The best thing you can do for the fediverse is just be kind
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Yeah. So much of our social media is structured to reinforce being combative. Even the upvote/downvote feature of Reddit/Lemmy etc has this effect of rewarding performativity over substance. People start competing for points and start to interpret high point totals as the equivalent of winning an argument or saying something of substance.
Since it’s a lot easier to get upvotes if you’re pithy or snarky or unserious the whole mechanism that underpins this tech tilts people toward simplistic and aggressive rhetoric.
I don’t want to get too “the medium is the message” here and complexity in political discussions (or any discussions really) have been decreasing generation over generation - so it’s not just a social media problem. But social media seems to have broken so many of the traditional guardrails we’ve had against demagoguery. It’s going to take a lot to unwind it.
I agree. You can get a lot of positive reinforcement from sincere positive engagement (this post gave me lots, lol
) but it's exhausting work compared to just making a snide jab. And that really does profoundly shape peoples behavior over time.I'm a BIG believer in the idea that the medium makes the message, and how we design the mechanics of this space shapes how we behave. Erin kissane has talked about that some in her work studying the fediverse and it's really stuck with me.
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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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There it is
I wasn't looking for dirt, I was genuinely curious as to why you were having that experience. I'm not attacking you, just giving you my opinion which is ironic... Of course self reflection isn't for everyone and it's often easier to assume our problems are all external, but in reality it's usually a bit of both. Anyway, I hope your experience here gets better.
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Sometimes they literally just are. Not seen it on Lemmy but on Reddit I definitely interacted with users, age under 1 year, all suspiciously pro-Putin. It's rare and I'm looking for it, but still.
It's rare and I'm looking for it
Unfortunately not that rare of a POV to find. They just generally don't do the young account thing. Some are true believers. Others likely state actors. Don't see as many bots but the greater levels of transparency and lower active population probably makes it less worthwhile of an investment.
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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
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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.
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.
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Interesting, ivermectin has that intense of side effects when taken orally? Or do the pseudo-science people who think it cures covid just advocate dosing it ridiculously high?
By coincidence I actually use ivermectin topically for my rosacea, a skin condition. Being a anti-parasitic its useful fro reducing the amount of demodex mites that can aggravate rosacea in some people! I know in people it's mostly used for lice.
I was replying to someone that said they could use it to treat covid, which has lead to people dying. Guess I got reported by them and for some reason an admin thought it was meant as a threat?
That’s really interesting! Did you have any problems getting your hands on it when people started buying it for covid?
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Thats when I came here too. Sadly, spez had his yes man ban a lot of people and some bad ones broke containment because of it.
It’s gotten to the point here at Lemmy that I’m wanting to set up my two favorite communities. It’s just that they are so niche I can’t imagine them taking off. And my pleasure in them is of course derived from people who are FAR MORE into them than I am.
But I can’t even go back to that cesspool Reddit now even for the good stuff. Oh well.
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I was replying to someone that said they could use it to treat covid, which has lead to people dying. Guess I got reported by them and for some reason an admin thought it was meant as a threat?
That’s really interesting! Did you have any problems getting your hands on it when people started buying it for covid?
Gotcha, that sucks, but I'm happy you made the journey over to Lemmy!
And oh, no I only just started using it more recently. I don't think the topical kind was ever used by folks who thought it did something for covid anyway. I know there are also oral treatments for rosacea, but I'm not sure if oral antiparasitics are every used, since it's just on the skin of your face that matters.
It also only got a generic over the counter version more recently, if I remember right, but now you can get it as a lotion that's labeled for lice, but for some people it really helps with rosacea (rosacea is one of those really complicated multiple causitive factor health issues that can manifest in serveral different ways that we still only kinda sorta partially understand. Demodex mites seem to play a role in some people but not others, there's a lot of trial and error)
The perscription version sometimes perscribed for rosacea is called Soolantra I think, its really expensive so an over the counter generic is kindof a godsend for folks whose insurance won't cover it
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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.
You know what, I can respect that take. I was trying to tailor things to my audience, you're not wrong though
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Ik a few people who lean to the right economically but aren't in favor of all this authoritarian stuff
And they're not Nazis, you cant just generalize so broadly about what should or shouldn't be tolerated.
Ofc if someone is being blatantly racist that shouldnt be tolerated, but economic discussion is totally fineElecting republicans is in itself blatantly racist.
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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.
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Electing republicans is in itself blatantly racist.
You do realize that there are members of marginalized groups who have been elected as republicans
Like there's black republicans
Is voting for them 'blatantly racist'?
If you overuse language it loses some of its meaning -
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.
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I don't miss the thousands of obnoxious, foul mouthed folks on FB that I routinely blocked. Haven't experienced any of that on the fediverse yet.
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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.
Yeah, let's show them! ... how to be decent human beings by example.
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I totally agree with your message.
These days everyone who is not ultra-left easily gets labelled as Nazi, similarly everyone who brings up any rather left argument will be called a woke snowflake.
Thus, any dialog is immediately shut down. Listen, understand, exchange arguments.
That is what unites everyone who believes in liberal values.
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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
Honestly I'd expect nothing less. Almost everyone here is a Reddit refuge. We'd need a solid balance of different internet groups to not feel like Reddit. Tumblr, 4chan, Instagram, Twitch chat... for better or worse all have a very different feel from one another.
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Most people know this in some capacity, but it's not talked about enough: the shape of the platform massively shapes its culture. Every mechanism, intentional feature or not, is a factor in resulting user behavior and should be accounted for.
Reddit Karma was (shitty) reputation from the start, but Slashdot user IDs became one despite being mere sequential identifiers; negative user feedback such as downvotes can be harmful to communities (yet, users without an outlet may lash out in other ways e.g. reports); even how the platform communicates with users influences them; and so on.
I'm not saying you shouldn't be nice and incentivize others to do the same, but unless the system naturally leads to the desired behavior, you'll have a bad time in the long term because building culture by interactions doesn't scale. By the time you realize there's a shift, it's too late; interactions will compound and affect how the average user acts faster than you can try to course-correct.
I wish lemmy was more experimental, because by building a clone of reddit, we've copied too many of its faults. We've already got gatherings to complain about mods, and the one time devs considered changing a core component, discussion was killed by an onslaught of users. Problems with the current setup that were brought up then will likely never see that amount of people thinking about how to solve them.
Contrast with Mastodon, which gets crap for not being a more faithful copy of twitter, but their reasoning for not including quote-reblogs is understandable. They're now putting a lot of thought into how to add them safely. Not ignoring functionality users want, but also not ignoring how it will affect culture, that's compromise.
I'd like it if we could talk more about how our platforms work and, specifically, how they affect us.
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A big problem is too much politics, feels like politics is always brought up even in posts where it's not the topic of discussion. Just look at this post. Then if someone disagrees with your view they'll attack you and then they'll claim they "are on the right side". People have forgotten the golden rule.
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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
Report it - people jumping straight to insults are trying to shut discussion down which really isn't acceptable.
