Posts advocating class solidarity, or like this one, meta making fun of the drama? Absolutely yes! Capitalism = evil, I know! (caveats: on the large scale, when unregulated, etc.)

Posts mentioning how sharp guillotines can get? Nope. Especially when it explicitly goes against community or instance rules. This will not end well imho. Innocent people are going to get caught up, and overall society, having refused to learn from history (AGAIN) will need to relearn some lessons. Especially with today's level of surveillance... yikes! 😳

It's like someone spent zero minutes reading the dictionary definition of "anarchy" and decided to implement it online nonetheless. Fuck the "facts" about how that actually advocates for the return to a more tribal form of... hey, what it REALLY means is that anyone can do whatever they want, at any time! (unstated premise: but nobody else should have that freedom, only the "right" people)

I just unsubscribed from the Lemmy shitpost and microblog memes communities, and now my Subscribed feed is kinda boring AF except the stuff I've already seen today.:-( Fortunately there are tons of others - Star Trek, LOTR, Star Wars, we've got good content here.:-)

This mostly dashes any hopes I had about being able to recommend Lemmy to people irl one day.

It would be different if someone were to spin up their own instance - like lemmyusa.com just did, awesome! - or to create their own community, then they truly can do as they please. But why use someone else's hardware, go to someone else's home, and absolutely INSIST on doing whatever da fuq you want, not merely ignoring but flagrantly flaunting the rules? Bc of the "rightness" of the cause?

Okay then, so the philosophy used by the Alt-Right it is, apparently. I'm now calling it the Alt-Left. That term used to be made up and falsely applied - but no longer. 😢

[–] AnarchoSnowPlow@midwest.social 38 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

I wasn't gonna, but since you asked:

"You're a bootlicker."

[–] massive_bereavement@fedia.io 16 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

How dare you? His family built this country, by the way.

[+] OpenStars@piefed.social -16 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

Yup, there it is. My family qualified for food stamps, I've been homeless myself for a time, yet I'm a wealthy elite now, b/c someone on the internet didn't agree with what I said. Surely I never ever ever have to fear the rise of the "alternative facts" crowd here, b/c unlike Reddit we rise above such things on Lemmy.

Apparently I'm a dude as well - until someone decides that my tone isn't "masculine" enough I guess?

I can be whatever you all want me to be!? But fuck all that noise, I think I'd rather just be me:-P. I'll do it alone if I have to, but I'll sleep well at night all the same.

[–] misterdoctor@lemmy.world 21 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

“His family built this country by the way” was a reference to an episode of The Office, where a character pretends his name is Buttlicker and says that line. Pretty sure it wasn’t about you being an elite or any of that.

[–] massive_bereavement@fedia.io 6 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

It's not like they have fallen into a koi pond.

[–] misterdoctor@lemmy.world 4 points 4 weeks ago

It’s not about falling into the koi pond, it’s about how long it takes to get out

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social -3 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

Thanks. There was no /s, but I upvoted it (before you said this even) all the same - it somehow managed to come across humorous despite the lack of context? :-P

Edit: for anyone else: video clip.

[–] massive_bereavement@fedia.io 4 points 4 weeks ago

Because I'm awkward and lack any originality, if I say something odd, probably it's just me quoting some tv show/game/book/comercial/back of a salsa tin can.

I wish I had original thoughts, but too much TV as a child and my nickel licking passion killed enough neurons.

In the scale of masculinity I'll say you're between 3 and 75. I may say more, but may I need to see you struggle with a DIY repair enough that your pride may lead you to an early grave.

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social -3 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Upvoting bc I wanna.

Although I it's (far) worse than that I fear - I genuinely believe it. There is no "hope" for me it would seem.:-)

[–] AnarchoSnowPlow@midwest.social 18 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (2 children)

I generally don't engage this much with posts of these types, but you seem to be a person who is making statements in good faith. As such, I want to encourage you to look a bit more into those you might label the "alt-left" because I'm quite certain I fall into that category and there's a lot more than "anyone can do anything they want at anytime" to what we (in the US) were taught in school about things like historical Anarchist movements.

