich one’s own pockets exclusively, apparently, more’s the pity).

Aside from that, the paradox of intolerance really is a fundamental principle of the universe: imagine that you had a pen full of a thousand sheep, and you let in one wolf - let’s even say to be kind, b/c he’ll die if you do not? The next day you somehow only have 999 sheep… and you let in 2 more wolves. The next day you have 996 sheep, and you let in 3 more wolves, and so on. It won’t be long before you have no sheep and only wolves left. B-b-but, they PROMISED me that they’d behave!? They PROMISED me that they wouldn’t eat MY face off sheep!?!? We ignore this at our peril. You can do the experiment for yourself: go to Lemmy.ml without being logged into an account and just going through the first couple of pages, count the number of posts that make fun of the Western world - especially the EU and even more especially in particular the USA - or perhaps it’s easier to count those that don’t? (granted, there’s a bunch of purely-Linux ones that do not, and sometimes you’d need to visit the post to read the comments rather than see it instantly from the title) Like here’s an example that I saw just prior to the recent USA elections:

B-b-bUt BoTh SiDeS eQuAl ThO?! Except… they are not though? So many Muslim leaders in America told their followers to vote for Harris - b/c while what Biden did was not great, it will be as nothing compared to what Trump will do - although many waited until sth like 3 days before the election, hoping to wrangle every last ounce of possible concession out of the deal, though it may have been too late, b/c people simply don’t follow the news all that quickly (it would seem). In fairness, there were many issues irt that election, and this was only one of them. It does not change how the Alt-Left tries to put a “spin” that is hyperbolic, false, and most relevant: misleading to the point of being actually disinformation rather than merely misinformation. It is so easy to prop up such a strawman: “none such exist” as want to stop the chaos? Bitch, we ALL want to stop it though?! Well, liberals do, the conservatives want to fucking JOIN in making it happen FASTER! Also, it’s not like Russia actively doing genocide in Ukraine, or China to the Uyghurs, etc. (oh wait…), so I guess somehow it’s “better” to just put Trump in where he will do as he already said: write a blank check for Israel to do whatever they want from now on, including even more genocide. You know, b/c BoTh SiDeS eQuAl, and b/c if someone says it on the internet, then it MUST be true I guess?!

So yeah, according to these people, we are “right-wingers”. B/c people in the USA voting for Kamala Harris rather than voting for Donald Trump and then violently overthrowing all of society is… “right-wing”… somehow?

I will take every last ounce of diversity, from someone arguing in good faith. But I will take none from someone arguing in bad faith. Even if they call me a Nazi, or a coward, or whatever they want to call me - those manipulation tactics don’t matter, what matters is what I choose to do in response.

Exactly what I’m saying. One mark of an extremist is often a kind of moral purity test of their ideology. I too was shocked to find out that I am considered “right-wing”, by the extremist left on places such as Lemmygrad.ml, hexbear.net, and lemmy.ml. The latter is federated with by almost everyone, and they will call you and me as “right-wing”.

Now whether that’s “true” or not… well actually, it is though - if you do not approve of actually irl really murdering your landlord, then you are “right-wing”, in comparison to them. Then again, they also say that they love North Korea - but how many of them have actually picked up and moved there, hrm? 🤣

So I think we are “centrists”, on the global scale. To the left of the Alt-Right, and to the right of the Alt-Left. My language may be odd though.

To people whose purview pertains to the set of “alternative facts”, whether left or right wing, I simply cannot converse - no matter how hard I’ve tried. However to centrists I seem to have little to no trouble making myself understood, with only the slightest efforts? i.e., anyone at all acting in good faith I can outright enjoy discourse with, while anyone acting in bad faith I cannot.

So that is my criteria: it has nothing whatsoever to do with “beliefs”, political or religious or cultural or otherwise, and everything to do with attitude, particularly the willingness to converse with compassion or at the very minimum tolerance to others’ POV.

Does that make sense?

They’d probably like it, or at least enjoy your having started the fight they were spoiling for.

I have feelings about the state of the world but corporations tell me that caring for things other than their products is wrong.

