The fediverse is small, and thats both a blessing and a curse - one of its several blessings is that in a smaller space we all individually have a bigger impact on what the culture of this space is like.
On this comm (and on lemmy broadly) there’s a lot of discussion about how to grow the fediverse, what to improve, but an easy thing you can do for the fediverse is right in front of us-
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Be kind
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Ask people what they think, and why
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Approach folks you disagree with with curiosity rather than hostility (EDIT: no, this is not specifically referring to Nazis. I get it, they’re the first thing that comes to mind. I’m not telling you to approve of Nazis I’m just saying be kind to your fellow lemmites)
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Engage sincerely
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Ask yourself if there’s something nice you can say
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Make this small space worth being in
A platform lives or dies by what’s available on said platform and often we have this conversation in the context of “content” or posts - and we may never have as much content as reddit does. But content and posts aren’t the only thing this kind of platform offers- it also offers people. It offers community, and human interaction.
Culture and community is lemmy and the fediverse’s biggest differentiator, and we all have a role to play in shaping the culture of this space.
The biggest thing you can do to help the fediverse is make it a place worth being.
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One my favorite ways to summarize this kind of thinking is with the Bill & Ted quote “Be Excellent To Each Other, and Party On Dudes” (mostly the first half applies to this post though). The part that applies to this post, Keanu Reeves said he interprets as follows:
I think that the sentiment of it is really just be the best person, the best human being you can be, and if you do that, then you can party on and live life to the fullest, but you’re gonna be safe… You’re going to be supported, you’re going to get the gift of giving, you’re going to get the gift of receiving, you’re going to get to the gift of sharing. We’re all just some humans on a rock in space, and so it’s kinda nice to kind of promote that idea of ‘give a little, get a lot’, kind of bring it in for a group hug."
@Cris_Color@lemmy.world being nice helps establish the “tone”, but I’m not sure that wouldn’t change with another “API event” on Reddit that results in another, larger mass migration.
Another suggestion I have for college graduates is to ask your alma mater if they are going to start using something other than commercial social to engage with alumni.
Most universities don’t want to make mistakes investing in the bleeding edge, but they are quick to follow. When a few schools do something, many more quickly copy that. They are also looking for low cost wins. Their engagement numbers are already telling them that Xwiiter no longer works to reach alumni or potential students.
If even a handful of alumni suggest a change at the right time, that is often enough to get them to give federated social a try.
That is when the less toxic “tone” really helps.
It’s extremely hard to be charitable online, when you have instances like these:
- https://map-wiki.com/index.php/List_of_active_instances_of_map_fediverse
- https://wiki.yesmap.net/wiki/Pediverse
- https://fediverse.wiki/wiki/Poast
- https://truthsocial.com/
I’m sorry that I cannot “be kind” to the intolerant.
I have also noticed people agreeing with someone in a reply to another comment, but the original commenter has no upvotes. If you agree, upvote. If you kind of agree, upvote. If you don’t agree, but they make a good case, upvote and then say that. Upvotes make people feel good.
Agree
Love how the point of the post is “hey try to be nice” and everyone sounding off in the comments like “FUCK YOU AND FUCK THOSE SPECIFIC GUYS TOO”
Maybe more people should just post their reviews of vacuums here
I generally say bullet points are good ideals, but there’s a much bigger issue with mental health.
There are certain people in lemmy that need to learn what “you have no enemies” and “I’m gonna do my own thing” means. It’s fine people are different live on earth is very diverse
Speaking past each other is IMO the biggest source of friction and division on the fediverse.
I have mysteriously vanished for like 2 or so months now (which is a good thing, please take breaks from the internet every once in a while), I don’t really remember NOT being kind here.
And this post reminds me of why Lemmy is a good place to begin with.
offtopic:
Test to see if from here it is possile to engage the friendica server of @utopiarte and @requeteche.btw and ontopic:
No, I don’t think I will.
Sometimes being kind doesn’t necessarily mean being nice.
Saved because would be interesting to read what the people that want to set others property on fire and guillotine people, think that is actually being kind
No
Hey this is a nice post, I wonder what the comments say :3 click
“Oh you think being kind is good? You’re a fascist OP >:T. You can’t make me vote republican”
Sorry but right wingers aren’t welcome here.
If (Republicans/Tankies/Fascists) want any voice here they can go get fucked.