Namely: "Anarchy means no rules and no one is in charge! Burn everything!!!!"

If I were to sum things up as succinctly as possible I would say that the primary idea behind "anarchy" as a philosophy isn't a "return to tribalism" but a flattening of hierarchies. (Not to be confused with anarcho-capitalism, which is in practice very different with regard to hierarchy)

Boiled down to key concepts:

No one person is inherently better or more intrinsically valuable than another person.
Every person should be allowed their own agency, to associate with whom they please, and have access to the necessities of life.
Any decisions made should be made with the consent of everyone they affect.

There's a lot of actual theory and what not you can get into, it's all available freely online, because that's another thing anarchists are big on, free access to education. The first read that springs to mind is "The Conquest of Bread" which lays out how and why an anarchy based society would work in practice. (Tl;Dr: technology has made it so that we can produce far more than we actually need, so we are capable of supporting everyone without starvation, homelessness, and man-made oppression)

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 1 points 4 weeks ago

Yes and it’s excellent to discuss and think about. Actually implementing it is different though, and we’ve seen a lot of militant advocates that clearly do not appreciate the complexity in applying those theories and principles to an entire city, much less a state or nation. They get very up their own arguments and there’s not much point asking questions.

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 0 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Genuinely thank you for the correction. I was mostly being tongue-in-cheek there with the ellipses but that seems to not have been all that obvious and anyway you are correct in that it would have helped to have aimed to be more precise even in a flippant offhand remark.

I have no idea if you are Alt-Left or not but from what I see here that seems a firm "no"? I would say that someone who often resorts to using lies is, while someone who at least aims to use only truths is not. Alt-Left isn't quite the same as extreme leftist, nor are either identical to "tankie", although there are some who are one or two or all three of those and yet there are also huge schisms between those who merely "play" at being some of them while actually not being thus.

I may not agree with the extremist left (truly I do not) but I will defend your right to hold such an opinion, while the Alt-Left to me represents disingenuous crap that needs to be fought against harder even than capitalism itself - i.e. the Alt-Left is doing the extreme leftist movement no favors, especially by using such easily-debunked lies and false argument practices.

Fwiw, "Any decisions made should be made with the consent of everyone they affect" seems to fly in the face of putting up "memes" that say "we should kill people" (e.g. landlords), not only b/c of the people's whose lives may be directly or indirectly impacted but also those who have to merely read such content. We did not sign up for such when we joined the community, and now we are affected by it, unless the mods choose to enact the rules that they previously agreed to. It's not about conversations not being allowed, but about those conversations being held in a RESPECTFUL (& civil?) manner, i.e. not everywhere & everyhow that the poster chooses despite when that is explicitly against the consent of the recipient. Again, if someone wants to make their own instance and/or community... then they can post whatever they like?

Thus a poster knowingly posting out-of-bounds material and then whinging about it having been removed seems to me, admittedly from the outside mind you, not to represent "real/true anarchy", but a child's version of it? As if they are merely using the claim that it is "anarchy" as a cover, in order to attempt to win the argument by cowing the recipient into submission, borrowing from the genuine power of the word and thereby cheapening it in the process, which they do not care about so long as they get their way.

I am curious to hear your take though: would you agree with the premise as I have stated it here? Maybe even also the conclusion?

Thank you for both the shortened summaries and the link to go deeper elsewhere.

[–] AnarchoSnowPlow@midwest.social 3 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

I see these kinds of things as similar to the "Paradox of Tolerance."

If your position is that you will tolerate everything all the time, you will be destroyed by the first thing that you allow into your space that does not tolerate you. Tolerating intolerance inevitably leads to the destruction of tolerant society.

If you instead view tolerance as a social contract, an agreement between us, any intolerance becomes a breach of that contract. Meaning that tolerance, should not, and cannot be extended to the intolerant.

With regard to off-color (or sometimes even violent) memes it's the same type of thing. I've certainly seen violent memes directed at violent groups, groups that advocate for the destruction of whole classes of people, either directly or indirectly.

