Econ 101 is liberal propaganda. They'd rather use much more trustworthy sources, like uneducated neckbeards ranting on YouTube.
I cannot get into Lemmy. It was just endless wars about who was federated with who.
Honestly, this gave me some trepidation when I first got here too. When you're checking out a list of servers, you're going by the descriptions written on the page. There's no footnotes about the little wars and name calling that on about this.
So someone is going to sign up on ml because it says it's focused on software dev and FOSS, then encounter people who judge them based on the fucking url after their username rather than the content of their posts. And I'm still not completely on board with the conversations and memes that perpetuate this.
When I got here and caught wind of this stuff, I actually questioned if I was even in the right place. That stuff is not attractive to new users who are just getting started up. It makes it seem like this platform is a minefield that you need to tiptoe around when you're seeing it for the first time.
This place has a few problems IMO. Not just the UX but also a lot of the users, I'm afraid to say. For example, in my first week here I saw another new user arrive and make a post in one of the ask communities asking if there is a gen z space. And this person didn't get an answer to their question but instead got a bunch of angry sounding snarky snark from people going "who cares about labels? I just came here and made the effort of typing this comment to show you how little I care. Because that's how cool I am."
And I've been seeing it all the time, to be honest. People here seem to struggle with the concept of just scrolling past something that doesn't interest them and they just have to stop by to tell anyone how stupid they think their interests are. And that's in addition to new users feeling like they need to tiptoe around instance wars. And that's after making the effort of trying to get started on a new, confusing (at first) platform.
So I'd love to see this place grow personally. But the longer I'm here, the more I have my doubts that it will happen. Honestly if another alternative popped up using the Bluesky protocol, I'd probably check it out in hopes that there's more women around who allowed to exist and in hopes that the general populace is a little more friendly as far as people's interests and likes and dislikes go.
Yeah well these news publications are starting to blatantly insult everyone's intelligence now. If it was really unexpected, there wouldn't be a bunch of comments here saying "Unexpected? Really?"
Yup. And I think that once again, a large part of this is the influence of the 'manosphere' putting bullshit into their heads.
There's been a couple of occasions having this conversation where people respond to me and say they don't listen to Jordan Peterson or whatever but they're still lonely. But then they'll say something like "I need marriage and children to be a complete human being or else I'm a failure in life. And I've been robbed." I mean, what the fuck. They're just kids or young adults.
So these guys are attempting relationships with all of this heavy shit about marriage and children and status and ownership in mind and chasing people away. I would run away too if someone started making wedding plans on the second date. And they're not looking for a person that they get along with and can spend the rest of their life with, they're looking for someone who can make their babies for them. Ewww.
Honestly sometimes this 'manosphere' shit is a little bit like purity culture. And it sometimes reminds me of some of the more cultish churches I've come across that push 18 year old kids who are dating into early marriage or else they're "living in sin". In fact I'm pretty sure that there's a religious right wing agenda behind it.
These kids need to stop clutching their pearls and acting like religious fanatics and just have some fucking fun. Go into things with zero expectations. Have one night stands. Enjoy their youth. And if in the process of that, they meet 'the one', then that's a bonus. They don't need to be tied down with kids and bills to pay by the time they're 21 just to be seen as any more of a 'man'. In fact that would just be sad.
Ah, thank you for the correction. I was under the assumption that both the Observer and the Guardian were sold but looking again, seems to be just the Observer. I'll edit my first post to direct people to your comment.
What the left truly failed to do was present the real narrative
Yeah, also a view as an outsider, your Democrat party truly does fucking suck. With the exception of Bernie Sanders, AOC and maybe Pete Buttigieg (I've seen people talk about how good he is but I've never seen him make the same splash as these other two from all the way across the ocean here), the rest of them are all fucking animated corpses mimicking basic life signs.
I guess it's easy for me to say from all the way over here "just vote for the lesser evil" but I don't envy you guys because it often looks like you're stuck between a rock and a hard place in that regard too.
I think that you guys maybe need to get over your fear of introducing another party. There's always this talk about how they'll take votes away from the main two but then less than 50% of the population even bothers to vote in the first place. Maybe if there was something worth voting for, another political party led by people who are actually alive and have energy would attract that 50% non voting population.
Yeah as far as I know that's the way it is in most western countries. A lot of our laws are based on Christianity. Along with every national public holiday being based on special Christian days. In places where they like to complain about how discriminated against and hard done by they are (while enjoying their freedom to openly discriminate against all flavours of queer people and anyone else they consider a heretic).
