Remote View

12mo ago

Lemmy users lack nuace and it stops actual discussion.

I seriously cannot have any degree of nuanced conversation here.

Like I get it, we all know capitalism is bad, but it feels like every time I or anyone go towards discussing the steps that need to be taken to address current looming problems in the short term, someone has to jump in and shut it down with "capitalism bad >:[ " and tear down any idea presented because its not complete and total destruction of the current economic model.

The result just feels like an echo chamber where no actual solutions get presented other than someone posting whole ass dissertations on their 33-step (where 30/33 steps are about as vague as "we'll just handle it") plan to fully convert the world to an anarchist commune.

Edit: I still vastly prefer Lemmy and the fediverse and a whole, my complaint here is that many of you are TOO INTENSE. You blow up small scale discussion.

294 comments

Welcome to the Internet? It's not just Lemmy lol
- Agree. Reddit was the same thing if not worse. Nuance is [apparently] dead and if you do not explain everything from the dawn of Man to cover your thought, people pick the comment apart like carrion as if you've never thought about anything deeply before. They might even gloss over things you did say and attempt to invalidate or discredit your post because only they hold the Truth of the Internet handed down from the Elders. It can be a bit frustrating.
  
  Did you even consider vegans don’t eat decaying flesh? You cant just hold everyone to your standards. I’m not even going to bother reading the rest of what you wrote because you're so fundamentally wrong already that I'm confident i can stop there and not miss anything of substance.
- Welcome to the internet
  Also happens all the time irl
  
  Thats a great song, thanks for sharing!
- IMO, it's anywhere that has a voting system in place. Every forum has a hivemind, but the hivemind is especially reinforced when fake Internet points are at stake. That, and moderators yanking comments they don't agree with.
  
  Its not about the points, its about the weighted value.
  Higher point posts go up higher snd are seen by more people. Lowering posts makes them less prominent.
  You can go for a system of whoever posts first gets their comment to be first, leading to people rushing low quality crap to be at the top. Or most recent comment first, giving you a shit experience like browsing a discord for information. Or random post order, where high quality content gets buried under a sea of shit.
  Ranked voting is the best option we've found that works online so far.
  Personally I downvote shit all the time if i feel its not more worthy than other content. Everyone should be judging posts according to their own metric so we can average out content across a communities views.
  
  I was really hoping we'd leave that behind when we stopped totalling them up.
  
  You need some way to order stuff. How would you prefer to order content if not by votes? Isn't votes at least a somewhat democratic way to do it? And much like democracy, it might not be great but I have no better ideas.
  
  And as case in point, some dickhole already felt the need to apply one downvote to your very factual comment.
- Yeah, but I feel like it's worse in Reddit and even WAY worse in here. I'm not sure I wanna keep using Lemmy anymore. Or threadiverse as a whole

It is quite often that responses seem to come from school age children who just discovered [insert edgy counter-culture ideology], and all of their responses and world views revolve around a rudimentary desire for that ideological utopia, with very little consideration given to sociology or economics. I suppose that is actually who's responding a lot of the time. All real world considerations are discarded, and any issues you identify are perceived as stupid/shill/Trumper/dummy/capitalist drivel with zero consideration given.
- I do notice and kinda agree that some users here are great at arguing about theory, but can't see beyond that for practical application.
- Agreed, often if you check the post history of folks like that you'll see that they're still in school.
- That’s precisely it. It’s manufactured outrage created by kids trying to look Worldly. The same about when on when I was in school- and it was every bit as cringy.
- Theres truth to this but I think the general sentiment is archaic and overblown to the point it's almost anachronistic.
  It used to be that cohorts would grow more conservative as they aged - trying to keep everything like they know, essentially. This was true when we built societies that allowed generations to prosper.
  We don't see that seismic shift in millennials or the older zoomers. We see the opposite. Millennials onward are actively moving further left, not just appearing further left because the Overton window has shifted. If anything, the window shifting, casting those in the center as "left", hasn't pulled the left to center, but the other way around. It's pushed the center to be more open to the lefts ideas. The left still convulses at the centers ideas, trust me (like student loans).
  This is one of those opinions that everyone likes to assume is part of the silent majority but there's just not that as much evidence to back up the confidence in which it's announced - which, remember this, is 100% the main tactic of those in the center. This is the "end of history", everything's figured out, inability to see beyond themselves that makes leftists say neoliberalism (the prevailing media world view, center-right) is a cult or that liberalism is a mental illness -the former I agree with, the latter I do not.
  Once this tone is dropped, its a mine field of red flags representing the death of nuance, that we've reached the limits of their rationality and critical thinking.
  Just like breaking thru the rights MAGA cult, breaking the centers techno authoritarianism is like explaining 3D to Flatlanders. And if that sounds like gobbledygook to you, you've either been completely sheltered (and in that case, buckle up, things are waaaay worse than you were told growing up) or you're fully indoctrinated into either ideologue. Blinders on. Kamakazi away.
- Makes sense. !askmenover30@lemm.ee is getting a bit more active lately, might be a community for that age range