If they acted in good faith and were capable of processing reality they wouldn’t identify as such.
Oh, not them. I suppose they meant among non-right wingers. I always found quite explicit they aren’t welcome here. Not today, not ever.
“Tankies”
The irony with this is that Lemmy was founded by communists and it follows a lot of communist principles.
serious question but how do/could you formalize your rejection of right-wingers? what is it exactly that you take issue with?
i’m asking because i talk to a lot of people (also some who identify as “right-wingers”) and i’d like to know what exactly are the issues that bother people, so i can forward it to them. it would help me bring up better arguments if i know what other people are thinking.
so, i’ve collected the following list of things to take issue with so far:
- right-wingers often think that people who don’t work, don’t deserve to eat, which clearly puts enterpreneurial spirit above human life, which is clearly illegal
- right-wingers often take brunt and direct actions, which can be uncomfortable to more sensitive people.
- right-wingers typically neglect far-sightedness, seeking only short-term profits (looking at you, quarterly profit).
tell me if i forgot something.
In America, right wingers support the republicans who have a verified track record of taking rights away, cheating elections and straight up lying. By refusing the see any other point of view, they reject open mindedness. They are unyielding in their beliefs and that is dangerous. It’s whats led to the current affairs of the USA. Theyve been swindled for years. The thing I hate most of all is there core principle is hate. They hate minorities, immigrants, foreigners and gays. They always have some justification for it. "Gays are cross dressing and confusing my children. Gays are indecent. Minorities are abusing social programs. Jewish people are running criminal cabals. (Etc. etc.)
You’ll have the “oh well I don’t support THAT part of my political party but shrug nothing we can do 🙂” publicans but don’t do anything or even CRITICIZE it. And those that try to refute these points either outright deny that its true or use whataboutism.
I will end this by saying I have right winger friends who are radicalizing away from me and I’m trying my hardest to show them that core beliefs of comraderie and compassion is far superior to the kool aid they’re being forced fed by all major social media companies.
you’ve put it very well, especially the
You’ll have the “oh well I don’t support THAT part of my political party but shrug nothing we can do 🙂” publicans but don’t do anything or even CRITICIZE it. And those that try to refute these points either outright deny that its true or use whataboutism.
is something that perfectly describes my mother. no matter how bad the situation, she invariably comes back to “christianity will save us, we need to work harder, gays are abusing social programs, …”
actually let me think about it again:
IMO that somebody’s always hateful is typically a sign of enormous psychological/emotional stress. so that tells me these people have a lot of problems, and probably don’t know how to deal with the world. i wonder what education would do to them.
The thing is, hate has varying degrees. There is: slight disregard up to boiling rage. But the root is the same. They hate those that are different and the higher ups need a Boogeyman to point their capitalistism caused depression to.
The basic problem is thinking that conquering somebody is natural, inevitable, or good.
oh yes i forgot about canada and greenland somehow, sorry
actually i meant in general, like apart from the current situation with trump.
Right wing ideologies hinge on distracting people from their problems instead of solving them.
This arracts exclusively con men and dumb marks.
And the distractions they choose always end up being the erasure of minorities for some fucking reason.
I mean
It’s been happening for the 99.9% of human existence
Doesn’t make it right. This is a civilized age and we must forever push for progress.
No one said it was
Fair enough
You can’t say fairer than that, oh drat!
Same with smallpox.
And we’re capable of better now.
We also didn’t have modern medicine for 99.9% of human existence. Want to return to that?
Who said that?
Basic history told me that?
Here, check under modern - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine
Okay, you are being purposely obtuse, thanks for clarifying
proof?
i’m asking because i suspect that might be a fallacy; i remember reading somewhere that 10k years ago the first wars happened, before then war practically didn’t exist because war requires a minimum amount of organization and that just wasn’t there before.
There was organized violence deployed by groups of humans against other groups of humans long, long before anything we would recognize as warfare. Particularly brutal violence too, because the objective was not to conquer other people (something which only makes sense once agriculture is the dominant mode of sustinence), but to either drive off or exterminate a rival group so you can use their territory for yourself.
And we don’t even need to talk about people here: we have records of chimpanzees fighting small scale wars of harassment and extermination against neighboring groups.
Pre-modern, pre-civilization, pre-aggriculture, pre-you-name-it human life was far more violent than what we deal with today.