You could have an academic discussion about what constitutes violence. Though insisting upon civility always upholds the status quo, and if the status quo of death and destruction through capital acquisition and paperwork results in as much death and destruction as more direct alternatives, is the social contract any less broken?

Now, to the point of rules enforcement etc. on individual instances. I can't defend nebulous examples of people being upset about one thing or another and claiming "anarchy" other than to point out that most people educated in the western world don't have a good understanding of what anarchy means other than the pop culture definition intentionally cultivated to denigrate moderately successful anti-oligarchic movements in the 19th century.

But in practice what is to be done about those kinds of things? Lemmy is a federation of fiefdoms, the admins being absolute monarchs of their instances should they so choose. If you don't want to see something, you don't have to interact with them. There are user, community, and instance level tools to clean things up for yourself individually, or there's the nuclear option of de-federation entirely for an instance that you don't want your instance to interact with. If you don't want to, or don't have the ability to construct and curate your own instance you are at the whim of whoever runs your fiefdom.

It is the same as browsing r/All 10 years ago. You will see everything, even stuff you don't want to see, unless you just stick to your subs or local instance only.

I wouldn't have recommended reddit to everyone I knew 10 years ago, just like I don't recommend Lemmy to everyone I know now, only those who understand all the asterisks that come along with it.

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social -2 points 4 weeks ago

"Paradox of Tolerance."

EXACTLY! So if e.g. the rules of !lemmyshitpost@Lemmy.World include "5. No Enciting Harassment", then that's their decision whether to remove something or not? Someone could make a new community like lemmyshitpost@midwest.social, and then they could say whatever they wanted?

Instead, they complain here, and I stated how I stand with those who choose to serve the community by making instances (admins) and communities (mods) work, rather than those who would tear it all down simply to watch it burn or in a highly short-sighted attempt to get their way and "win", at whatever cost.

Contracts are only meaningful to those who read them, understand, or in general care i.e. act in good faith.

So if someone wants to make memes glorifying violence - then do it? But that's not what we're discussing here: the topic as I understand it is why people are okay to "merely" complain about why others won't simply do as they say, even when the former don't bother to expend any effort on their own behalf, i.e. to make a new community that will allow such content.

I wouldn't have recommended reddit to everyone I knew 10 years ago, just like I don't recommend Lemmy to everyone I know now, only those who understand all the asterisks that come along with it.

I don't know if Lemmy will survive in anything close to resembling its current form. Many seem entirely okay with that, but I'm just saying that it is what it is. Lemmy.ml for instance has lost many of its subscribers, and they have migrated over to other instances. Now with non-extremists being turned away by the "leaky" nature of the communities here, which have rules but they are not enforced, it will harden further.

Our userbase is already shrinking. Last year I had 1 account, today I have 3 different ones that I actively maintain, so as of now I count for 3x active users, or 4 total. But I am only 1. Thus, I don't believe the stats showing our monthly active users remaining static - if people leaving Lemmy.World and making alts as they move to other instances are likewise either in transition during the time period of the measurement or possibly check back with their old account (to receive notifications on older content, and messages, etc.) then they too will be counted multiple times. How to reconcile the growing number of total accounts with mostly static number of "active" ones, except that our total actual non-bot user numbers are shrinking.

Again, some large fraction of the userbase here seems to think that's okay. But some of us had hopes that this could be a Reddit replacement. For those of us in the latter camp, we feel disappointed now to find our hopes dashed, as mainstream normal people simply are not coming here - nor are we even comfortable inviting them in the first place.

[–] AtHeartEngineer@lemmy.world 18 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

I think a lot of discussion on lemmy assumes pretty strong polarization, you are either for all the people or against all the people.

In reality there is some spectrum of potential response to things in our society that aren't good for the whole: you can deal with it (and bitch about it), something along the lines of civil disobedience in the middle, and violence on the other end. There is a lot of spectrum in the middle that seems to be just ignored, people either bitch about things, or they advocate for violence. The number of problems with the violence option is very high. Obviously doing nothing and bitching about it doesn't actually accomplish anything because the system is rigged against us. I do think people really need to start thinking more creatively on that middle path though, is it harder, yes absolutely. Violence is easy, actually solving problems or at least strongly influencing the system in our favor, is much harder but I think it is the best approach.

