Pretty much, yep.

The hexbear folks were the worst. Like, putting all of their political opinions aside, they would just swarm posts and flood it with low quality buzzwords and memes and every formatting option to be as visually obnoxious as possible.

I don’t know if I blocked them, they blocked me, or if my instance defederated from then, but holy shit my Lemmy experience got so much better when I stopped seeing their shit everywhere.

Hey I comment from time to time, that’s contributing! Kind of!

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth”

At least I think that’s from the sermon on the mount. Raised Christian, but I’ve been a self identifying atheist for about 15 years at this point.

I can see why someone would identify as “fiscally conservative”, but not if they actually paid attention to what conservative fiscal policy really does.

The most “reasonable” version I can imagine is the kind where someone goes “things are fine for me, so let’s just go with the status quo, maybe fewer taxes, that’s conservative, right?”

But man… once you know anything about the history of conservatism or what it stands for in the US now… what can I say but yikes.

Rumble isn’t any better. It’s where my dad gets his COVID conspiracy material after folks got kicked off other platforms.

Sometimes people ignore consequences because they simply haven’t thought through the consequences. That’s a very normal human thing. Laying it out this way can persuade some people.

Some people might even become consequentialist when shown the consequences they hadn’t fully considered before.

Bold of you to claim most millennials understand how a computer works.

True, it’s a misapplication of the original thought experiment.

But it also kind of lays bare the consequences of choosing “the moral high ground” over an outcomes-based approach to morality. And I think that is still a useful thing.

Same

Device information

Sync version: v24.03.26-14:56    
Sync flavor: googlePlay    

Ultra user: false    
View type: Slides    
Push enabled: false    

Device: panther    
Model: Google Pixel 7    
Android: 14

These days at least we have streaming services. If you can get them hooked on the good stuff (eg Bluey) or the tolerable stuff (eg Octonauts) you can (mostly) get away from the worst stuff (Cocomelon and it’s million somehow even more cheaply made derivatives).

I think the big thing is that Lemmy isn’t nearly as monetizable as other social media. What that means to me is that if we do grow, it’ll be largely organic. It’ll be at a pace where the culture won’t change overnight. If we get big enough to have real issues, we can meaningfully splinter to more manageable sizes, or moderate shit stains into instances with no reach beyond themselves.

In short, so long as we maintain interoperability standards, I think we will have all the tools needed to keep things from enshittification. We might just grow out of pure longevity as other social media enterprises slowly but surely kill themselves.

But that could be wishful thinking. Who knows!

From what I’ve been reading, it’s so close to vote buying and similar crimes it’s a legal grey area at best.

Long hard fight.

We take our Ws where we can get them.

Interesting. Can’t say that would ever work for my circumstances, but I at least get where you’re coming from a bit better. Thanks!

So like… do you play the game with no sound? Does your gaming partner hear everything coming through your speakers into your phone’s microphone?

I’m just struggling to understand how that could be a good experience for anyone, including you. Am I just missing something?

Edit: oh, I missed the wireless earphone on one side thing. Is that for your phone or for the game?

You want to… be on the phone for video game chat?

I cannot fathom this mindset.

The whole point is that the rate of people doing that is increasing, meaning there’s likely something driving that uptick.

Like, if you saw the murder rate jump 20% year over year, “people have always done murder” doesn’t really explain that rise, y’know?

Edit: something, not someone

I think I actually agree with you overall.

My comment above was more trying to express what I think “small talk” means to the people who always complain about small talk, maybe. Unsure. Slightly elevated atm.

I’m not entirely sure what counts as small talk. When I think of it, it’s usually conversation between strangers or acquaintances where neither party knows the safe topics, the topics to be avoided, or even the general preferences of the other. It’s all testing water stuff.

I think that’s what people actually mean when they say they hate small talk. They hate the awkwardness of not yet knowing enough about their interlocutor to know they won’t accidentally upset anyone. Or they don’t have the skill to navigate that social space to avoid negative consequences. It can feel downright dangerous in some circumstances.

And that’s tough. Because the socialites think it’s a skill issue, which it often is. And unfortunately if you don’t learn that skill growing up, the social consequences of being bad at small talk only get bigger and more dangerous, which prevents folks from being able to practice freely.

I dunno. Just my $.02 I guess.