I’m very familiar with and agree with the Nazi bar metaphor, and said as much in one of my very first comments I made in the discussion under this post. At no point have I advocated letting Lemmy be a Nazi bar. And we don’t exactly have many fascists here compared to other platforms, Lemmy is almost exclusively leftists.

Being kind to your fellow lemmites is not making this platform a Nazi safe haven, it just makes it a social space actually worth spending time in.

Ohhh, yeah I meant the anniversary of your time on Lemmy, I didn’t realize that’s today because you just made your account. Welcome!! Lol.

And yeah it’s definitely a pattern unfortunately :/ Lemmy is far from perfect, but it has a chance to be something better than we’ve had before and I think that’s pretty cool :)

The first was in reference to when someone expresses an idea you don’t understand or a perspective you don’t share, and the latter was about the tendency to just keep scrolling and say nothing even when you like a post or comment, but I can see why you interpreted them that way.

In my experience when someone is expressing their thoughts they generally take kindly to folks asking them about why they see things the way they do 🤷‍♂️

Personally I don’t see calling people Russian bots/trolls or accepting harmful behaviour as the only available options.

I don’t think the former is at all productive or helps anything, and the latter is completely unacceptable. But those aren’t our only options when we decide how we want to engage with people we disagree with

and again, fascists are not the only people with whom disagreements happen on lemmy. We’re literally disagreeing right now, if you called me a Russian bot I think that would be silly and unproductive. That’s literally my whole point. Not everyone you disagree with is arguing in bad faith 🤷‍♂️

my argument automatically has no merit without you hearing any of it

I did read both of your comments in full and think about them, but if you have more specific thoughts on why you hold the perspective you do I’d be open to hearing them :) (full disclosure though, it might take me a bit to get back to you- with how much I’ve engaged with this thread I’m starting to kinda run out of social energy 😅)

I guess Ben Shapiro argues with people that aren’t media trained to make his stance look better, do you want me to say people Ben Shapiro argues make some awesome argument all the time without exception?

Its a little hard to follow exactly what you mean towards the end, I think there are a couple typos, but no. I just personally see a distinction between productive conversation and making a game of humiliating people buy talking circles around them regardless of the merits of their arguments.

I can’t know that you exactly meant the latter, but it’s kind of a spectrum and when you said “I like pissing people off then making much of them for not being able to defend their position” it did sound like you were advocating the idea that it’s good or productive to take joy in making people feel foolish for their inability to argue as well as you. I think there’s a big difference between the merits of a stance and someone’s ability to argue them. That’s why I expressed I disagreed. And that’s why I made the connection to Ben shapio, he’s really good at arguing, and makes sport of trying to make people look bad when they make the sort of arguments I personally agree with.

I’ll teach you that it’s not on me to make your arguments, get your evidence. I just put it on myself to communicate my arguments and poke holes in other people’s arguments

I think I see argument as much less of a zero sum game than you do. I don’t wanna score points, I wanna learn about what people think and teach them why I think differently.

You’re not wrong to point out flaws in peoples arguments, or to expect them to make their case for themselves, but that’s not the same thing as treating it like a game to win, and considering yourself victorious once their day is worse for having interacted with you. I think the former is appropriate and healthy, I think the latter is destructive and doesn’t actually accomplish anything 🤷‍♂️

Thank you very much for sharing, I expect that story will stick with me too.

You know what, I can respect that take. I was trying to tailor things to my audience, you’re not wrong though :)

Gotcha, that sucks, but I’m happy you made the journey over to Lemmy!

And oh, no I only just started using it more recently. I don’t think the topical kind was ever used by folks who thought it did something for covid anyway. I know there are also oral treatments for rosacea, but I’m not sure if oral antiparasitics are every used, since it’s just on the skin of your face that matters.

It also only got a generic over the counter version more recently, if I remember right, but now you can get it as a lotion that’s labeled for lice, but for some people it really helps with rosacea (rosacea is one of those really complicated multiple causitive factor health issues that can manifest in serveral different ways that we still only kinda sorta partially understand. Demodex mites seem to play a role in some people but not others, there’s a lot of trial and error)

The perscription version sometimes perscribed for rosacea is called Soolantra I think, its really expensive so an over the counter generic is kindof a godsend for folks whose insurance won’t cover it

That took my brain a hot minute to process lol. Is that actually from something or did you just invent it on the spot? 😅

“I am filled with fear and tormented with terrible visions of pain. Everywhere people are hurting one another, the planet is rampant with injustices, whole societies plunder groups of their own people, mothers imprison sons, children perish while brothers war. O, woe.”

"But nobody wants it! Everybody hates it.

"OH. WELL, THEN STOP.

Unironically wisdom we should all learn from. I can’t stop for other people but I can at least choose how I act, and whether I contribute to that pain suffering and discord.

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.

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.

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.

some people have never caught a vibe in their life and it shows

Lmao 😂

And yeah, we actually have tangible evidence to support that idea Erin kissane has done a lot of incredible research work on how to effectively design the fediverse and support people in navigating it and one of the earlier things she did was interview people who left Mastodon after having bad experiences and collate that data-

A lot of people’s reasons is that when they joined they were met with hostility. It plays a huge role in people’s experiences here, and even just from a purely pragmatic perspective it’s REALLY important

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.

I don’t think kindness is at all mutually exclusive with knowledge and truth :)

To be clear I didn’t mean “enforcing kindness” as in like forcing everyone to engage in a specific way or they’re banned for not being nice enough

The big corporate platforms are, in a lot of ways, designed for hostility conflict and toxicity. Because they’re designed for engagement, and anger drives engagement like nothing else possibly can. Facebook did internal studies and found their algorithm made people miserable, and then kept it that way because with respect profit, it was a great design.

I think we should be thoughtful about the mechanics of the platforms we’re building and whether they incentivize people to lash out at eachother, or incentivizing healthy social spaces.

I’m not here in support of some dystopian “be positive or else” insincere niceness platform. But I do think it’s worthwhile to shape the culture of the space we spend time in intentionally :) I wanna enjoy being here. I’m here in pursuit of worthwhile, sincere interactions with other human beings, not shitty internet flamewars where nothing is gained and everyone walks away more bitter and angry

When you say you think knowledge and truth should be guiding principles, what do you mean? How would you see this platform designed? What way of engaging with eachother do you think is worth pursuing? :)

It sounds like we share very similar approaches :)

That’s an interesting and specific actionable idea, I love to see those! Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Don’t hesitate to talk about that idea (or others) more often with folks here on the Fediverse!

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 should give quiche a chance…?

I like quiche okay 😅 very eggy but it can be pretty tasty 🤷‍♂️

I think the use of violence is complicated. I think people are too eager to let their anger dictate their behavior.

I also think that if you always turn the other cheek you’re allowing cruelty, and you won’t be the only one to suffer it at the hands of said cruelty.

I’m interested in what’s effective. I care about the outcome. I think kindness often has the outcome I want.

I also think that if you lived through the Nazi regime, you’d be justified in shooting Hitler. You’d be justified in taking up arms to protect your loved ones from persecution, or execution at the hands of a group that needs victims to fuel its political machine.

I’m not inclined to believe my anger always dictates the best course of action. I’m also not inclined to believe that my desire to be friends with everyone will always be enough to build a world that isn’t ruled by profound cruelty. I think those two ideas can co-exist.