There are a few subreddits I check out from time to time because Lemmy doesn’t have the volume of users required to keep those niche conversations active.
Wow, what a pain! There’s so much hostility and byzantine rules. It’s just not worth it.
There are a few subreddits I check out from time to time because Lemmy doesn’t have the volume of users required to keep those niche conversations active.
Wow, what a pain! There’s so much hostility and byzantine rules. It’s just not worth it.
Heh, yes you did go off the deep end a little. I agree with everything you said.
We do have an impact, even though we don’t often hear about it. I was fortunate enough that someone actually messaged me back in 2016 and thanked me “for opening their eyes about trump”. That was really satisfying, because up until that point I felt like I was just shouting into a void. But people are listening, even when they don’t take the time to tell you they are. Of course for every one person that is actually affected, 30 of them aren’t. But reaching even one person is better than not reaching any.
You’re right about leftist messaging being targeted by propaganda too. Some of it is from Russia, but a lot of it is from the right-wing. They take a message and twist it to the extreme so that it turns off people who would have otherwise supported it. What’s most frustrating is that a lot of gullible people actually agree with the extreme version, and now you have people supporting what was an intentionally ridiculous idea. I’ve even seen my friends fall for this.
I think what makes discussion so difficult online now is the sheer volume of it, and the expansiveness of subjects to be discussed. It becomes overwhelming and then people just completely tune out, which of course was the troll farm’s purpose all along.
Omg I agree with all of that so hard, as well.
The purpose of the conspiracy theories being less “here, believe this one thing” and more “somewhere, somehow, there is corruption in the government” (uh… duh?), and then promising to go in and fix it, which I guess gets taken at face value b/c the person “looks like” the message recipient, in some manners that count?
But also, Trump never did “win”, so much as Clinton “lost”. And then later Biden did not “win” so much as Trump “lost”. Before that, Romney lost, before that McCain, and on and on it goes. So all the conservatives have to do to make Trump palatable - that guy who “Christians” like despite how he barges into little girls dressing rooms while they are changing, and talks about grabbing women by the actual irl genitals - is to make Biden seem worse.
Which both Biden, by virtue of doing things in a boring manner, and the news media, by chasing after what bleeds & therefore leads, are cooperating along with to make happen. I dunno, I really hope they can pull it together in the next several months - the clock is ticking, and this time the literal planet Earth may be on the line (not only WWIII, but also climate change seems to have suddenly jumped towards us by something like ~100 years quicker than we expected - btw I entirely made that number up, but that Arctic temperature spike of 38.9°C/70°F in a single day does lend such a “feels like” statement some credibility doesn’t it!?).
Meanwhile, people are gullible as hell - but since we know that, why aren’t we doing anything about it? Then again, I’m not smart enough to know what things might possibly work in that regard:-D.
Or using it for good? The Democrats have been consistently out-maneuvered for years now because the Republicans know how to manipulate the public. So why aren’t the Democrats running “trump is a socialist” campaigns? Why aren’t they showing clips of everything he’s ever said that supports socialism, showing how much government support his businesses get, and that sort of stuff? Perhaps they feel like they’re taking the high road, but the high road is washing out in a storm and fascism is growing. I think they’re partially inept. They want good things, but consistently fail to deliver on them and then blame the Republicans for their failures. It makes me think of this old Simpson s episode: