First and foremost, let me say that I appreciate you actually engaging in a real discussion on Lemmy!
Why did I make this community? Well, mostly in response to the rest of Lemmy and the way many otherwise interesting discussion threads fall apart into downvoting and groupthink.
I don’t like people making baseless accusations and defend people on all sides when people are wrong about their opposition. I hate it when people think they know what others think and project incorrect (and often evil) bullshit on each other. It’s important to maintain solid reasoning and conclusions, not just one or the other.
I hate people being wilfully wrong because their group fetishizes a certain angle of the truth instead of the boring reality of the situation.
Ideas are important and I don’t feel we can get out of the current shitty slump we’re in with political discourse unless we are able to clearly articulate ourselves and discuss the world we’re in.
So let’s talk like people. What do you want to talk about?
I always find starting a conversation is hard without an ice breaker. Not necessarily something cheesy, but perhaps let’s talk about what general discussion forums already exist and what we like about them. There was often genuinely fun and interesting chat at AskReddit, "would you rather"is a good starter, and maybe we could have a “philosophy Friday” to get into the weeds on deeper topics?
Alternatively we could discuss why “forums” annoys me. It should be “fora”, dammit!
Alternatively we could discuss why “forums” annoys me. It should be “fora”, dammit!
My opinion is that if you’re communicating with an ancient Roman you should pluralize according to ancient latin. If you’re communicating with a modern english speaker, you should choose your words to convey what you intend.
I.E. you should use “fora” if it’s your purpose to portray your penchant for pedantic pluralization prescriptions.
It may the exquisite alliteration that swayed me, but I agree.
I’m thinking many of them could be started by news articles, but approaching it from a completely different angle than most of Lemmy. Over the next few days I hope to set a tone with interesting “icebreaker” articles like you mentioned.
The idea with posting them to this community would be to have some kind of commentary or discussion about it with a focus on understanding instead of pushing a specific view.
The last thing I want to see here is a clickbait-y article with 1600 upvotes, and 400 comments basically saying some version of “outgroup bad.” It’s why I’m specifically encouraging people to play Devil’s Advocate.
If you look through my comment history you’ll see I frequently ask people what the reasoning is for thinking a certain way, but rarely get responses.
Maybe I just miss “fora” though!
Good luck with this community!
I appreciate it!
Test
Test 2
I’ve been enjoying watching Lemmy mature into something with nuance lately but didn’t expect to see a community founded upon its very principals attempted
This seems interesting, especially intentionally starting with 2 combative subjects but with no personal interest in them personally I hope to see what other topics appear
Thanks! I’m really trying to do something different here.
I genuinely don’t like reading comments in most social media because of what it’s become. I hope to fix at least a small corner of it.
Is there a topic you’d like me to broach? Two I was considering tomorrow were gender and AI.
I’d like to see a discussion around “capitalism” that doesn’t devolve into bumper sticker logic and people either use the terms they mean (capitalism often conflated with consumerism or corporatism) or at least provide their particular definition (which would certainly be necessary if the topic of UBI were to arise)
Of course that topic alone is so broad in a vacuum something like the housing crisis or entrepreneurship would be better individual discussions under that umbrella
It’s on the list! I hope to see your take when I finally get it all down.
I always have a lot to talk about and discuss with opinions on a large variety of topics.
I’ve already had good debate with other people (without it devolving into insults). So I suppose I got that going for me which is nice.
I guess I want to see where this goes
Hopefully you’ll be onboard! I just populated it with two discussions that I see come up frequently that are always combative on Lemmy.
Good idea. In theme with what you’re talking about, I think that it would be interesting to explore some topics where there’s broad agreement - or rather, to see if we can find some where there are. I’m a strong believer that there are a lot of general social goods that can be accomplished without the involvement of politics or parties, but just on the basis of voluntarily doing good things for others and society as a whole.
(One example that the left/right might agree on for different reasons is equality of opportunity for all children. The left generally favours social policy that favours the young to begin with and the right generally talks a lot about equality of opportunity - yet because of how we start differently in life that is currently not the reality in a lot of countries. What would we need to do to make it so, and what’s most sensible?)
That is something I would definitely like to explore. The how and why they both approach the same idea but for completely different reasons is always so fascinating to me. I have about two dozen things that I hope to be writing on over the next bit here, and of course if anybody else beats me to it then I’ll be contributing to that discussion.
Subscribed!
I appreciate it! I only want to contribute to a better Lemmy.
Good luck, people are filthy creeps. You’re going to find out that out soon enough. Nobody wants honest and fair discourse, the entire reason people use sites like this is to find excuses to shit all over other people.
Maybe some, certainly. Not all people though. Never all.
Maybe not. I guess there are a few, maybe one or two good people in the world. But they’ll never be heard above the din of all the other horrible monsters.
You’re one to talk, I’m having to look through your comments today, half of them seemingly are severe rule violations.
I only spew venom at those who attack me first. And when I’m attacked, I always give all the hate I can to the person in question.
Someone disagreeing with you isn’t attacking you.
EXACTLY. That’s the point I’ve been making for decades now. But people won’t just simply disagree. They throw in nasty, invective disparaging words and insinuate that you or I must be morons because our views differ from theirs.
When someone calls me names just because I’ve expressed a view they don’t like, you better believe I’m going to rain down on them like a ton of bricks. You can disagree with someone in a civilized manner – but call me names and you’re going damn well live to regret it.
I agree, but if someone insults you on c/politics you can just report the comment and we will remove it, and after enough strike ban them. Rather than you going from 1 to 100 and getting yourself banned.
Is that true? I wasn’t aware I could report their comment. If so then that’s what I will do from this point forward, and see what happens. My whole viewpoint has always been, we should be able to disagree in a CIVIL way here - without the need for name calling.
Trust me if you look at my history, I have always been nice to people initially and then been called horrible names by others JUST for saying something they didn’t like. Of course I have no way to know they didn’t like it until they come back with horrible insults to show me I’ve trod on some “sacred” cow of theirs without realizing it.
Thanks - I will take your advice and report such incidents when they happen from now on.
I mentioned it elsewhere, but it seems like over the last 20 years or so the internet has become a lot more intolerant of even discussing how someone could approach an opposing viewpoint. This is how Echo Chambers were built and came about in the first place and I feel it’s made a lot of people much more thin-skinned.
I hope this community will fix all that at least in this one tiny corner.
Well I hope it will also. People have become much more thin skinned and reactionary, as if posting an opposing viewpoint is somehow a personal threat to them when really it isn’t. If they disagree with a posting, they can always just say, “well I disagree, and here’s why…” It doesn’t need to be a slapfest.
