Posted this in a small community, curious to know what everyone here thinks.
Let me preface by saying, I would love to hear counter points and am fully open to the fact that I could be wrong and totally out of touch. I just want to have some dialogue around something that’s been bothering me in the fediverse.
More and more often I keep hearing people refer to “normies”. I think by referring to other people as “normies”, whether you intend to or not, you inadvertently gatekeep and create an exclusive environment rather than an inclusive one in the fediverse.
If I was not that familiar with the fediverse and decided to check it out and the first thing I read was a comment about “normies”, I would quite honestly be very put off. It totally has a negative connotation and doesn’t even encapsulate any one group. I just read a comment about someone grouping a racist uncle and funny friend into the same category of normie because they aren’t up to date on the fediverse or super tech savvy or whatever.
I don’t want to see any Meta bs in the fediverse. I barely want to see half of the stuff from Reddit in the fediverse. I don’t want to see the same echo chamber I do everywhere else.
I do want to see more users and more perspectives and a larger user base though. I want to see kindness and compassion. I want to talk to people about topics they are interested in. I want to have relevant discussions without it dissolving into some commentary on some unrelated hot topic thing.
I think calling people normies creates a more toxic, exclusive place which I personally came here to avoid.
Just my two cents! I know for most people using the term it isn’t meant to be malicious, but I think it comes off that way.
Love to hear all of your thoughts.
I think wrt to the “noticing negativity on kbin” complaint, we’re just kinda collectively suffering from “wherever you go, there you are”. The world and especially the internet has become a pretty fucking negative place as of late.
The reasons for that are complicated and some of it can be blamed on things like political polarization and that sort of thing… but I think the roots of a lot of it boil down to more fundamental issues like climate change and economic inequality. All of that has downstream effects on public discourse. If you look at the sorts of factors that have preceded major societal upheavals in the past it’s often come down to some combination there was a famine, or hyper inflation, or “let them eat cake”, etc.
I don’t think things are on the whole going to get more positive in society if resources continue to become hard to afford for people. And god help us when water shortages really start to hurt and we see a lot of major crop failures.
Ok so weird tangent but TL;DR I think a lot of the vitriol we’re experiencing is the beginning stages of what happens when shit hits the fan. Doesn’t matter where you are.