Reddit:

• It has a much larger user base and many heavily specialized boards that nevertheless stay reasonably active.
• It’s a collection of echo chambers. Dissent is usually stomped out by mass downvoting and heavy moderation/bans. It’s rare to find a board that allows arguments for a long period of time. Agree with the board’s users/mods or get silenced. Posted rules do not matter, and you can definitely be hateful in ways that violate posted rules so long as that type of hate is acceptable on that board.
• So many users mean that getting content to succeed is a crapshoot. Often posts become lost in the noise, especially on busy boards.
• I left about a year ago, but apparently there’s a lot of bot/AI slop on boards now.

Lemmy:

• Much smaller user base. Heavily specialized boards move slowly if they exist at all. It’s not unusual to see boards where it’s just one/a few people posting with days in between new content.
• More ability to have disagreements. Whether it’s because moderating a smaller # of users is easier, the mods are less authoritarian, or whatever you are more likely to be able to disagree. Don’t be blatantly racist, celebrating violence, clearly trolling, etc. and you’ll probably remain able to participate. I’m sure this isn’t universal on all boards, but it’s my experience on many boards.
• For all that I believe the above point, there are still “echo chamber” moments on Lemmy. Sometimes it seems people may be downvoted simply because they are already downvoted. It’s still way less egregious than on Reddit, and such is human nature I suppose.
• Fewer users means you are more likely to get some engagement on your post, at least in my experience. I never sorted my feed by new posts on Reddit because it was an avalanche of posts of questionable quality, so I only saw whatever content had already succeeded. On Lemmy I can look for new posts and see most if not all content on the boards I enjoy.

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• Take time off from social media once in a while, or at least avoid doomscrolling all day. Bad stories generate FAR more engagement than good stories, and every form of media knows this. If 100,000 people in your area have an average-to-good day and 5 people have terrible days, all 5 stories presented to you will detail how things are in your area are terrible.

• Physical health affects mental health and vice versa. Eat healthy (or healthier). Stay hydrated. Get 7-9 hours of sleep regularly and use sleep hygeine. Get 90+ minutes of exercise (anything that raises your heartrate) a week which is like 15 minutes/day. Don’t worry about doing it all immediately - if you try to change everything at once you’re more likely to get overwhelmed and burn out. It’s way better to make slow, sustainable changes over months than it is to do a difficult crash course for a short time and get fed up with the process.

• Do thankfulness exercises. When I go to bed at night I think of 3 things I’m thankful for in the day. On average or bad days it may be that I wasn’t in constant/chronic pain, that I got to eat and drink, and that I’m in a safe place and a soft bed. Just remembering those basics (that many of us take for granted) helps keep me aware of good things in my life.

• Find ways to enjoy hobbies that require participation - arts, sports, board/video games, whatever. Just something other than passively taking in TV/online media. This will help you feel engaged and double points if it’s something that allows for improvement because you’ll feel rewarded as you get better.

The only thing he he should be allowed to do is retake whatever high-school civics course he failed that covers how laws protect anonymous and uncoerced voting.

Because of his billionaire background, he already knows where he can grab them to keep them close at hand. He’s been practising for this policy with several reluctant women over the years.

Occupational safety may be punk rock, but breaking forklifting rules is early-2010’s dubstep.

No worries friend.

Dammit, Lemmy says you beat me to the joke by literally 30 seconds. Which is the time I took to look up this:

Great minds think alike.

I’m surprised it’s that low. In the first several weeks alone Israel dropped hundreds of 2,000lb bombs. “The heavy munitions, mostly manufactured by the US, can cause high casualty events and can have a lethal fragmentation radius – an area of exposure to injury or death around the target – of up to 365 meters (about 1,198 feet), or the equivalent of 58 soccer fields in area.” That doesn’t even count all the other munitions used.

“I was shown the satellite pictures. I was like, ‘Wow that’s a lot of water. So much water. I know, I grew up around the best water.’ Let me tell you - it’s not even American water. American water is beautiful and pure and none of it comes from the floating trash heaps outside our borders. That water hurricane came to America illegally and it’s killing people’s cats and dogs. Biden let the water in - I wouldn’t have let the water in. It’s soaking couches in multiple states - I showed Vance the photos and he started crying. Now those tears are American water.”

Edit: While I stand by what I say below about the sentiments being genuine, when actually reading top comments across boards - in most threads the top comments are pretty civil and reasonable. I was wrong.