I find Lemmy significantly worse than reddit was in this regard. The number of times I've had my different (not unpopular outside of lemmy) opinion met immediately with personal insults is way higher here in the few months I've been here than my years with reddit.
I've just been learning not to engage on any of the lemmy propaganda areas, and that leaves me with a lot less active communities.
- I agree, and attribute that to the kind of people who would boycott Reddit forever, where the largest part of the lemmy population seems to originate from.
  As much as I roll my eyes at the overuse of the term, lemmy is mostly comprised of the "woke"est of the reddit population.
  
  People who make their politics their personality appear at both ends of the spectrum.
- I’ve found the same and sadly when I open Lemmy up I see the same half dozen articles still at the top of home. I’ve done back to Reddit on Mobile where there’s still a ton of new content.
- I seem to have a knack for pissing off fanboys. There's no use using logic and reason.
- Lemmy is less ban happy than reddit, so I don't mind throwing down in the comments. Do your part, fight against stupidity.
  
  It's not less ban happy at all.

Sure, but have you tried using Linux, going vegan and guillotining billionaires?
- You forgot Firefox, you absolute monster!
  
  And FOSS. Don’t forget FOSS

Like I get it, we all know capitalism is bad, but it feels like every time I or anyone go towards discussing the steps that need to be taken to address current looming problems in the short term, someone has to jump in and shut it down with "capitalism bad >:[ " and tear down any idea presented because its not complete and total destruction of the current economic model.
That is literally why my instance finally defederated from .ml Every 3rd comment from someone there was exactly that regardless of what community you were in. It was exhausting. Lemmygrad and Hexbear were already blocked here, and once the .ml peanut gallery was gone, it was like "wow, this is kind of enjoyable again".
Do I miss a few FOSS communities that were more active there than their counterparts elsewhere? Yeah, a little. But, overall, the experience is just so much better after they were blocked. It's not even that I really disagree with them on everything, it's just....STFU already, stop brigading, and maybe say something constructive for once.
- Hexbear were already blocked
  Yeah things were so, so much worse before that happened. I finally blocked the whole instance in my client so I didn't tear out all my remaining hair.

I feel like many people here are literally unreasonable. Any person with any faith at all is an idiot, all enlightened atheists are superior... FuckCars seems to be leaking and anyone who has to drive for their job is hated on... Linux is the only option, you should never, ever use Windows for anything... etc...
Like, not everything is black and white! The real world is shades of grey and often requires compromise. But the loudest voices here seem to be extremists that slap down any comment that isn't 100% what they believe in. It's exhausting...
- I mean, to be fair, it is the internet.
  a large portion of people on it are, in fact, idiots.
  Thats the price we paid when the internet went from a nerd toy in the mid/late 90s, to essential utility in the aughts.
  
  As a nerd who was on the internet in the 90s I can assure you that was no filter against idiots.
  
  Damn, you got me :(
- Lemmy is the other side of the same coin as reddit unfortunately. Im part of the problem myself, its hard not to vent here sometimes even though it is inappropriate.
- Absolutely. At work I man a tech desk for a big box store (aka helping people who don't or can't understand what email is activate phones), and at home I share responsibility caring for two people who don't have the mental capacity to shut the refrigerator door when they're done finding food. That's...a bigger can of worms than what we're talking about here, but encountering open-and-shut thoughts on how things ought to be (on here) feels like whiplash compared to how I usually have to think through my actions in a day.
- This. I've come across more than a few posts discussing solutions to various problems. Said solutions are shallower than a wading pool. Playing devil's advocate and poking and prodding to invoke some critical thinking is met with downvotes and derision.
  It just ain't worth it.
- Maybe try !casualconversation@lemmy.world ? It's more laid back and nuanced
  
  Thanks, I genuinely appreciate the suggestion! I know that's how some browse, but not me. I look at what's in my feed and comment on it. I don't care if it's !PaintChemistry@boring.org or !AlienSexualAdventures@fuck.zig.
- Don’t you think this is kind of a black and white characterization? 😋
  I think this is a problem with online social interactions everywhere. Maybe it stems from the lack of empathy people feel for the faceless internet strangers we are interacting with. It remains to be seen whether a large online community can be built around more positive kinds of interactions. If it exists, I have not found it yet.

