I’m not myself familiar with that subreddit but that’s interesting.

…huh. I didn’t see that coming.

Honestly better left wing than right wing I think, even if they’re stance on the wing is… questionable, to say the least. Though I say that with the benefit of hindsight.

I’m not proud of it, but long ago I myself fell into some of those spaces actually. And not to get into all of it now but I can absolutely see what leads one to have those perspectives, and I also think to some extent I am uniquely qualified to challenge those perspectives becaus, and ofc this doesn’t go for everyone, but for many I’ve associated with the hardline posturing comes more from a defensive paranoia perspective than any will to opress or subjugate anyone. That was certainly always true for me, I’m trans ffs, I never wanted to opress anyone. But the opinion you’ll run into at the heart of the authoritative left wing is that control is necessary to secure freedoms and prevent the new society from collapsing from outside influence. If you can challenge that core assumption (and also misinfo about Soviet Union etc. but that’s a whole other topic), you can actually make meaningful dialouge.

But by far the thing that kept me in those communities for the longest time was the sense that anyone on the outside would not accept us for our beliefs and could not be trusted, and when all my friends and social connections were in those spaces it was in my interest not to deviate from the line, leading to a kind of spiraling of radical opinions in an echochamber. The thing that brought me out of it was an anarchist extending her hand and us just getting along well on a fundamental level, and not judging me for the beliefs that I’d fallen into or calling me stupid or anything else but just challenging them on an intellectual basis and having evidence to back up her arguments.

I suppose the best takeaway from all of this is that if any time you push someone away, you simultaneously push them closer towards the group that is influencing them. And I get it, sometimes it really isn’t worth the energy to deradicalize people, especially those who are truly fargone. But I think it’d be a mistake to ostracize everyone from the outset.

Sorry for the long response, I got a lot more vulnerable here than I was really planning on 😅

Thanks for listening to my ted talk lmaoo

Oh.

They’re libertarians aren’t they.

This is part of why I, who am part of Gen Z, am actually really thankful that I didn’t get access to iPad until 9 (first gen, it might still be around here somewhere, kinda wonder if it’ll ever become a relic) and phone until 13, but did have access to a super old windows computer. It taught me how to install mods in Minecraft. It was astronomically difficult for me at that time with my limited understanding and all the fake green “Download here!” buttons that kept duping me and installing tons of bloatware and even malware onto the PC (yet another reason why AdBlock is a privacy and security concern, honestly deadass don’t let kids use a computer without it). But eventually I caught on and got good at identifying the scams from a young age and was able to teach other kids, and even eventually got into command stuff and writing my own mods. I memorized all of the block and item IDs before the flattening, but after that I was so disheartened that all my memorization was useless I kinda just stopped and never got really good at it. But still, just from that alone my computer knowledge was way ahead of other people’s around that time, and you might even say it set the foundation for my now linux-using open-source-contributing fediverse-loving self hahaha

Why is lemmy.ml full of assholes? Wasn’t that one of the original lemmy instances? Genuinely asking

I have no advice for you but as someone relatively new to lemmy I’m trying to understand all this drama. It seems like hexbear is leftist which I thought was cool (full disclosure tho I’ve not checked it out at all), but this just seems… really extreme. That joke comment reply probably wasn’t the best thing to say but it’s crazy to me that you didn’t even get any dialouge opened up or anything, just an outright ban? And it seems like the person who reported it had no frame of reference for Stardew. Sorry this happened :< Seems kind of knee-jerk on their behalf. I hope you can open a dialogue, clear things up and get your account back <3

The thing is that is exactly what I mean by having a problem with people who force their religious values onto others, which is expressly not okay. But I know plenty of people, be they Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or whatever else who practice their faith in their own lives and do not disrupt the lives of others according to their beliefs. As a matter of fact, the vast majority of religious people I have met and know in real life are like this. Christian nationalists are different, they don’t respect the beliefs of others and want to force their faith onto other people. That’s where the line is. What I have a problem with is those who attack people who are not past that line, who are practicing their faith in their own lives without forcing anything onto others.

Ugh, not surprised. Apparently even sci hub is blocked in the UK

Wow, that is pretty ridiculous

Really I prefer the word secular for myself, and for me that means I am comfortable within my own ignorance. Scientifically, we can neither prove nor disprove the existence of a god/gods, afterlife, etc. They are unfalsifiable, and therefore inproveable either way. So I just say I am comfortable not knowing. I neither assert the existence of god or the nonexistence of god, because I have no way to know either is true. That, and as I stated previously I just don’t like some of the connotations aetheism has gotten. Long ago I used to be a very loud, annoying, self-proclaimed atheist. But eventually I realized that just as there is no way to prove theism, there is no way to prove atheism. That, and I recognized that in my efforts to “spread” atheism and debunk religion I’d basically become what I was originally trying to “fight against,” essentially. Now I should be clear that I very much do still massively criticize those who try to exercise their religion onto others. I’m trans so I’m very used to it at this point. But I know plenty of religious people from all kinds of different religious backgrounds who practice in a way that is accepting of all people and does not impact those who do not share their faith, and I really see no problem with that.

This is such a huge problem in atheism communities, which is why I don’t spend any time in them despite being secular and non religious myself (yeah, I honestly don’t even like using the term “atheist” anymore). Religious or not, you shouldn’t be telling people what to believe or how to believe. That goes for hardline Christian nationalists just as much as it goes for hardline Atheists attacking anyone of faith. If it’s not hurting anyone, let people believe what they believe.

That inability to passively keep “consuming content” is honestly a big strength of Lemmy for me. On Reddit I can sometimes get sucked in for hours on end, and I can get mentally exhausted pretty quickly but just keep scrolling for “the next thing.” The fact that you can’t really do that on Lemmy has made it a much healthier choice for me to spend time here, and I’ve only just started (kinda – it’s complicated).

Interactions here feel so much more personal too, which I like. Even with all the various instances and communities, we’re also all part of the same community. And that can kinda extend to the fediverse as a whole too. What we have in common is that we all want an alternative to the corporate social media landscape that gives more freedom to the users, and enables interchange between platforms to discourage monopolizing walled gardens. It really is fantastic.

There’s no way this is real 😭