I believe the meme and comments actually reflect the views of the people posting them. Perhaps I’m wrong, but the sentiments come across as very genuine and so I don’t think it’s accurate to dismiss them as “just joking”. I also picked it because I remembered it and so it was faster than trawling through other threads for examples.

I really wish the USA was just seeing the end of a double-term Bernie presidency. I’m not dumb enough to pretend that it would have all been roses and prosperity (especially with the pandemic), but missing the setbacks of that 1st Trump presidency alone would have been pretty great. I -think- I’d prefer a younger president, but if an older president had to be chosen then Bernie seems articulate and compassionate.

Edit: I’m adjusting my stance because while I can find abuse in many threads most of the time it WASN’T in the top comments. Seeing what actually makes it to the top proves I was wrong and I won’t cherry-pick comments further down to argue I’m “right”. “Vote bullying” exists so I’m not deleting, but when I looked for other examples I found that most of the time upvotes are for reasonable folks.

I’ll give one high-ish profile example that illustrates what I’m talking about: /c/politicalmemes has nearly 6k users, which is fairly big for Lemmy. In the last 6 months, the #3 top post with 1.91k upvotes is about how not voting because you feel there’s no good choice means Republicans win and not seeing that means “you have a problem”. The top comment in that post is about how people saying Biden isn’t doing enough are propagandists. The #3 top comment literally tells dissenters to “do a lot more shutting the fuck up”.

As I’ve said from the beginning: it’s not universal, but it shows up regularly enough to make me appreciate Bernie’s approach.

I feel you. I completely agreed until sometime in spring, when Sen. Sanders first posted an argument very similar to OP’s linked article. One of the major reasons I switched stances was environmental damage and global warming which is threatening horrible suffering for hundreds of millions at least. If for no other reason than that Trump must lose. Afterwards those who stand for ethics and proportional response can try to drag the Western leaders out of complicity with war crimes. Never stop criticizing such unethical and illegal policies, but if you’re American please vote Democrat.

Edit: I’m changing my stance on how common this is after a few hours looking at top election posts and comments across boards. The abuse definitely exists, but in most places it WASN’T at the top. While “vote bullying” happens, I was wrong about how much support it gets. I’m happy to be wrong and glad to see that people usually are pretty decent about presenting their arguments. I still think OP’s article shows how people should be convinced.

I get what you are saying and half-agree. Where I respectfully disagree is that people have always been this reasonable. By writing “this is how it’s done correctly, with respect and logic” I’m juxtaposing Sen. Sander’s approach vs. “vote with us or else you’re -insert insult here-” posts, comments, and memes. I’ve seen tons of some attempts to dehumanize or discredit critics of Biden/Harris/Dems on Lemmy and other platforms. You are right that some most have always tried to be empathetic and civil.

I also agree high-profile endorsements matter. That bugs me a little bit because I think arguments should succeed or fail on their own merits and not reputation. But I know I’m a consciously “have no heroes” person because I believe everyone is fallible. I definitely have people I respect a lot, but no one that I’ll agree with all the time.

This is persuasion done correctly. “I understand how you are feeling. Israel’s crimes and US support of them should be important to all of us. You aren’t wrong to have your reservations, and I agree change is needed. That being said, please let me tell you why it’s important to participate.” No insults, readily apparent empathy, and a sound argument.

“What do you do?”

“I’m a nunya.”

“Do you mean a nun?”

“No, I mean nunya goddamn business.”

Ryan James Girdusky, the POS in this clip, just posted on X: “You can stay on CNN if you falsely call every Republican a Nazi and have taken money from Qatar-funded media. Apparently you can’t go on CNN if you make a joke. I’m glad America gets to see what CNN stands for.” (I’m not going to post a link because fuck that platform.)

“Oh I was joking”. If you were joking you wouldn’t have told people you responded because you thought Mehdi said Hamas (which you didn’t think, you heard Palestinian and got angry). You would have said it was a bad joke. What a typical Nazi crybully Girdusky is.

Dude realizes he said a heartfelt, knee-jerk “quiet part out loud” and frantically tries to walk it back. It’s SO obvious that in his heart all Palestinians, and anyone who supports Palestinian rights, is a) Hamas and b) a valid target.

yttrium aluminum garnet

Making me look up obscure gems first thing in the morning… and now I know it’s used in optics and lasers which is knowledge I’ll never, ever need. #Grumble #ComeOnIt’sJustAColorlessRock