i think if someone’s intolerant, pointing out that they’re wrong is something appropriate, but picking a fight over it is not worth it. it makes you like that person in that meme:

edit: in bad cases, report it and move on with your life.

That suggests we should be intolerant of intolerance, which is an oxymoron.

Call them out so that resistance is visible, then block them to remove their agency to engage you.

This is a whole different train of thought (mine is, I won’t speak for yours) and I don’t wanna derail my original thought but that’s a thing I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.

I agree with you, and subscribe to the idea of tolerance as a social contract that, once broken, is no longer owed to the one who broke the contract.

At the same time, I’ve also learned that very explicitly, feeling persecuted is a requisite ingredient in radicalizing people into hate groups. And that at an individual scale, it’s generally undeserved compassion that helps deradicalize them. We know this from the accounts of people who managed to leave hate groups- a little while ago there was really good (and long) interview with someone who used to be leader of a white nationalist group where he talked a fair bit about that idea, since he now works with a nonprofit that helps families and friends support and deradicalize loved ones, but it’s far from the only account

At present I’m really not sure how I personally reconcile those two things I belive to be true. The Nazi bar analogy is real.

I know wading into this more specific conversion runs the risk of immediately derailing what I was trying to start a discussion about, but I figured I’d share my thoughts. If anyone reads this and has thoughts to share (though I’d prefer not to get 50 comments just saying I suck for having complicated views on what we do about the predicament the US and world is in with the rise of fascist ideology. I’m interested in what’s effective in terms of fixing the problem just like you are) I’d be interested in hearing them. I’m still looking for a way to synthesize my beliefs into a coherent whole.

Edit: thought I’d add the interview for anyone curious. I don’t see everything exactly the way he does but I think understanding the problem and exactly how it works is necessary of we’re going to address it, and I think his account is a really useful glimpse into certain aspects of how that world works

I think part of pleasantness is not bringing politics into things that weren’t intended to be about politics.

Are you open to some additional thoughts / feedback on feedback / constructive criticism?

Have a great day :)

I’m not one for religion, but I for one would like to join the Church of Cris.

On constructive criticism - definitely rule one is make sure that it’s invited first, but second, the best way to “sweeten” a critique and make it more appealing is to put it between compliments. Don’t have a bare remark about the problems or suggestions, tell them what you like first, then how they might change things, and then close with something else positive or simply thanking them for sharing it. Even if someone says they want to hear what people think, it’s normal to be defensive, so help lower that reaction first, and then leave them feeling appreciated even though you pointed out issues you saw.

Because there’s fewer foreign bots trying to make you hate everyone in your country, and fewer social media engagement bots trying to make sure you stay online arguing with someone.

Fuck yeah! I think that’s the thing that makes the fediverse special :)

We all care enough about the online spaces we choose to inhabit that we leave the big platforms for something kinder. I think that’s worth leaning into :)

And not just memes and shitposts you find elsewhere

Make things and share

It ain’t gonna be perfect but that’s half the fun

Baby steps! :) I found it helped me build the habbit if I kept an eye out for posts that could be cross posted to smaller more niche communities

There are a lot of times where a post only gets posted on a bigger community because it has enough traffic, and smaller niche communities would benefit from folks crossposting it around!

A nice comment is worth more than 1000 upvotes, emotionally.

Oh neat, being younger there’s a lot of how folks approached the web in its earlier years that I don’t have any experience with, and think there’s a lot to learn from

I love that!

Thank you my friend, you too!

Thank you very much, I do my best :)

By the way I love your username lol. Take care!

I’d say there’s also some corners of Lemmy that feel like the slightest provocation leads to an absolute dog pile of people being super angry looking for a fight.

That aspect blows but it’s usually helped by making sure that the instance your account is on is federated (or specifically NOT federated) with specific other instances.

Though this place is so much more chill than Reddit it’s fucking mindblowing

I think as early members of this small online space we have to potential to cement a kinder culture that can influence even what this platform is like many years from now, with users that won’t be here for a long time!

People tend to match energy with the people they’re engaging with. When you show people kindness they intuitively respond the same way, and when that’s the culture, I think it can profoundly shape people’s social behaviors :)

And this space being as small as it is, we all have an outsized impact on that culture compared to something like reddit where any given user makes up such a teeeeny tiny fraction of the social interaction there.

We can all create that kind of culture that leads with kindness and prompts others to follow suit

I swear Reddit has bots/trolls/AI designed to argue and rile you up to increase engagement. We see it in reposts/titles, why not in the comments?

I used to use reddit constantly, and did so for years. That level of hostility took over so gradually that I didn’t even consciously notice. I used Lemmy for a few weeks before it really sunk in that nobody had jumped down my throat over a minor, irrelevant issue (like a careless punctuation or grammatical error).

People here tend to give each other the benefit of the doubt, which had become virtually unheard of on reddit. Even when people make replies I don’t agree with, they’re usually discussing the point rather than the way that point is presented.

I will never, ever go back.

Hell yeah 😊

And I absolutely agree. Lemmy straight up isn’t as big as reddit, it’s important that there be stuff to see, but I think one of the best things about the fediverse is that it feels so much more like healthy, actual social interaction, and I think that’s a strength we ought to celebrate and actively facilitate :)

I can definitely understand that. I think in a lot of ways that problem is driven by how much of a political echo chamber lemmy is. Any time there’s a narower range of beliefs I feel like you can see those beliefs getting more extreme, or expressed in more extreme and toxic ways.

I honestly don’t really know how to improve it given the state of the world. It feels like the range of political beliefs keeps getting compressed into two groups and it makes it harder and harder to tolerate the beliefs of those further from yourself. And for valid reasons.

And the more justified the contempt for people of other political views gets the harder it gets to figure out how, culturally, we manage the justified anger that comes from how deeply broken everything is.

Elon musk is doing actual literal Nazi salutes and peoples anger about that is justified. And at the same time I’m not sure what way of acting on that anger (and acting on the problem) yields anything other than radializing people teetering on the edge of extremism.

I’m glad I don’t really see actual Nazis on lemmy. Its nice that there’s less debate about the legitimacy of people’s humanity.

And at the same time anger is deeply toxic to healthy interaction and drives behaviors that I genuinely don’t think make the problems prompting people’s anger any better.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts candidly, a lot of this thread is a love-fest and that’s wonderful and puts a smile on my face, but it’s at least as important to talk about the unhealthy aspects of the fediverse’s culture

It may not do much depending on the mods/admins, but it never hurts to report and downvote comments or posts like that.

Emphasis on reporting there, as I think sometimes that stuff lingers around because people have made a habit of only downvoting and blocking those doing that regularly. I realize in your examples it’s more likely bias or bigotry respectively, but still.

Report first, then downvote and block. Doing only the latter only makes your experience a little better, the former may help the community.

people are very emotional rn because of everything that’s happening but i agree with you that violence for it’s own sake is never good. the discussion must stay positive.

Agree

Please do tell how to increase the purity tests