Just throwing a random idea out there:

I know people care about privacy in health care a lot, but if we had a system where people could publish their claim denials (with personal info redacted), and we could openly compare decisions made by many insurance companies and call companies out on claim denials.

Someone could then start a non profit (and transparent) company that can take in donations and identify and fight outlier cases in court with the insurance companies.

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 1 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

I love your approach - especially how you advocate for actually DOING something rather than merely talking about it.:-)

[–] AtHeartEngineer@lemmy.world 3 points 4 weeks ago

I mean it is still just talk unless someone actually does something which frankly I don't have time to do

[–] cm0002@lemmy.world 11 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable" ~John F. Kennedy

[–] FearfulSalad@ttrpg.network 5 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

People bitch and moan about things--irrespective of forum--because they have both things to bitch and moan about, and the time and energy to spend bitching and moaning. That suggests that things are pretty fucked for them. Sure, there are some people who lie, and their bitching and moaning is for show, but chances are that something is fucked in their lives that they want to do that.

To assume that a forum can be created to channel their bitching and moaning about fucked things away from the public eye implies several things: it is okay for things to be fucked for some people, and those people need to keep their bitching and moaning in line with rules and shit, or else to themselves. Instead of "I don't like this, so I'll either not read it, or I'll downvote it." That would be far more reasonable

That implication, that people need to keep their bitching and moaning to a certain format, style guide, and location, is pretty fucked up, because it takes the status quo of the current state and insists that it is correct. (Which, it, very clearly, is not.)

Neither you nor anyone on lemmy get to have a private instance that is still a social network open to the wide world to register on, read, and post on. You pick one or the other. Pretending that you can have both is, of course, what makes you (and the admins and mods sweating so hard) a bootlicker to the people and forces insisting that the status quo is fine, and people need to be 'more civil' about how they bitch and moan (read: they need to accept that their fucked state is just fine, so they can be fucked over more).

The french revolution was not a good time for anyone. Did it make things better? I dunno, I wasn't there. But it happened because things were really fucked for a lot of people. Who are you, to look at history, and say "yeah, they did the French Revolution, but in the end I think it made things worse for people, so they should have just stuck around with the boot on their neck instead?" They didn't know how things work out, they just knew that their current state was untenable, and needed to be changed. Anarchy and violence suck, for everyone, to be sure, but they suck more for the people who benefit most from there not being anarchy or violence. That's just tautological.

All the other social network alternatives are owned, operated, and moderated by the problem, so obviously any Lemmy instance owners, admins, and mods cowtowing on Lemmy with respect to how the problem wants things handled is... Bootlicking. Yeah. That's bootlicking.

If it doesn't literally break the local laws (which were written by and for the problem in many jurisdictions, so that's another source of fuckery to birch and moan about), then the mods need to calm their shit and moderate... less. Community and instance rules past that are all nice to haves, not must haves, because, and this is important, they were written by some rando preparing to be a real NIMBYist. If the community wants to laud a guy who did murder as the people's hero, and laud his methods as the methods of the people, and you don't like that the community is doing that on your hardware, fucking turn that shit off. The mere existence of large instances that draw the majority of discourse does not mean that the community needs to fucking adhere to the guidelines imposed by the instance admins. The instance is there for the community, not the other way around. It means the instance admins are in the position to be fucking public fucking servants. If they don't want to shell out the money and expertise to be public servants (which, by the way, means serving the public how the public wants to be served), they need to fuck right off. None of this "start your own instance and run it how you want" bullshit while the old instance still exists makes any fucking sense.

When the people in power act in a way that the people see as not in the people's interest, that's when the people are fucking pissed off. If that shit applies to governments and health insurance companies (which it clearly fucking does), why do you think it shouldn't apply to, oh, I don't know, Lemmy instances and their stewards?