I dunno man, I didn't come here looking to contribute to or find a plan to fix the world. I came here to doom scroll and look at memes.
- Yeah that was my line of thinking. Even if someone did come up with a solution to all the world's problems, it's not like it's going to lead to anything.
- Fully aware I’m either the old man yelling at clouds, or at the choir. CAN’T STOP, WOLN’T STOP

This is my big problem with online spaces. Yes it's great to demand that everything should be different, but I've spun on this planet for a few decades and all I can say is change happens slowly.
We're still dealing with the fallout from slavery and it ended over a century ago. A decade ago I fought for gay marriage and I thought we won, but it's still being contested.
Keep fighting for change, but know that we need to focus on small victories. Places like the US are not going to give up capitalism in the next year. Or the next decade. Or century. What we can do however is push for strong regulation, housing, and rights.
Nuance here is important, and I agree dropping the "everything bad is bad" talk is key. We all know it's bad, but a country is a big ship, and a big ship takes a very long time to turn around.

I actually appreciate the flow of opinions and information from people with other viewpoints and political opinions. Yeah people can be too intense like you say. I've really enjoyed learning about politics from a communist's perspective. I was sort of blown away by people who disliked liberals but their talking points weren't those of the American right wing. They were leftist communists, and their viewpoints are really fascinating. I've really gone into the rabbit hole learning about class warfare and historical actions of communist countries. If people are trying to spread their viewpoints they should be able to make compelling arguments to support the things they advocate for. I'd be happy to digest more communist information/propaganda/marketing it's really well thought out stuff.
- Just keep in mind most of the people repeating this stuff are teenage edgelords. Every now and then you get a true intelligent person but it's usually just a kid going through a phase.
  
  Almost all of it just seems like contrarian meme bullshit. The same shit that gave rise to MAGA but for lefties.
  
  That doesn't make sense because Lemmy's user base is probably almost entirely 40 or older
  
  I don't think this has much to do with age. I guess it's more because formulating actual arguments takes some effort.

In fact I agree with your "echo chamber" comments, by design the servers and communities foster a group of like-minded individuals and the moderation is enforcing the same kind of thinking and rules.
At the same time, I find it more possible to get nuanced takes, back and forth discussion that isn't just troll bait or shouting matches here on Lemmy than elsewhere. People approach some topics with more curiousity, are a bit more willing to admit they are wrong/corrected about something and listen to each other's perspectives. Productive communication is a two way street. There's still a group of jerks, trolls and bad actors, but it's a monumental effort to moderate them away and they're virtually inevitable in any populated anonymous online space.
I don't really mind if something is downvoted for being unpopular unless it's an obvious troll/flamer. That includes people that talk about capitalism's benefits. I know there are cases of missed references or sarcasm, I am a proponent of /s to avoid misunderstanding for that reason.
What sort of thing would you like to have a nuanced discussion on?
- Really just the half steps and the means to make progress towards a better system that works for the benefit of the majority, y'know, socialism. It's a bottom up discussion that always gets taken over by the top-down people who can only ever talk about the whole shebang.
  
  There are no satisfactory "answers" on how to make progress. Because the only actual answers are painfully and slowly. By educating and convincing others. So it always boils down to impatient revolutionaries trying to do it by force. Fundamentally failing, and setting everyone back again and again.
  Even Marx phrased it as "evolution" not revolution. And like you said it starts from the bottom up. Revolution has only made the educated and ignorant alike fearfully clutch to capitalism. Because the ideology of the revolutionaries is a lateral move. That wouldn't actually make things better. And would see a lot of people needlessly killed.
  The one, possibly best thing we could do. Is for interested, individuals to start pooling their money to buy land. Then build high density, communal housing and sustainable communities. Dedicated towards proving socialist/small c communist principles. Ideally with people able to help replicate such communities. Where there will be no Lords of any sort. And rent will be the cost of what is needed to maintain housing. Not someone's luxury. The funds to get started would be the biggest hurdle. But once people see there's nothing to actually fear. And for younger generations, lots to gain. You'd see a lot of people warm up to the idea.

capitalism bad >:[
- i said "X bad", now surely everyone must agree that i'm right and they're wrong

I notice there is definitely a lot of bad faith discussions happening, but there's also a lot of us who are autistic lol

It's not a Lemmy thing, it's an internet thing. People have become lazy and instead of discussing things will just vote and move on.
Makes for a very boring and stale world.
- Agreed. I voted as soon as I saw the spelling mistake. We don't applaud a tenor if he can't clear his throat, as they say.
- It's to a greater intensity on Lemmy than anywhere else except right wing spaces.
  