We aren’t chimpanzees. As persistence hunters, our kinds of territorial disputes would have been very different and early humans were likely very nomadic rather than settling into territories that fight. In times of scarcity we’d just move on to different lands.
Which, notably, is why humans spread over the entire planet. We aren’t really built to be fighters.
No one is saying we are chimps, but we share lots of mammalian behavior
For example, did you know chimpanzees engage on guerrilla wars, torture and , weirdly enough, prisoner exchanges?
But that’s besides the point, I think they were just pointing out how standardized is that behavior in the animal kingdom, not excusing it
Nomadic people don’t just wander around aimlessly, and there are big differences in how desirable different territory is for nomadic hunter-gatherer humans. The principle is the same as with nomadic pastoralists: your group has a territory which can sustain them when hunted on/gathered from/grazed/etc over the course of the year, and your group will wander within that space in a deliberate pattern. If some other group decides to “just move on to” your group’s territory, hunting the animals and foraging the plants that your group knows they are going to need to survive the year, that’s an existential threat to you. And you can’t “just move on” yourself without wandering into the territory of yet more groups whose territory borders yours, and who will react violently to your presence for the same reasons.
Given the choice between fleeing to who knows where and fighting who knows who for the privilege of moving, or staying right where you are and fighting for the land you know your group can survive on, you stay and fight.
Humans spread out across the earth as the losers of these conflicts (those who survived, anyway) fled until they stumbled on new-to-humans territory, often displacing or eradicating groups of more “primitive” hominids they found there. This process continues until just about everywhere which humans can reach and which can support human life has humans in it. But expanding populations, the occasional natural disaster, and normal human frustration that their territory sucks while their neighbors have it great (which was often true; again, not all land is the same to a nomadic hunter/gatherer) meant that these conflicts were constantly reignited.
The main thing is the bigotry and making marginalized people feel unwelcome and unsafe. Having trans people and Nazis existing in the same space isn’t really tenable, in practice, most marginalized people would rather be in a space where their existence and basic rights aren’t up for debate and where they won’t receive slurs and threats of violence. So the question is, who would you rather have in your community, oppressor or oppressed?
Of course, this person applies this standard blindly by including “tankies” as “right-wingers.” She’s just abusing a valid argument by using it to dismiss any perspective she doesn’t like, left or right, bigoted or accepting, bad faith or good faith, as “right-wing.”
Horseshoe theory is horseshit.
- ‘Horseshoe theory’ is nonsense – the far right and far left have little in common
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory#Academic_studies_and_criticism
- Funny thing about Hannah Arendt’s construction of “totalitarianism”: She came from a bourgeois family and so was unsurprisingly anti-communist, and she was funded & promoted by the CIA.
Imperialist Propaganda and the Ideology of the Western Left Intelligentsia: From Anticommunism and Identity Politics to Democratic Illusions and FascismOne of the centerpieces of the cultural cold war was the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), which was revealed in 1966 to be a CIA front. Hugh Wilford, who has researched the topic extensively, described the CCF as nothing short of one of the largest patrons of art and culture in the history of the world. Established in 1950, it promoted on the international scene the work of collaborationist academics such as Raymond Aron and Hannah Arendt over and against their Marxian rivals, including the likes of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.
Thanks for showing up to be an example Davel
Davel is one of the ones who knows exactly what they are supporting, but choose to because they don’t act in good faith.
Now kindly fuck off until next time Davel. :p
You’ve once again shown your empty accusations and insults, contrary to OP’s advice in this post.
You will never be accepted in this space no matter how many alt accounts you make to downvote people.
This isn’t reddit you fascist, your tactics don’t work here.
Calling an admin an alt account is a bold play.
I have no problem with them being here, FYI
Why thank you, one of my thousands of no good, bad faith alt accounts.
Proof?
Calling an admin an alt account is a bold play.
This is an example of what being nice is for the average Lemmy user
Jesus Christ you people can’t even comment without going ballistic at each other over the slightest thing
I wouldn’t call this the “average” Lemmy user, but there is a minority of very loud users who make it seem that way at times.
If we want this to be a pleasant place, users need to report them, and mods & admins—who, I cannot stress enough, do this labor for free or at most peanuts—need to deal with them.
https://join-lemmy.org/docs/code_of_conduct.html
They have one very important thing in common. They both support the alt-right. Fascists because they want to. Leftist because they’re purists.