Diagnosis: empathy.

Their response:

If you are talking about some brand new instance that you just created, you can construct a URL with the community name to find it the first time, then someone from your instance needs to be the first to subscribe/join it. After that, someone just needs to search for it using its name from the Communities link at the top of your instance homepage - making sure that All rather than Local is selected at the top.

PieFed will pull in old posts, I think Lemmy won’t, but either way the old comments and votes are a lost cause, however newer ones (after possibly a bit of a delay, maybe 24 hours unless there’s a larger backlog of things to sync) will automatically sync up from then on (additional caveats exist like locked/removed posts).

So for example to get to the !AskUSA@discuss.online community, you’d go to https://yourinstanceurlhere/c/AskUSA@discuss.online and join (e.g. https://lemm.ee/c/AskUSA@discuss.online is a functional link).

Caveat: the instance (Discuss.Online in the aforementioned example) must already be federated with, which you should see in the https://yourinstanceurlhere/instances, and not also defederated with (lemm.ee barely defederates from anything, but most instances have a much more substantial list of spammers and gore and bad-faith instances that they curate so their users don’t have to do so individually). An easy way to get there: go to homepage, scroll all the way down and click Instances; to see the defederated list click the Blocked Instances tab at the top of that.

But from your current instance lemm.ee, all of this has almost certainly been done for you, as iirc it is the #3 largest instance across the entire Fediverse. Just make sure that searching the Communities list is set to All rather than Local!:-)

Edit: but as for how to discover the community names in the first place, simply browse some existing instance like lemm.ee, you don’t even need an account to see most of them (those not marked as internal-only).

Not everyone wants that, but excellent point about the fact that some do:-).

And there, as now, it would be nice to constrain things.

Though you mentioned the rather powerful counterargument earlier that this was a MAJOR event, and it’s understandable that it’s leaking.

True, and btw I don’t mean that there is not good/great reasons for such even - people are DYING.

I was just pushing that thought since we were initially responding to:

I just wish the top posts on the meme pages were more than just an anti-capitalist caption and a vaguely related image.

It’s creating an environment where people who can’t handle the cultural shifts (e.g. not everyone is neurotypical) are having to heavily curate their experiences.

Omg !tenforward@lemmy.world is also amazing, check it out! Also there’s Risa and the Star Wars memes etc. - there are so many fantastic memes communities available:-).

Separately, you may be interested to know that the entire “vibe” of Lemmy has changed in the last two weeks. Very seriously, check out an instance where you are not logged in and just take a peek at what the most popular content is lately. I’m not suggesting that you wallow in it but you should know what’s going on lately bc it affects the future of us all.

Okay so yeah for actual conservatives totally. The Alt-Right is never going to be convinced no matter how many “facts” you explain to them anyway.

But you are considered a right-winger too, as well as I, by the likes of the folks in hexbear and Lemmygrad and lemmy.ml. We don’t view ourselves that way, but it’s the truth: compared to the likes of the Alt-Left, we legit are more “right-wing” than they are. And for good reason: e.g. we may not appreciate them but we’ve never actually murdered our landlords.

Totally. Maybe we should invent some kind of… oh I dunno, ideological purity test? Surely that would not eat our faces off, hrm? Surely we can exclude only “them”, while keeping “us”.

Smh, it’s always the same. People don’t even see it.

Not me, I’m salty about it:-) 😔 😭

The top Google hit to an instance isn’t “here” but rather Lemmy.ml (DuckDuckGo chooses Lemmy.World, but as long as we are talking normies here…). Lemmy.ml’s default method of showing posts is Local, rather than All. Combined, this means that a mainstream normal person will see first primarily the Alt-Left propaganda machine pushing for the violent overthrow of capitalism and Western society, and then will NOT see so much of all the cute cartoons and Star Trek memes and such. Especially prior to the USA election, there was very much an obvious bias promoting the idea that BoTh SiDeS sAmE.