  That depends very heavily on how you engage with lemmy. Lemmy isn’t a monolith and different communities have very different energies. Some are toxic, many are not. My feed is not terribly toxic like many of you all describe.
  
  Maybe it's because a lot of Lemmy users came from reddit, where presumably only a minority of those accounts had a lot of karma. Seems somewhat plausible to me, because the inhibition threshold to leave reddit for Lemmy would be higher if you weren't just a lurker.
- I've tried an instance without downvotes for a few days, it's interesting to see views that would otherwise be heavily downvoted
  
  How are you finding it? I generally hide vote counts and other social metrics where I can, but that's not the same

I have a feeling the comments section here is going to be a case study in irony.

They also have a reddit-scale visceral hatred for religion lmao
- Religion is fucking bad, though: without hyperbole, it is and always has been a scourge on our collective existence.
  
  But religious people aren't always bad and that seems to get lost on here.
  
  Then I can argue that Athiesm is worse, if that's the case.
- Would people hate religion if religion wasn't constantly weaponized against individuals?
- Yea, I saw couple of people that want to discuss religion and faith in the civil manner but the majority is drowning out the conversation. I would love to have a safe space for discussing such topics but I already have couple of communities that I contribute as a sole person and I am unwilling to create another one.
  
  Would be nice if there were enough religious people on Lemmy to form a functional community. Probably one of the few things I miss about Reddit. Although r/Christianity had many athiests just coming in to dunk on Christians and was very poorly moderated, unfortunately.
- I'm OK with this one.
- The replies of this comment is the reason I'm tired of using the whole Fediverse.
- I find it more concerning that you appear to be a bootlicker for religion
  
  I find it more concerning that you'd judge people for not prioritising 70-90 or so years of their life over eternity.

Whenever I have a broad vague discussion of the world that is subject to significant interpretations and assumptions it creates a lot of friction too. Contraversy is one place where Lemmy's high response rates work against it.
To the people doing "capitalism bad" replies I implore you to check out socialist economists. Fleshed out descriptions of socialism and communism usually discuss emulating the successes of industrial capitalism while mitigating the failures. The idea of armed revolutionary communism is largely a mess that only ever worked in rural environments.
- Armed revolutionary communism appeals to teenagers and simpletons, that's why you see it brought up a lot on Lemmy.
- Fleshed out descriptions of socialism and communism usually discuss emulating the successes of industrial capitalism while mitigating the failures.
  This is true for socialism, but communist economics are traditionally moneyless.
  Socialism is conceptualized as a transitional economic stage, so it makes a lot of sense it would share commonalities with capitalism.
  Armed revolutionary communism is a bit of a misnomer, since it's a part of that socialist transitional stage towards communism. If memory serves, it has basically only been done in rural/early industrial states.
  
  Currency has always been a metaphor for energy and other resources to help alleviate the incongruities of a barter economy. A moneyless society is just a barter economy even if people's needs are largely met.

Yup. That's why I started up a new community:
!actual_discussion@lemmy.ca
To quote our pinned thread:
Why did I make this community? Well, mostly in response to the rest of Lemmy and the way many otherwise interesting discussion threads fall apart into downvoting and groupthink.
I don’t like people making baseless accusations and defend people on all sides when people are wrong about their opposition. I hate it when people think they know what others think and project incorrect (and often evil) bullshit on each other. It’s important to maintain solid reasoning and conclusions, not just one or the other.
I hate people being wilfully wrong because their group fetishizes a certain angle of the truth instead of the boring reality of the situation.
Ideas are important and I don’t feel we can get out of the current shitty slump we’re in with political discourse unless we are able to clearly articulate ourselves and discuss the world we’re in.
You (and all of you who feel the way you do) are welcome. You won't always agree with everyone there. That's okay. We talk about it. We're grown-ups.
- Subscribed. Would regardless of my thoughts lol, seems like a genuinely good layout for a community.
  
  And we're happy to have you!