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social -3 points 4 weeks ago

It's not about channeling - it's about being respectful. And no I don't mean to the wealthy, I mean to one another here.

Lemmy.ml for instance says that it is "A community of privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers", so surely it must be all about software enthusiasts r-r-right? Nope, instead go there now and see things like:

Meh, they can do whatever they choose. And I choose not to advertise for them anymore by telling people irl that I use "Lemmy". I've also figured out how to block all the users of the instance as well.

BTW I'm worse than a bootlicker - I'm a "collaborator".

Also, I guess my own complaining isn't as worthwhile as others complaining, so that rather than simply scroll on it warrants "a talking to", in order to uphold the status quo of Lemmy that pushes ever more to the extremist state. Translation: ONE side is, shall we say, "mOrE eQuAl" in its right to complain than the other.

You next explained the "rightness of cause" and "ideological purity", yup. Particularly interesting is how the admins don't have the "right" to do with their own instance what they choose and must instead kowtow to "the community" - which somehow excludes the entirety of all of its non-extremist members, yet for whatever reason includes solely the extremist ones? Interesting... I feel like I have heard this identical Alt-~~Right~~ Left message before somehow, just phrased in different terms.

[–] eskimofry@lemmy.world 5 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

You think you got your good life without bloodshed?

[–] GBU_28@lemm.ee 6 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

I probably wouldn't hinge "good life" on prior violence. Might not like what you find.

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social -2 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

Absolutely. I think I'll go join my comrades in North Korea... oh wait, no, actually I think I won't do that? :-)

Even those who fought and bled and died, actually got up off their couches in order to make something happen?

Meanwhile, who is offering to e.g. moderate an alternate USA News community, if someone does not like the one on Lemmy.World? I first petitioned Discuss.Online to defederate from hexbear.net and helped create !AskUSA@discuss.online so that !AskLemmy@Lemmy.World and !AskLemmy@sh.itjust.works would not be barraged so much by Americans asking our questions, but I suppose for the likes of some, I don't support the Fediverse "hard enough". It's so much easier to just complain rather than put forth effort into anything at all.

Edit: like understanding something before breaking it. Video

Edit 2: removed errant space messing up a community link

[–] HootinNHollerin@quokk.au 4 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Silencing people results in radicalization.

Look at the Middle East

Or hell even your home town childhood friends. The most overbeared ones I knew all went hard AF

If you wanna talk about alt left and alt right. Look where going hard has gotten the right. In charge that is, with the left sitting with their thumbs up their ass. The right took over all 3 fucking branches in the US. And fucking twitter. And making gains all over Europe. Not to mention the trillion$. Meanwhile one guy possibly just did more to fight for the working class than the ‘left’ for the past fucking decade.

Silencing people results in radicalization.

They NEED an outlet. They DESERVE an outlet. So thanks Lemmy.world you’re on the path to radicalize more than many could if they tried, while trying the opposite

Yes I’d like to set up my own instance this upcoming year. Many independent instances growing and .world shrinking is a future I’ll happily seek to be a part of

[–] njm1314@lemmy.world 4 points 4 weeks ago

You fucking bootlicker

[–] ComradeMiao@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Found the liberal! Gonna vote away all the issues, eh?

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 0 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Oooohhh noooo the libz gettin cucked! Or wtfe

[–] ComradeMiao@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 weeks ago

Huh?

[–] Cris_Color@lemmy.world 2 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

I don't disagree with the mods for enforcing their rules (I think online spaces ought to moderate and set rules according to their goals and purpose), but I really can't see how anyone would be surprised that this reached such an unfortunate end. And it's frankly kinda true that rights we take for granted today largerly WERE earned through bloodshed. The US ought to know that better than anybody; it was literally our violent refusal of monarchy that inspired the French with their guilotines. We were where they got the idea. And those are grotesque outcomes, but the ideal out come would be exploitation and abuses being prevented or resolved, a reality that people did not live. And the outcome of that reality was that violence really DID play a fundamental role in building the world we appreciate today.

