Unpopular Opinion
Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!
How voting works:
Vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
Guidelines:
Tag your post, if possible (not required)
- If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
- If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].
Rules:
1. NO POLITICS
Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.
2. Be civil.
Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...
Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.
5. No trolling.
This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.
6. Defend your opinion
This is a bit of a mix of rules 4 and 5 to help foster higher quality posts. You are expected to defend your unpopular opinion in the post body. We don't expect a whole manifesto (please, no manifestos), but you should at least provide some details as to why you hold the position you do.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
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It's difficult to avoid nihilism neck deep into an apocalypse. But you're right, I was being glib and dismissive. Sorry about that.
The reason I objected in the first place is that the oligarchy has used the personal choices conversation to quash criticisms across the board, and it's extremely effective. You can't complain about American manufacturing jobs going overseas because you drive an imported car. You can't complain about slave labor because you buy Nikes or KitKats or strawberries picked by illegal immigrants. It's a thought-terminating purity test that doesn't even hold up to scrutiny.
Factory farming chickens (or pigs or fish or reduces carbon output, but comes with its own environmental horrors, like diseases, water contamination, pest control, etc. Everyone in the world could go full vegan tomorrow, and the oligarchy would be clear cutting the Amazon rainforest to plant soybeans and lentils the day after, because the problem has never been personal choices. We need systemic changes to fix systemic problems.
By all means, reduce your beef consumption. But if you want to actually reduce human-drive climate destruction, we need to start eating billionaires, not chickens.
Yes, you are totally correct in all that, but I'm coming from a personal perspective - self preservation in what seems like a hopeless situation. Yes, it's all fucked and don't stop trying to eat the billionaires, but if you can not play their game, even in a minor way, that is a small win for you personally. Not dancing to their tune is a better feeling than hopeless nihilism as you bite into another one of their burgers, giving them a little bit more money and power.
And if enough people did that, who knows - it might actually make a difference.