These politicians just don't want to work anymore. This generation is killing the politics industry with their sheer laziness and lack of work ethic. Something something Flintstones. Avocado toast.
won’t recommend Lemmy to many of my friends or family because I know they will give up
Yeah, when I first started out here, my experience was like this:
- I went to the join Lemmy page, then clicked to show all servers. Then waited. And waited. Then I went to bed.
- By the next morning, the list of servers had managed to load. I spotted one that was advertised as "recommended for users to join to reduce load on the Fediverse", which seemed like a good idea after seeing how even the join page was battling to load.
- Found out that the server I joined seemed to have all sorts of issues loading content. And was apparently de-federated from a bunch of instances that align with my interests. So search results were showing me little to nothing in regards to queer communities for example, only dead communities.
- Signed up on world instead and encountered multiple posts that said they had comments but loaded nothing. Found out that there were no languages selected in my settings. So I selected 'undefined', scrolled down, selected 'English', then saved.
- I was still missing a bunch of posts after that, so I went back to settings and saw that 'undefined' was deselected again. That's when I realised that you have to ctrl click each language you choose or else it just deselects the previous language that you clicked on.
- Finally success! 3 or 4 days later. And now I'm here.
I would love to recommend Lemmy to the few people I know who use Reddit. But I can't see any of them trying without just giving up and going back to the place where all you need to do is sign up and hey presto, content to look at and interact with.
I have a feeling that even the process of choosing an instance would probably put them off. I could give advice but there's only so much I could do or explain without being there in person helping them. If they have to read walls of text explaining how to get started, it would probably end there.
I'm not sure what the solution is though, or if there even is one. It might just be a little bit like trying to recommend Linux to people who just want to be able to push a button and go. Which is the majority, based on what I've seen.
Also just one last thing and something that has been discussed to death. There's just not enough content here yet for the average person to see any reason to switch over from the place with all the content.
And on that note, recommending this place to people that I know in real life would be too risky right now that they would see my account and figure out who I am. Because there isn't a crowd of a million people to slip into and disappear here. And this isn't Facebook. I don't want people to know about the very personal things I sometimes say on anonymous social media.
Edit: I was a bit mistaken. It was in fact the Observer that was sold by the Guardian group. Still seems like there's smoke which indicates fire but I was not entirely correct here. See one of the replies to my comment for more information.
Based on what I can find, The Guardian was actually sold to a company called Tortoise Media two months ago in December 2024. And according to Wikipedia:
Guardian and Observer journalists voted to strike on 4 and 5 December 2024 in protest over a sale that they said would betray the commitment of the Scott Trust—owner of the Guardian Media Group—to the Observer.
So not even the journalists wanted this company in control. And funnily enough, there was a Guardian article in 2018 that specifically mentioned Tortoise Media while talking about the "increased involvement of private wealth in the journalism industry" and how that is a bad thing. So from what I can tell, it can no longer be trusted.
Thanks for your input.
The link isn't loading for me, unfortunately. Not sure if it's a browser thing (I use Firefox) but I suspect that it's the "removed" in the URL causing trouble.
However, if you tap / click on those memos in the article I linked, it reveals the box art.
You may find benefit in discussing it with other non binary people.
I've been thinking about it and honestly it would make me feel too much like a liar. And I don't think I would be able to bring myself to do it, even if I decided right now that it's what I'm going to do. I actually feel kinda shitty even for just asking that question, it feels wrong for multiple reasons. So I'm sorry for laying that question on you.
You've given me a lot to rethink here though. I definitely need to do a bit of homework regarding alt right tactics, in order to know the enemy better. I'm bad at homework and following directions and tend to just wing it but this is important and if I'm going to be involving myself in these conflicts, I'd better be armed appropriately.
Thank you very much for this awesome conversation. I've honestly been looking forward to your replies because you seem to get exactly what I'm talking about and your solutions make 100% sense to me. I hope to see you around here often, people like you make me feel a little less like running away from this place. Hope you have a great morning / day / night / whatever the time is where you are.
You might appreciate this: Leaked Memos Explain Why Every Mega Man Cover is Terrible. (satire)
Mulder documentaries? Like the X-Files?
Literally the opposite.
After the French Revolution, parliament was arranged so that the people who supported democracy and freedom literally sat on the left hand side; and all of the freeloading, self serving, bootlicking monarchists that wanted to return to rule by a king or queen sat on the right hand side.
Far right are that but more extreme. They don't just lick boots but also the assholes of the politicians and billionaires that they worship like gods.
Huh that's pretty cool. Definitely a fun fact!