Your approach used on Reddit of pointing to a highly specific instance recommendation, especially one that has defederated from Lemmy.ml, is carefully crafted to avoid the scenario I outlined above from happening. And irl it’s helpful to do the same: don’t say that you use “Lemmy”, bc that has a very pronounced reputation.

Conversely though: you are considered a right-winger by some (Lemmy.World = neoliberal bastion of not extreme enough Leftists). (And to be extra clear: me as well:-)

I agree that we must exclude trolling behaviors and those who refuse to not do them, but not bc of their beliefs and rather bc of their intolerance to anyone who disagrees. But by the same token, we must not become them in the process.

This would exclude both the Alt-Right, as well as the Alt-Left, leaving us centrists in the middle. And a week ago I would have added: “who don’t want to violently overthrow all of society”, although now I’m not so sure that a goodly fraction of Lemmy agrees with that anymore.

Pro-Tip: do NOT tell people irl that you use Lemmy. 100% of the times I’ve done this, I get the most horrible looks from them. It took me a long time to figure out why, but the short explanation is that the Alt-Left is here, so it’s equivalent to saying that you use Truth Social, just on the other side.

Sadly, I still don’t see pictures being displayed on lemmy.cafe - perhaps that problem was unrelated, or the upgrade process isn’t entirely finished yet.

On the bright side, while the top instance hit for “Lemmy” in a Google search is “lemmy.ml”, the top DDG hit is “Lemmy.World”. Not only does LW have ~80% of all Lemmy users but it also shows a default post sort using All rather than Local as ML does. Thus while the chief takeaway from a normie user going to ML is “wow, these guys really hate the USA/Western world” and “bUt BoTh SiDeS eQuAl ThO”, the takeaway from using DDG to find LW is a much more positive experience of “Lemmy”.

So if DDG searches of Lemmy are not always better than Google, they are least sometimes are.:-)

The presence of the high end of the extreme is what blew me away though. On Reddit I had given up all hope bc it never happened (even from myself, as I kept becoming more defensive, more snarky but less kind) while here the fact that it sometimes, heck even often happens, is just… outstanding!:-) 😍

Also the low end of the extreme is concentrated into specific instances, such that blocking Lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net will improve someone’s experience on the Fediverse by ~90%, and then blocking users from lemmy.ml (with the PieFed Lemmy alternative, or either the Sync or Connect Lemmy apps, or lemmy.cafe, dubvee.org, or quokk.au at the instance admin level) improves by a further 90% I found.

So the structure of the curve matters greatly here, to someone’s quality of experiences in the Fediverse.:-)

PieFed allows you to block all users from an instance of your choice without needing admin approval. The Lemmy apps Sync and Connect do also. So I’ve already managed to defederate from Lemmy.ml personally, aside from lemmy.cafe, dubvee.org, or quokk.au that have all done that at the admin level.

Although it sounds like you meant more that so many communities are still on that instance - which is fine - and don’t have alternatives yet elsewhere, which is not fine. If you can, perhaps consider making just one and modding it to help it grow. It won’t fix everything but it will help, and if 9 other people did likewise then that’s 10 communities that people would not have had access to without those group efforts:-).

Little by little, I think that we don’t have to consider places such as hexbear.net as part of “us” anymore. Perhaps it will take the further development of Mbin, PieFed, and Sublinks to accomplish that for Lemmy.ml. Otherwise we simply will progressively give up while the place dies slowly around us, as people leave and new ones refuse to join.

And either way, it takes effort tp fight against those natural inclinations.

Agreed but I want to push you to go further: it’s not just politics that has been so influenced.

Even Google searches - once world-renowned for their recall and precision and overall helpfulness, now are shit. Reddit as well. Twitter… well, apparently was always a hellhole? :-P YouTube was not though - until it was bought by Google.

Enshittification destroys all that it touches. Even/especially governments. Though the same happened to Rome, so many thousands of years ago. And to Russia too, more recently, despite it ostensibly calling itself “communist”/leftist.

I do think that there was a plan to help move it along, but I also think that it might have been an inevitable consequence of (more or less) entirely unfettered capitalism, and that those two worked together to destroy a nation that once was struggling far less than it seems to be doing lately?