mindbleach @ mindbleach @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

Federated sites overlap with leftist-adjacent interests. Software freedom, opposition to Facebook, weird illustrated porn, that sort of thing. Even if we're not leftists - we're the people who heard about Lemmy and went "oh, like Mastodon."

Many leftists were also familiar with Mastodon, because they saw Twitter as a harassment engine. Every system is perfectly designed to produce its observed results. Even before Elmo took over, Twitter was a continuous source of misery by design, if not on purpose. Now it's definitely on purpose. And it's been tilted against leftists, specifically, for a long damn while.

Some people are here because the mainstream options were a threat to their physical safety.

Meanwhile, right-wing assholes aren't leaving Twitter until they run out of victims. They just want an outgroup to yell at. They don't even like alternatives made for them specifically, because they can't stand each other, either. When they get tired of suffering their own company they'll migrate over to Threads. And then endlessly whine that Threads is "bias" against them, no matter how blatantly Zuck ignores their abuse and silences their victims.

Reddit was in a damningly similar situation, long before Spez decided to burn down every scrap of trust and goodwill. Some of us have been waiting on a better alternative for ten fucking years. There wasn't one. There still isn't. The bastards in control just made reddit itself worse, in ways that make even passive use feel like a failure and a betrayal. Spez could personally hunt me down and kick me in the groin, and it wouldn't leave me any less likely to waltz back in with a smile on my face. Dumb bastard made insane demands, killed the best interfaces, told us stupid lies, threw away our money, declared protest powerless, and threatened the people who do all of the fucking work on his empty box of a website... then says 'they'll come crawling back.' Nooo shit the first people out were principled self-organizing curmudgeons.

That aside:

People here reasoning from what they pretend "conservative" must mean are actively doing harm. Political conservatism obeys none of the other dictionary definitions. It's just a label. It's the label chosen by generations of influential public figures whose general philosophy is "Well someone has to be the king." That is their only constant, and it is a thought process baked into the human brain. It is our default. That's why dealing with it is such frustrating bullshit.

Politics being genetic, of course.

What?

God save us from the delusion that whatever happens was secretly the prediction of assholes in power.

Sometimes... people... fuck up.

Sometimes people fuck up real big.

These people got caught lying on tape. Maybe they're not as smart as you'd like.

What servitude would DeSantis need to be forced into, to develop skills such as basic human empathy?

Fake scenarios like asking 'what if I support a bigot without being a bigot?'

Fascism is a suicide cult. All forms are ultimately self-destructive because it's an irrational exploitation of humanity's tribal instincts. Your brain's default mode is 'ingroup good, outgroup bad.' What people naturally do with language and reasoning is justify those beliefs by working backwards. They'll stick the word "because" in the middle. That's not the same thing as having an argument... or an opinion. It's a slogan. It's signalling to other members of the tribe, so they'll rally and fight, instead of backing down or splitting off.

Well now it doesn't make any dang sense.

Exciting times will do that.

This denial is worse than any vulgar insult.

We're talking about violent bigots. People responsible for mob violence against democracy, and state violence against women and minorities. Stop fucking pretending we 'just don't like it' when you try to make us less than human.

A lot of racist jokes are funny as hell. They're still racist. I could use some to illustrate any facet of comedy, and the explanation would be a true and useful guide to constructing a joke... and the examples would still be extremely racist.

There's countless good jokes. Some are beloved by racists.

There's countless Star Wars jokes. Some are beloved by fascists.

This is one of them.

Some jokes affect real life. "Thanos did nothing wrong" is inseparable from legitimately dangerous Malthusian nonsense, and there's a razor-thin margin between joking about space Nazis and full-throated endorsement.

The only difference between this and "Austrian veteran and artist attacked in bar brawl" is the facade of popular fiction. Both can be jokes - sincerely, insincere. There's ample room for humor in absurd counter-factual exaggeration, where half the laughter is over how much of an asshole someone would have to be, to say that. But sometimes those posts are from actual assholes. Sometimes 'calm down, it's a joke' is how trolls spread awful ideas, with all opposition silenced.

Even when that opposition is politely saying: can we not? Let's don't. Here's why.

"The Soviet Union did fall circa 1990, though."

"Oh, so it's different people in charge of Russia now."

"Well..."

"Aside from anyone they respected enough to elect."

"Uh..."

"At least their neighbors are generally safe and separate."

"Hmm..."

Friendly reminder that "Empire did nothing wrong" jokes are largely rooted in sincere right-wing propaganda, which fits hand-in-glove with the denialist attitude necessary for contrarian takes on fiction with childishly straightforward morality.

The admins can push whatever stupid numbers they want. People were not somehow tricked into giving the site a second wind, by turning this desperate exploitation of a beloved icon into a vulgar billboard against the fucker selling us out, or by dumping all the soon-to-be-stolen awards onto comments asking what the fuck he thinks he's doing.

The nature of bad faith is that there is no right answer. Any response, including no response, will be twisted around and treated as victory, because the person being condemned for making shit up gets to make shit up. There are no circumstances where they don't go "Ah-HA!" There is no point scolding people for not doing the thing that would stop this, because that thing does not exist. People who care what's real just have to deal with it and act in spite of it.

Reddit has the worst per-user stats of any social media site, by an order of magnitude... and the bump in engagement here is bluntly saying it's time to leave.

Lemmy.world in a current web browser.

Show them footage of January 6th.

Half the problem is, that's where people are.

The network effect exists because adoption is a feature you can't design.

You can't spend engagement. It's not real.