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I disagree with your premise.
It should be "The best thing that you can do for humanity is to be kind".
Seriously. We're living in a time when fascism is in an upswing and at least one religious leader has publicly called empathy a sin. Kindness and empathy are rebellious acts.
I'll add: "be supportive and helpful if you can, and just shut up if you can't".
Fediverse is sometimes suffering from the same kind of people that Linux has - "oh you have a problem? Well, here's the GitHub repo and a project Wiki, figure it out".
Yeah, if I don't have the answer I usually just stop in to say I hope someone more knowledgeable can chime in and wish them luck.
That way the post at least gets a little engagement for visibility. But the "rtfm" attitude, while understandable, can be really miserable to be met with when you're out of your depth doing your best to learn about something new and need some help from another actual human.
We all begrudge the automated phone systems that try to reduce the need for human beings by helping people with simple problems, and that approach to helping people exists for good reason but it does feel like sometimes we're too eager to leave people to figure things out by themselves just because it's a lot of work to actually help them, human to human. None of us enjoy being treated that way when we need help.
This place is becoming very Reddit, if you post anything that deviates from someone’s beliefs they call you names and insult your intelligence. So many people can’t have a debate or discussion without jumping to personal attacks and hate. It’s really disheartening. I love political debate but there’s no such thing anymore, only name calling
Spez had his gestapo admins ban a bunch of people after Elon had a fit so you're getting a lot of the terminally online types coming here. My suggestion is just don't give them any attention and they'll eventually give up. I was semi active in a few lefty subs and holy shit you could smell some of the people there just from their comments.
Its definitely rough, I can understand why. I live in the US and as a queer person whose loved ones are almost all minorities the outlook is feeling pretty bleak, but its definitely frustrating that it feels like even slightly different left wing ideas, or thoughts on what we do about our problems can spawn flamewars.
Literally with people you're in the exact same camp with :/ I'm also big on political debate, I think democracy can't function unless people can discuss with eachother what problems we have and what we think we should do about them. (And yes, I know we increasingly may not have much of democracy here in the US. I still think my statement is true of how democracy functions in general)
I think it's really valuable to learn how people arive at worldviews other than mine.
Yeah. So much of our social media is structured to reinforce being combative. Even the upvote/downvote feature of Reddit/Lemmy etc has this effect of rewarding performativity over substance. People start competing for points and start to interpret high point totals as the equivalent of winning an argument or saying something of substance.
Since it’s a lot easier to get upvotes if you’re pithy or snarky or unserious the whole mechanism that underpins this tech tilts people toward simplistic and aggressive rhetoric.
I don’t want to get too “the medium is the message” here and complexity in political discussions (or any discussions really) have been decreasing generation over generation - so it’s not just a social media problem. But social media seems to have broken so many of the traditional guardrails we’ve had against demagoguery. It’s going to take a lot to unwind it.
I agree. You can get a lot of positive reinforcement from sincere positive engagement (this post gave me lots, lol 😅) but it's exhausting work compared to just making a snide jab. And that really does profoundly shape peoples behavior over time.
I'm a BIG believer in the idea that the medium makes the message, and how we design the mechanics of this space shapes how we behave. Erin kissane has talked about that some in her work studying the fediverse and it's really stuck with me.
Doing a quick look through your comment history paints the picture that you're likely the issue since your responses are often vaguely or overtly aggressive. Snide and snark.
There it is. And that’s the weirdest, most volatile group, the ones that search through your comment history so they can find ammo for personal attacks. That’s so so weird, I have never ever looked through anyone’s comment history, if you’re an asshole i generally move on. Going into a strangers history to search for dirt is really cringe and kind of speaks to your priorities in life
I wasn't looking for dirt, I was genuinely curious as to why you were having that experience. I'm not attacking you, just giving you my opinion which is ironic... Of course self reflection isn't for everyone and it's often easier to assume our problems are all external, but in reality it's usually a bit of both. Anyway, I hope your experience here gets better.
Everyone's been really nice as long as I don't touch anything political - then it becomes a fart sniffing smug fest.
Unless I know the other person has the same intent to respectfully listen and try to understand rather than argue I won’t engage in any sort of political discussion. Polarizing opinions have been completely normalized online and it’s literally ruining society.
Happy Lemmy anniversary! I'm glad you're here :)
And yeah, I can very much understand that, I try to do the same. Sometimes it feels productive to talk with people you don't share perspective with, but if it's just gonna be a flame war I don't wanna go throwing gasoline, nothing is gained by that
I love talking with people with a different perspective, and I love playing the devils advocate to try to understand other points of view better. As you said, if it’s just going to become a fight it’s completely meaningless.
It sounds like we share very similar approaches :)
Oh and happy Lemmy anniversary. Is it really today? Weird coincidence that I joined today.
I got temporarily banned from Reddit for saying that using ivermectin might kill you, and that was it. I’m done.
It must be, your name shows up highlighted with a little birthday cake in my client :)
And interesting, ivermectin has that intense of side effects when taken orally? Or do the pseudo-science people who think it cures covid just advocate dosing it ridiculously high?
By coincidence I actually use ivermectin topically for my rosacea, a skin condition. Being a anti-parasitic its useful fro reducing the amount of demodex mites that can aggravate rosacea in some people! I know in people it's mostly used for lice.
I was replying to someone that said they could use it to treat covid, which has lead to people dying. Guess I got reported by them and for some reason an admin thought it was meant as a threat?
That’s really interesting! Did you have any problems getting your hands on it when people started buying it for covid?
Give quiche a chance.
I should give quiche a chance...?
I like quiche okay 😅 very eggy but it can be pretty tasty 🤷♂️
The thing that I appreciated most about Lemmy and my transition from Reddit is how cordial everyone has been. Even if a comment is taken out of context, people tend not to jump down each others throat and assume the worst, or make bad faith arguments full of fallacies. I've had legitimate back and forths with people, something that basically never happens on Reddit.
I fuckin love the hear that, I hope we can foster even more of that. It can be so hard online but I really think it's worth it. This space is only as good and as worthwhile as we make it ❤️
Well I came here to chew bubblegum and talk shit, and I’m all out of bubblegum.
I am sorry surph_ninja, but I have to be honest, I was the one that stole your bubblegum
I arrived at LEMMY after what I think we very optimistically called the Reddit Collapse. We wish. And I had toe in LEMMY and a few others at Reddit.
Recently with their abusively patronizing redesigning and gamification and just ugly bullshit, I can’t stomach Reddit at all. So LEMMY grows increasingly important, not just to me but to folks who haven’t yet even heard of it.
So, I’ll just say thanks for your post here. I have, I confess, engaged with a couple bullies on LEMMY and I always try to say… I don’t like to do this on LEMMY— and I say that precisely for the reasons you mention.
And as you encourage: I will try to be kinder, even in when feeling… hmm… less than kind.
Thats when I came here too. Sadly, spez had his yes man ban a lot of people and some really bad ones broke containment because of it. Most places I've been on here I haven't seen any chronically online shit but if this post is being made it must be getting worse.
It’s gotten to the point here at Lemmy that I’m wanting to set up my two favorite communities. It’s just that they are so niche I can’t imagine them taking off. And my pleasure in them is of course derived from people who are FAR MORE into them than I am.
But I can’t even go back to that cesspool Reddit now even for the good stuff. Oh well.
Thank you for considering my thoughts ❤️. I think when our anger is justified and we are feeling less than kind is when kindness can have the biggest potential impact, and is most worth being proud of.
Undeserved compassion is a powerful thing. But I don't think that means you can't confront bullies and tell them their treatment of other people is unwelcome here. Those things aren't mutually exclusive :)