That isn't a universally unpopular opinion; at least two of us hold it lol.
I may have to ignore all the politics and news communities for a while and focus on more important things like star trek memes.

Want deeper discussion? I'm reading "being no one" by Thomas Metzinger. In simplistic terms, it's a scientific book about how you aren't a self, but a constantly running process. I'm very down to discuss it.
Of course, people aren't using Lemmy for that level of discussion generally. They're using it to entertain themselves while shitting, or they're urgently trying to push agendas. That's the internet these days. People geeking on specific subjects into granular detail is on life support in tiny communities.
- I agree with much of what you said. Lemmy is (to me) a place to find memes, news, and shitposts. It's not a place i would attempt to find a meaningful community for a specific hobby-- something Reddit was able to pull off to some extent. Even then, i found Reddit was often a low-quality substitute for communities that were often better served on a dedicated site and/or forum elsewhere. Reddit could still point you to those places though, so it all worked out imo. It's a shame it all went down the way it did, nothing good ever lasts for very long--especially on the Internet :/
- Sounds interesting! Your description reminds me of this YouTube / Nebula video about head transplants

If you block unhelpful people you improve the Internet for yourself.
- While i agree with this and i do block people, regularly, if you aren't paying attention this is exactly how you get echo chambers.
  Not suggesting i have a good solution, because i don't.
  Best i can do is try to differentiate between "opinion that is not my own" and "flagrant arsehole".
  I like to think it's the difference between good faith and bad faith arguments, but that still assumes i can tell the difference consistently.
  Shit is hard yo.
  
  Shit is, indeed, hard yo
- I have blocked a lot of users and communities. I don't need to see a ton of stuff about and I don't need to deal with people who lack critical thinking skills. The "permit all and block" strategy works better with Lemmy being small and federated to keep learning about new communities.
- But make it worse for others. Tragedy of the commons.

Nuh-uh doodoo head!

I mean you're right, but I found the same on other platforms.
I think being contrarian just feels like engagement. When you're taking a shit beating on some commenter about how bad capitalism is a quick hit.
I think the format of most social media encourages this type of simple pre-thought positions on things.
- My exact thought. This isn’t a lemmy thing, it’s an internet thing.
  I really don’t have much of the experience OP is talking about either, but that’s largely due to the feed I’ve curated. Either that or I’m the problem lol. But in general, I tend to have pretty good interactions for the most part, unless I’m feeling feisty and start something.
  
  I'm on /all constantly, and I agree with you. People are fine. I don't really know where people get the idea to post these things. I think they might browse all, see a bunch of posts from /antiwork, or /fuckcars, or /aboringdystopia, or /linuxmemes, and then complain that they only see those things. It's probably confirmation bias, and if they used frontpage instead and actually followed spaces they were interested in they wouldn't have these problems.
  To me, it's like complaining about sex at an orgy. The point of the platform, and reddit, and most other forms of social media, is to curate a feed that suits you. If you don't do that, it isn't the platforms fault if it then doesn't suit you.

Yeah we're a bunch of cunts, it's fair to say.
- Speak for yourself you cu...
  Oh fair enough
  
  That's offensive, I lack the warmth and the depth!

I think this is a general problem with online discussion. You can have more productive discussion about capitalism/socialism/anarchism in a bar in the deep south than you can online. Online people tend to forget there’s another person with a brain on the other side of the conversation (if they even intended to be having a conversation, which people mostly don’t). We know from every day life that people don’t speak carefully in conversation—you really have to be constantly extending the benefit of the doubt. Online no one extends the benefit of the doubt even though we know most comments are off the cuff on the toilet.
There are some neat online tools for structuring discussions like Kialo that I think make some headway in diminishing the effect, but drinking a beer with someone while discussing still works better as far as having an interlocutor who is actually considering what you’re saying and who might actually be willing to shift their own view.
Internet is better equipped for quippy one liners and getting (bastardized) ideas into the zeitgeist.
- I have a pet theory that the structure of comments on Reddit and Lemmy leads to low effort posting. As such, I have been looking for alternatives, so thank you for noting Kialo.
  I don't know what the fix for Lemmy is, or even if it is truly an issue as not all types of discourse should be presented in the same way.

