Hail Satan.

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Sharkey

  • 1 Post
  • 80 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • I miss what Facebook used to offer in the earlier days. I miss being able to keep up friends and family and having a central place for everybody to just share things. It was nice for a while. It was also just nice having an account where I felt comfortable putting my face and name out there; I know that may seem kinda weird to most people, but there was something weirdly relieving about having one place where I could just say “This is me” without using a screen name and feel right about it. Facebook used to be that place for me.

    Then once Facebook started to monetize every pixel on my screen and every post on my feed was just a link to something I couldn’t care less about or trying to sell me something or infect me with something else, it became unbearable. The last time I logged into Facebook, I scrolled for probably five whole minutes before I was able to find a single, actual post written by somebody I actually cared about. Everything else was just links, freebooted videos, or algorithmically-boosted content designed to suck my attention away from the thing I actually wanted to look for.

    I’d honestly love it if there was a better Facebook-like platform on the Fediverse. Or even not on the Fediverse, just a place where I can actually keep in touch with the people I know instead of just internet strangers. Since ditching Facebook, the internet has definitely felt like a much lonelier place for me.




  • I generally use the body text field for a snippet of the page I’m linking to, usually a paragraph or two that I felt were important takeaways from the article (so that people who generally only skim headlines may still see something useful from the article).

    If I’m linking to an article, I personally don’t like putting my own opinion in the OP, itself. I’d rather it be a top-level comment, instead, as it feels like grandstanding on somebody else’s work when it’s in the OP body.










  • At what point is engaging in HP fandom distasteful?

    I’d say when the material that makes up the HP franchise, itself, becomes distasteful. I’m not hugely invested into HP, but last I’ve seen of it, the franchise is LGBT-inclusive, directly in spite of Rowling. I see no reason why one shouldn’t be allowed to enjoy the story.

    Yeah, Rowling may still profit from it. But the bitter pill is that she’s allowed to. People are entitled to make money from their IPs, it’s how society enables creatives. Just because somebody’s a shit person doesn’t mean they’re not allowed to earn a living. And realistically, she’s going to make money from it, anyway. Blocking a Lemmy instance has literally zero impact on Rowling’s bottom line, making the act little more than posturing.

    The HP material, itself, is fine. And the HP community largely seems inclusive toward LGBT fans. I can’t think of any reason to consider liking it or talking about it to be distasteful. Rowling’s a TERF shitbag, and I think most of the HP community is generally onboard with that notion, too.




  • Man, the gatekeeping is wild these days.

    You’re allowed to like a story you grew up with as a child and also dislike its bigot author, they’re not mutually exclusive. Talking about Harry Potter doesn’t give Rowling magical transphobe powers; Voldemort logic doesn’t work in real life. The rightsholders have already taken great strides to distance the HP property from Rowling and adopt it to be more inclusive in spite of her TERF bullshit. It’s not a hate crime to like a story about child wizards anymore.

    If people want to geek out about some books or movies they like, they should be allowed to do so without the insinuation that they’re by default enabling transphobia or something. But the beauty of the Fediverse is that your community has just as much right to exist as any other, so as long as you can maintain a healthy, hate-free community that isn’t posting a bunch of pro-Rowling bullshit, I say go for it. Anyone who would block your instance for merely existing probably isn’t worth your time, anyway.