This sounds like a humerus activity to try

You’re not wrong. Many of them are exposed to propaganda on TikTok and it is a growing issue. Espionage is being done to divide the left and consolidate the right. Just because it’s not as noticeable as the propaganda from the right doesn’t mean that it’s not having subtle effects. If it gets people to disengage or not look out for their best interests then it is effective. All this to say, there is a way to bring about positive change and that has to do with being involved locally.

I’m not convinced the most extreme comments you see online seeking to split up leftists are in good faith. It’s relatively easy for people committing espionage to pretend to be leftists, push their agenda, and then seek to divide and conquer.

I’m not saying there aren’t real people out there saying these things, but I do believe many of them have bought the narrative of bad faith actors that were disguised among them.

The same exact thing happens on the right, but it’s more so just spamming their bad faith rhetoric with bots in their case. Since their goal is just to convince the least checked-in person to disengage or believe their side a bit more by seeing their side first.

The frame is mostly enforced by top donors and the ones that do not want to rock the status quo, namely the Baby Boomers in Congress that are still benefiting from the current status quo.

That’s not to say Democrats wouldn’t fix some or many of the problems, but the very structure of the Federal Government makes positive change a big task. The fact that about half the states have been sold on a lie by the Republican Party contributes greatly to the problem. Republicans can say government doesn’t work, then when they get in office they actually break the institutions. They then point at those institutions they broke and say “See it’s busted!” as they actively had a hand in defunding the system.

Really, I feel the Democratic Party within blue states need to step up and implement the federal positive change they sought, but at the state and local levels instead. The only way Blue states will convince Red states to change at this point is by showing how their progressive policies work for them, and will in-turn work for us.

Namely, Blue states need to be tackling the housing crisis, creating well paying government jobs, investing in healthcare for all programs, providing more public housing options by potentially buying up private apartments, breaking up big monopolies, buy out the energy utilities to provide energy not-for-profit/actually implement energy system upgrades, and even implementing a statewide Universal Basic Income program.

Adding on to everything you’ve said, the people most likely encountering these topics for the first time usually are adolescents. I feel it helps my patience trying to keep that in mind when talking with them, since it makes sense that they may not have encountered the topic before.

I agree, having that and high taxes on the wealthy were part of the reason the US had such high levels of prosperity for the average citizen back in the olden days. The whole country should be getting connected via high speed rails, I feel. It would open up jobs for people living in more rural areas as well.

The fix is multifaceted I feel, everything you said is spot on for the issues.

I feel a fix requires Universal Basic Income and Housing, along with mental health support. A minimum level of support would at least help a lot of these people to be able to get off the ground or at least live with a modicum of dignity.

Universal Healthcare would help at least with health issues that people out on the streets face.

Marxism itself wasn’t necessarily tainted, but his ideas of socialism and communism definitely had a social stain associated with them. So by association it had a black mark.

I think it’s pretty clear that we haven’t seen it for what it was supposed to be, when it was weaponized by authoritarians and then attacked by capitalists. It’s supposed to be a grand thing of the people coming together, not stained in blood.

I think you may have misread what I said there about the reformist part. His ideas were revolutionary for the time, but many of the ideas could be applied by reformist.

I think you’re spot on, Marx specifically has a lot of connotations the general, uninformed public is terrified of.

I remember when I had to read it for a class the first time and the sense in the room was exactly like you’re opening some kind of book of sin. I was scared of a book, as a college student at the time. Then we actually started reading it, and it was like “wow this guy gets the issues of the system”.

While I personally have agreements and some disagreements with Marx, I think he helped give a lot of solid ideas that the system itself could be reformed and reforged.

I think it’s a shame that his ideas had carried a public taint to them for so long due to several authoritarians co-opting his message.

Teaching them about logical fallacies and how to spot them may be the best defense against these types of personalities imo. Many influencers that you’re concerned about try to prey upon these fallacies, so teaching your kids to spot them can help them to realize those people are full of shit.

Curating their content a bit to include more people you want them to be like can help as well, at least then they can have good people to look up to.

If your kids think you have their best interests in mind, I feel they’re less likely to push back and more likely to respect the boundaries you put down.

Some of it had to do with there not being admins to go around afaik. Lemm.ee for instance couldn’t find enough admins so they shut down. Moderating an instance seems like one of the hurdles that go along with running an instance. I could imagine some people dipped out of Lemmy for a little while if their server was deleted since they’re starting from scratch again. It took me a good month or so to make this account and ramp back up my own activity here for instance.

The admins across the servers do a good job of keeping bots out imo. If it ever becomes a problem the admins could look to adopt BlueSky’s moderation tools down the line, I feel. As BlueSky makes it easy to filter bots, misinformation spreaders, and have user level content controls.

It is with my in-laws at least; well for some of them. It’s how they envision coming on top in their American Dream. They get to spend their weeks pumping themselves up thinking it’s their turn next to win and envisioning all the things they’ll get to do with all that money.

I would say the scam is convincing people that they are lucky and that they specifically will eventually hit it big in their lifetime. This exact gimmick is what prevents some people from voting against their best interests because they could one day hit it big at the lotto and be in the big leagues! Assuming they don’t blow all that wealth on poor financial decisions in the few years thereafter.

When they said wicked, they meant wicked, not wicked.

I think for those types of communities having it be open but restricting commenting to flaired users that are verified makes way more sense. I’m not sure if that’s possible on Lemmy, but it’s an easy way to have the best of both worlds.

I think it’s a little hard on the other side of that as well. I have a lot of friends and it’s hard to not let someone down because things get busy and I get booked out so quick. Planning things a month out is the most realistic way I even get to see people these days.

I haven’t even seen my best friend in person for like two years now because we’ve both been slammed :/ I don’t know how reassuring that is, but I hope you don’t see it as people being against seeing you but some people feeling a bit overwhelmed by other stuff going on. Your best bet at knowing if things between y’all are good is asking to do an activity together a few weeks from now and catching up then. I hope this helps! :D

Imo it would only work here if everyone does it at the same time and if it’s implemented by legislation enforcing it. If one company does it, their competitors can take advantage of the perceived differences.