I discovered Lemmy and Hacker news at roughly the same time, and the difference in comment quality is striking. Obviously HN is a lot more mature platform, and more specialised, but still... People over there are lamenting the quality of their comments and saying they're not what they used to be, but the majority are interesting and constructive
- It’s cool if you like to circle jerk with libertarian tech bros I suppose.
  
  omg lyk dis iz wat op is tlkin abt!!!,,
  It’s obvious these people don’t enjoy this place, yet instead of leaving to find somewhere else they do enjoy or putting in a modicum of effort snd starting a community to foster likeminded peoples, they’d rather moan to feel validated.
  Or in other words, they want a right wing discussion board and are upset people would rather engage in other topics.

That's not an argument, you're just contradicting me

I definitely feel like I can get away with posting against group think here on lemmy far more than I did on reddit.
- I'm not talking about going "against group think" I just don't want to be bombarded with replies about the global capitalism problem when I'm trying to talk about how to engage in local rent control or something else smaller than global revolution.
  
  Ah, yeah. That can be annoying. I'd suggest getting more comfortable with the block feature then. Since I myself have gotten more comfortable with it, I've had to deal with the loud idiots far less. Lemme has far more ability to curate what you expose yourself to than Reddit ever did

I just want to talk about Linux and make clever jokes.
- You were literally complaining about women and how you prefer buying material possessions in life over valuing connections with people just a few hours ago.
  
  Are you always so boringly literal?
  
  Irony is dead

I completely agree. However, I also think its better than 'most' internet places.
There is a down-vote brigade around any kind of criticism of a knee jerk reaction people are having to a headline. I think because of the current political climate, nuance around responsibility for the state of things simply isn't suffered, which I do understand the sentiment. However, I've also been pleasantly surprised at the number of 3+ deep comment threads, which seems to be about where the nuance appears.
Its really the knee jerk downvoters and one line commenters who do actually lack critical thinking skills, but this isn't unique to lemmy. Its all over, hackernews has them too, there is simply a larger effort to 'appear smart' on hn than lemmy. Lemmy is more casual, which is fine. This is a space for casual discussion, and hot takes are fine and should be welcome.
I'll use a political example, such as my concern around how much water carrying I see for groups like congressional Democrats. If you push back on something coming from NYT as being a 'Democratic win', you'll be very quickly downvoted below 50%. However, I don't think the lack of nuance is because of lemmy or the demographic here. I think its from a place of real fear around what might happen if the US loses its democracy to fascism that is generally palpable across the internet and offline as well. People are materially very afraid, and reacting without nuance right now, and I think the fear is justified. However, if we want to find solutions, we need to maintain a clear head and keep discussions happening. Its open forums like Lemmy where opinions are made and nuanced developed; there needs to be space for that.
This same point can be extended to issues around global war, climate change, the rise of global fascism, the usurping of generations of potential by the oligarchical class, any of the innumerable ills we are currently staring down the barrel of. Its a stressful time and people are rightfully scared and worried. Scared worried people don't do nuance. They react. Up for things they think they agree with, down for things they don't. No nuance.
Largely I agree with the point, but I don't think its a lemmy thing in the current climate.
- I like your point about a place of fear. I did an edit to clarify that I still think the Fediverse beats other social media and my complaint is a criticism coming from a place of love. It's very hard to continue wanting to engage in low-level discussion around issue when I know someone is about to take it over with either some grand (in scale, not concept) statement about the issue, or abject defeatism.
- It's becoming way more difficult to introduce nuanced news to a mass audience.
  People aren't informed outside of their own bubble. I'm self aware enough to seek out all sides of the story. Even if it means I have to learn an opposing viewpoint.
  I hate having content suggested and 'curated' for me on every single platform. It's a divisive echo chamber.

Just ignore the low-effort comments and wait for someone who is able to invest more effort to answer.

why do you expect random people on the internet to be smart enough to be able to have a position and defend it for such a complex thing as the economy?
I think you'll find a lot of nuance for more specific matters, but not for something this complex and abstract. You'll mostly get emotional responses and opinions. If you want to have an intellectual discussion on economics, I don't think this is the right place.
You could also be part of the solution and create a community for that type of content. You could be in charge of moderating it, to keep away the users that you consider are echo-chambering without actual contributions.... I mean, if you really care about actual solutions.
- I don't expect much, just that when I'm having a discussion about how to engage in grassroots efforts to fix smaller scale problems, I don't have a third chime in with "global revolution now, only answer or shut up"

See? Even the post criticizing the lack of nuance says everyone thinks capitalism ia bad. :D

I wish there was an option to judge the content independently of form. A 2 types of karma kind of system.
There are times I strongly disagree with the idea behind the post, but it's really nicely written. And then there are other times when I agree with the general gist of a post, but OP is still a dick and deserves a slap.
- It wouldn't matter. You could have 20 different metrics to rate a post and people would use all 20 to bury things they didn't like.