They do not support the alt-right. What are you even talking about? “MAGA communists” almost never show up on Lemmy, and when they do they are quickly shown the door. And Marxist-Leninists are neither “purists,” “idealists,” nor “utopians,” which you’d know if you’d read any Marxist-Leninist theory.
I have read a lot of marxist and anarchist theory. All marxist theories did is to confirm that the anarchists are right.
They support the alt-right by being overly idealistic and failing to partner with liberals and more moderate leftists to make progress.
Divide and be conquered.
Look at what you made me do!
I wouldn’t have considered genocide, if you weren’t so idealistic!!
If you had only partnered up with the people who only care about money, we could have returned to the status quo.
Mate, the goal is to be idealistic. No one is perfect, but we want to strive for what’s the best and hope we reach there some day.
Yes, but not at the cost of letting fascists win. Harm reduction is real.
Sure, harm reduction is good. That’s what’s been happening for the past century.
But you give the liberals an inch and they’ll take a mile. They’re only “liberals” as long as they’re making money of others, as soon as something goes wrong they’re first in line asking for government handouts. That’s why the liberals will always prefer fascist over left wing idealists, because they’re opportunists more than anything else. They’ll backstab you and vote in fascists if they think they can make more money with them. That’s exactly what’s happening in the US.
We need new politics where hating on the LGBTQ+, immigrants, women, and putting money over the lives of few isn’t considered a political leaning.
Partnering with liberals is idealistic. They always stab you in the back at the first opportunity.
I disagree. Socialists often tactically partner with liberals on shared goals, despite the risks. Knowing that, when forced to choose, liberals have historically sided with fascists, because fascists will never upend capitalism.
It makes tactical sense to partner with liberals in some contexts, like a national liberation struggle, and to put aside lesser contradictions to focus on the principal contradiction. It doesn’t make sense to partner with liberals while under capitalism, especially not within the imperial core. The liberals in congress don’t have a shared goal in stopping fascism.
What is a tankie?
That is a very specific interpretation of what I meant by this post.
To be perfectly honest, I really wasn’t making the point you should approve of nazis. Just that maybe it’s worth putting effort into being kind to one another…
For example, I constantly see leftists online biting eachother’s heads off (including on lemmy) for having slightly different left-wing ideology. Its not like “approach people you disagree with with curiosity” means specifically actual neonazis, and approaching someone with curiosity doesn’t mean telling people “your idea is correct and you’re right for thinking it”
It means trying to understand it. You can dislike someone and still gain from better understanding their worldview. Even if you think it’s harmful. Even if you think it’s illogical. Even if you think they’re wrong. Curiousity isn’t tacit approval.
If you want to think about it cynically you can consider it creating allies and knowing your enemy.
I understand we disagree on certain things, that’s okay, these are just my thoughts on the subject, and it’s a profoundly important one, so I can appreciate why people would have different strongly held beliefs on it. Hope you have a good one :)
If you think political stances can be adequately expressed along a single line, then you’re not much better I’m afraid. Engage with the nuance, friend, it’ll build understanding and be better for all of us.
If you know what you are arguing and argue with tankies/Nazis in good faith, nine times out of ten they will eventually lose their temper and make fools of themselves. There is no need to be hostile to begin with, they just defeat themselves basically because their ideologies are totally flawed (kinda like in real life).
These people don’t deserve validation.
It is not to validate them, it is to discredit them and provide red flags to would-be readers how dangerous their ideas are.
It makes them feel validated, they’re not capable of self reflection
From my experience it hurts more than helps to engage with fascists/right wingers because you give them a platform.
They should be contained on twitter and truth socal until they learn that it’s not ok to kill minorities or they decide they want to get shot.
they’re not capable of self reflection
You missed the part where I said it is for the readers, not the cultists. It is not about convincing these ideologues, it is to warn the readers why the ideas of these cultists are bad.
If you look at their past interactions with “tankies”, they’re all the opposite of what you say they should be: it’s the “tankie” calmly and reasonably making their points while SoftestSaphic immediately descends into an incoherent raging tantrum.
Every time I engage with you tankies it results in mockery, lies, trolling, genocidal denial, intolerance, and pushing mostly Russian propaganda. You really aren’t welcome here. Sick of being tolerant to the intolerant.
Your comment history is deranged
Don’t apologize.
