Fediverse

I can definitely understand that. I think in a lot of ways that problem is driven by how much of a political echo chamber lemmy is. Any time there's a narower range of beliefs I feel like you can see those beliefs getting more extreme, or expressed in more extreme and toxic ways.

I honestly don't really know how to improve it given the state of the world. It feels like the range of political beliefs keeps getting compressed into two groups and it makes it harder and harder to tolerate the beliefs of those further from yourself. And for valid reasons.

And the more justified the contempt for people of other political views gets the harder it gets to figure out how, culturally, we manage the justified anger that comes from how deeply broken everything is.

Elon musk is doing actual literal Nazi salutes and peoples anger about that is justified. And at the same time I'm not sure what way of acting on that anger (and acting on the problem) yields anything other than radializing people teetering on the edge of extremism.

I'm glad I don't really see actual Nazis on lemmy. Its nice that there's less debate about the legitimacy of people's humanity.

And at the same time anger is deeply toxic to healthy interaction and drives behaviors that I genuinely don't think make the problems prompting people's anger any better.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts candidly, a lot of this thread is a love-fest and that's wonderful and puts a smile on my face, but it's at least as important to talk about the unhealthy aspects of the fediverse's culture

Hell yeah 😊

And I absolutely agree. Lemmy straight up isn't as big as reddit, it's important that there be stuff to see, but I think one of the best things about the fediverse is that it feels so much more like healthy, actual social interaction, and I think that's a strength we ought to celebrate and actively facilitate :)

Fuck yeah! I think that's the thing that makes the fediverse special :)

We all care enough about the online spaces we choose to inhabit that we leave the big platforms for something kinder. I think that's worth leaning into :)

I used to use reddit constantly, and did so for years. That level of hostility took over so gradually that I didn’t even consciously notice. I used Lemmy for a few weeks before it really sunk in that nobody had jumped down my throat over a minor, irrelevant issue (like a careless punctuation or grammatical error).

People here tend to give each other the benefit of the doubt, which had become virtually unheard of on reddit. Even when people make replies I don’t agree with, they’re usually discussing the point rather than the way that point is presented.

I will never, ever go back.

I think as early members of this small online space we have to potential to cement a kinder culture that can influence even what this platform is like many years from now, with users that won't be here for a long time!

People tend to match energy with the people they're engaging with. When you show people kindness they intuitively respond the same way, and when that's the culture, I think it can profoundly shape people's social behaviors :)

And this space being as small as it is, we all have an outsized impact on that culture compared to something like reddit where any given user makes up such a teeeeny tiny fraction of the social interaction there.

We can all create that kind of culture that leads with kindness and prompts others to follow suit

Thank you very much, I do my best :)

By the way I love your username lol. Take care!

Thank you my friend, you too!

Baby steps! :) I found it helped me build the habbit if I kept an eye out for posts that could be cross posted to smaller more niche communities

There are a lot of times where a post only gets posted on a bigger community because it has enough traffic, and smaller niche communities would benefit from folks crossposting it around!

Oh neat, being younger there's a lot of how folks approached the web in its earlier years that I don't have any experience with, and think there's a lot to learn from

I love that!

This is a whole different train of thought (mine is, I won't speak for yours) and I don't wanna derail my original thought but that's a thing I've been thinking about a lot lately.

I agree with you, and subscribe to the idea of tolerance as a social contract that, once broken, is no longer owed to the one who broke the contract.

At the same time, I've also learned that very explicitly, feeling persecuted is a requisite ingredient in radicalizing people into hate groups. And that at an individual scale, it's generally undeserved compassion that helps deradicalize them. We know this from the accounts of people who managed to leave hate groups- a little while ago there was really good (and long) interview with someone who used to be leader of a white nationalist group where he talked a fair bit about that idea, since he now works with a nonprofit that helps families and friends support and deradicalize loved ones, but it's far from the only account

At present I'm really not sure how I personally reconcile those two things I belive to be true. The Nazi bar analogy is real.

I know wading into this more specific conversion runs the risk of immediately derailing what I was trying to start a discussion about, but I figured I'd share my thoughts. If anyone reads this and has thoughts to share (though I'd prefer not to get 50 comments just saying I suck for having complicated views on what we do about the predicament the US and world is in with the rise of fascist ideology. I'm interested in what's effective in terms of fixing the problem just like you are) I'd be interested in hearing them. I'm still looking for a way to synthesize my beliefs into a coherent whole.

Edit: thought I'd add the interview for anyone curious. I don't see everything exactly the way he does but I think understanding the problem and exactly how it works is necessary of we're going to address it, and I think his account is a really useful glimpse into certain aspects of how that world works

I think part of pleasantness is not bringing politics into things that weren’t intended to be about politics.