I've found the opposite to be true on Lemmy. It's definitely getting worse with time, but the exodus that fueled Lemmy initially seemed to consist mostly of the reasonable people. You can see a noticeable decline in attempts to calmly rebut misinformation with sourced arguments in Reddit (to the general detriment of the audience reading the posts there). Just my personal experience of course, but you have to scroll so much further to see the actual true in a lot of posts on reddit than you used to (if that truth shows up at all).
So it's nice for us personally to be in a bit more filtered existence here, with a higher overall quality of conversation, but the masses on reddit suffer, especially the kids - Gut feels like all the 30s-40s millennials went to Lemmy and left the Gen Z kids as chum in the water for the boomers and bots that make up the ceaseless repetition of unsubstantiated broken-minded talking points.
I'd also encourage you to look internally at the quality of your own arguments if you feel like nobody is entertaining your opinions on things.. maybe you just kind of suck?

This is a great video for anyone trying to understand why those types of comments happen
- Thank you for this. Never saw it and he makes a great point.
- this really explains a lot, thanks for that video; it definitely changed how i look at some comments and posts.
- Wow. This is spot on. Very interesting! Let me add my 2 cents: Capitalism is bad/eat the billionaires.

Upvoted for unpopular opinion. I don't agree though, I think it's still better than most other online places. It's just that "most other places" doesn't set a high bar and besides, I bet even if it was a lot better, people would still complain.

Remember most people are teenagers.
- I suspect most of Lemmy’s user base is 25+ if not 30+.
  
  Yeah but most are former reddit users, so
  
  Doubt.

I don't really agree. Sure, there's shitty content everywhere, and there's a couple of instances filled to the brim with edgy tankies possessing not only an IQ worthy of fenceposts, but a comprehension of Marxist theory on par with that the highest ranked Gulag camp keeper.
There's also, however, other people. And more often than not I find that wherever there's an interesting discussion to be had, people are having it. If someone annoys you it's not harder than blocking them or their instance, and you can keep having your high brow discussions in peace and quiet.

Why aren't y'all just blocking the people you don't want to interact with?

/agree
Hot Take: I honestly don't know if I'm right or not about this, but it feels like it's a generational thing, and not just a Lemmy thing.

It's a shame that this discussion so frequently centers around the political discussions, but this has definitely seeped into the broader discourse. Short, low-effort comments with no actual content are nearly always at the top. The only solution I can see is to create some heavily moderated spaces where low-effort comments will not fly, but we've seen time and time again that lemmy users are more anti-moderation than most.
- There are heavily moderated spaces, but they seem dedicated to banning anyone who dissents rather than culling low quality posts.
- It's not necessarily about effort. I've seen people put a lot of effort into some absolute drivel.

First day on the internet?

Maybe try !casualconversation@lemmy.world ? It's more laid back

I think this is mostly because it's a smaller community overall so when you're in those politically minded subreddits, it's all the same opinion. I think it'll change as lemmy grows and more people with diverse experiences and outlooks join the discussions.
- While I agree, I will add that therein lies part of the problem. Many people will see those extreme reactions, decide no one is willing to hear any sort of dissenting opinion, and write off lemmy as a whole :(

Yeah. It's a moderately popular forum. You need to find a small community or instance to get nuance because places trend towards echo chambers after a certain size

I've found the fediverse mostly better than reddit. Better than most of the big subs, worse than a lot of niche subs.
Facebook was probably the most nuanced for me, but that was because I only ever interacted with 20 people I personally knew.
I think the fediverse is too broad to expect a lot of nuanced discussion in the comments, but not populated enough for niche communities with enough common ground that you start to see meaningful discussion.

Did we just have a different post on this topic a couple days ago? I can dig up my reply from the last thread but basically Lemmy and the fediverse is similarly bad for political discourse as the other social platforms because of the (semi)anonymous of social media and the fact we don't really have the mental bandwidth needed to devote time to have nuanced conversations with strangers.

