Am I taking crazy pills or does the first panel does not reflect reality whatsoever? In my experience, Americans (the citizenry) regularly, openly, and loudly criticize and/or mock dictators and oppressive regimes, the federal government historically does not allow for normal business or trade to occur with them, and in several cases in recent history (for better or worse) the military physically intervenes.
Kirk
Your points are all correct, but I feel it's also important to remember that nobody owns and operates "Lemmy". It's entirely volunteer operated and while it has two full-time devs, they're paid by donations (and not very much). There is no budget or UX/UI department to do A/B onboarding testing or anything.
What I'm saying is that if there is something you feel needs changing nobody would stop you (in fact they would welcome you!) from rolling up your sleeves and trying to address it (like @Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com is doing with this community)!
I honestly don't bother with trying to explain what an "instance" is to people interested in leaving Reddit. I just say "get the app" since most users are on their phones anyway. The only time a new user needs to know about any decentralized/federation stuff is if they're using a web browser, where, yeah, it can be confusing. But apps hide all federation stuff. Just download it, make an account, and follow communities (or people in Mastodon's case).
Also thank you for sharing your perspective as a newbie in this community it's very helpful!
@rysiek@mstdn.social's blog is one of my favorites. He really understand the social aspect to a lot of modern technology.
I don't know if it's correct to say that Vulcan culture is unaffectionate, just thay they don't express affection in the way you are used to. Remember: Spock was played the way he was in the 1960s to demonstrate the distance humans are willing to go to tolerate other cultures, no matter how (literally in this case) alien.
There's definitely a lot to unpack in suggesting that their culture deserves to "fail" because they do not assimilate (lol) into your culture.