The CEO destroyed a horrific number of lives and the positive outcome would have been the US government effectively protecting its people from exploitation. That never happened, and when people's justified anger at being treated so abusively at a terrifying scale just SITS for that long, eventually it's gonna boil over. And the consequence is that society is actually paying attention to how horrific of a death and abuse machine the company he built was. I don't like that someone was murdered. I do respect the willingness to fight back against a man abusing you and a terrifying number of others, and reject that somehow it's okay to intentionally abuse people if you're making money doing it and call it a business. More than anything I hope it moves us forward and we address the issue. And it's entirely possible it won't be addressed, but to be perfectly honest it's really apparent it wasn't gonna get addressed without this happening, because our representatives demonstrated OVER AND OVER AND OVER that the only thing that matters is that someone is getting rich.

But this country really was founded on a violent rejection of abusive authority. Our declaration of independence was written in British blood. And the insistence that if rights and saftey are denied they will be taken by force (through protest, collective action, and at time throughout history, outright violence), really did create many of the rights and protections we now enjoy.

At a certain point people don't just blindly accept that being abused is the way the world must always be, and sometimes that violence really has forged a better life for people. I just hope this violence actually yields that end. I'm tired of people being abused, and I also know that there will be more anger and violence if the abuse and destruction of lives continues to be the status quo :(

[+] zfirerose@lemmy.world -13 points 4 weeks ago (3 children)

My sentiments exactly. Honestly, it's a waste of breath to have an opinion on Lemmy. I have been thinking I might as well put up with the reddit ads at this point. I don't really fall in with the hive mind. But of course, they'll say Reddit is the hive mind here.

I saw a post on one of the pro union groups (I believe it was lemmy.ml) where they started naming him Saint Luigi and how he should kill more CEOs... like what am I even supposed to think about that? Am much as I agree with a lot of the ideologies on these instances, It doesn't feel right despite the circumstances.

Whoops, gonna get down voted now, lol

[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 14 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Honestly, it’s a waste of breath to have an opinion on Lemmy.

Says the guy who agrees people shouldn't post their opinions about the hero who stopped the mass murdering CEO.

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 0 points 4 weeks ago

"They" will say all sorts of things. When it is true, then it is true, when it is not true, then it is not true. Being able to tell the difference though is exhausting. The hive mind makes things so much easier, to never have to "think". Ofc we all do it - the difference is that some of us fight against that trend:-).

And Luigi is a legit difficult narrative to talk about - even if he helped spur a(n inter-)national conversation, what about when we get to one person per day, and the corps instead of budging an inch just tighten the screws all the harder? Surely communism is working out GREAT for the likes of Russia, China, and North Korea? Except how come the people espousing that thought never seem to move there to "enjoy" the fruits of their labor?

Those mods put in WORK to curate their communities. I respect that. Even If I did not agree with their actions (although I happen to agree, but I am saying even if I were not to), I still respect their commitment to service to their communities. And if someone wants to spin up their own instance or make their own community and mod it, that's one thing, but to simply complain about it without bothering to invest even one iota into understanding those decisions... seems childish to me.

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 0 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

lemmy.ml)

https://feddit.nl/post/16246531

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social -3 points 4 weeks ago

I disagree - these seem different than tankies.

I mean, don't get me wrong, tankies love to do the same (example on lemmygrad), but there's more than that now. Not all extreme leftists are tankies and quite frankly the reverse is true to a much higher degree than tankies will admit either.

Here, or here but that's hexbear.

That's why I've started calling it the Alt-Left, and I notice that I'm not the only one, especially see this exchange from long before the election.

Here's one from a year ago that seems to have been deleted, which a search is able to show but clicking it will not - so odd!? TurtlePower@lemm.ee said:

Because they are the opposite of the alt-right: they are the alt-left. They are not actually leftist, just like the alt-right isn’t actually conservative. They are both just plain fascist.

[–] zfirerose@lemmy.world -3 points 4 weeks ago

Is that the post? I might've blocked either the instance or the group. I can't see it anymore.