What you are describing is a correct "image" of human-nature.
It also is a correct understanding of why humankind won't get its viability in-order until it's far far far too late to make any difference.
There are 1 or 2 papers, recently, on how human-nature is reactive to obvious-problems, and how that makes it impossible to prevent ClimatePunctuation, as I call it, from killing either all or nearly-all of our kind from this planet/system.
Nuance & considered-reason, both, have no place in imprinted animal-reaction, which is what is displacing considered-reason from our world, now.
"dog whistle" is just a euphamism for imprinted/programmed animal-reaction, limbic-mind's displacement for considered-reason.
Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking Fast & Slow" is the most important psychology-book in our world, right now, it is on this 2-system basis of our minds..
All the intense-but-not-actual/workable enforcing of ideology-addicts.. it'll never save us.
fundamentally, consider that addiction is a mechanism, not a problem: addiction-to-integrity is a Good Thing(tm), right?
Addiction-to-growing-up, addiction-to-wisdom, addiction-to-outgrowing-ignorance, addiction-to-being-a-proper-parent, etc..
But that is nuance.
Try telling any of the ideology-addicts whose ideology is centered on "addiction" that addiction is just an impersonal-mechanism, and it is what-the-addiction-is-TO that can be a problem .. and you'll discover how rabid/automatic/closed minds can be.
shruggeth
No matter: if life is what human-ignorance need eradicate from this world, then .. eventually .. life'll try again, elsewhere.
An eldless stream of Universes, filled with worlds, it doesn't matter if we won't earn considered-reason, does it?
It'll happen somewhere..
someday..
Statistically, it must, right?
_ /\ _

Actual discussion on what?
You've said you don’t like people being unhappy with the system they're forced to live under, and that it annoys you that we talk about it? We have solutions, we have two centuries of theory and historical examples, its not our job to teach you all of this if you're not willing to learn it yourself. Its not hard to find this information online, why should we always engage in intense debate? It was exhausting on reddit and 99% of the time it ends in bad faith arguments and you've wasted an hour of your time on someone who was nothing worth more than a ‘k’ and moving on.
If you so desperately want to see other content, foster it yourself. You could start your own community or instance and put in the hard work to see what you want to on the Fediverse. Its no one else's job to cater to you, you have the tools use them.
Frankly I fucking love this place, it’s the closest to what the Internet felt like 30 years ago and my interactions with most people have been bloody enjoyable.

110% agree.
I could say "you know, I guess I can kinda see why people thought free market capitalism would work"
And someone will come out of the woodwork like "I can't believe you think billionaires profiting off exploitation is actually a good idea"
First of all, no? Lol I'm saying I understand why people might think it would work, but for some reason forget that we as a people are generally selfish. Human nature and corruption and all that, people in power hoard power.
- So basically you're saying capitalism would work if human nature were completely different? Gee I wonder why people don't take your views seriously.
  
  The irony is palpable.
  What if corporations didn't count as people? If they didn't worship the almighty dollar and put profits over people? Could capitalism work?
  No idea, probably not, but I'm not an economist. And humans are notoriously bad at screwing up basically every form of government.
  Also, that wasn't my viewpoint, but you gotta admit that a lot of things in life would be better if human nature were completely (positively) different. Our lizard brains are wired for self preservation.
  
  Wait, are you not being sarcastic...?

thats precisely why anarchism is so criticized as being naive.
there are actual proven methods for the people to organize and seize power from the burgeois and current aristocracy.
people just refuse to believe it and instead go for the ages-old red scare propaganda for their opinions about it, and they just feel impotent then.
yall will have to find out what leftism actually is, then be open to changing your minds in many respects.

I am happy we could build a community where there is little nuance on Capitalism. Being a long-term Redditor, A was used to nuance, and whataboutism.
I don't believe in extremisms, it's just nice to see.

Like I get it, we all know capitalism is bad
Perhaps it’s you who isn’t bringing the nuance

Humans have been trying to make Capitalism "work" for the past 400 years. It. Doesn't. Work. We're now at an extinction level event due to just how atrociously bad Capitalism is for the human species (and all species for that matter) .
- Is there an /s missing or not? Genuinely hard to tell. Your comment is so fitting to what OP is complaining about.
  
  There's no /s missing. Just because the op complained doesn't make the facts less true.

Just ask them to point to a successful communist country.
Last I heard Vietnam was one and doing good, but that’s it.
- That just adds to empty dialog, it doesn't genuinely cultivate real discussion. So, I don't see the point. I've seen this question asked time and again and never has it led to anything productive just more zingers back and forth. In fact I've seen the question posed in response to many comments that simply point out flaws in our current system rather than engaging on anything.
  Perhaps because there are so many trolls we want to quickly establish which broad camp the other belongs to so we can choose whether to invest any significant additional time in responding.

294 comments