EnsignRedshirt [he/him]

I’ll be sincere here, the issue that this is clearly a forum for ADHD memes. People are here to have a chuckle and commiserate about shared experiences. Everyone here is aware that these aren’t good or useful behaviors.

It’s not about normalizing these behaviors, it’s about contextualizing them. If someone has been struggling with these things their whole life, there’s a good chance they’ve been told over and over again that they should try harder to not do these things, but without any compassion or accommodation or treatment. They’ve heard “oh, you should be able to control those things” from people who don’t have trouble with these things, and your comment is basically indistinguishable from that sentiment.

People know these are unhealthy behaviors, they know there are ways to work on them, and they are probably already doing that work. It’s unhelpful and tedious to point out that these are bad and you can work on them.

Next time you’re with your therapist, ask about controlling your impulse to be condescending.

Wow, I never thought of it that way. Maybe neurodivergent people are just lazy. Have you shared this fresh insight with the medical community? They’re going to want to hear this right away.

Having worked with lots of government departments (in Canada, but the principle is the same), basically all government “inefficiency” is caused by high accountability to the public. Governments have more guardrails on their activity than privately-controlled organizations, much more transparency, and much less discretion to jettison their obligations. Otherwise, government is just as efficient, or inefficient, as any other large institution. There’s no magic energy field that makes government somehow worse at everything just because it’s the government.

It’s also very funny to hear startup people talk about inefficiency as if startups don’t have a literal 98% failure rate. We would crucify our governments if they took risks like that, even though that’s apparently how you create value.

Regardless, it’s always been clear that these people are either too ignorant to understand, or too dishonest to admit, that their definition of inefficiency is just “things I don’t like.” It would be like if I pointed at the Pentagon budget and said that it represents $800B in government inefficiency. I do believe that money could be spent better elsewhere, but I’m not a child so I understand that it’s being spent more or less exactly how the decisionmakers want it spent.

Extremely jealous that someone got to use the word “Kafkaesque” correctly and in an appropriate context.

Researchers suspect that this is because screen time displaces sleep by taking up time when people would otherwise be resting.

So if we went back to the old way of doing it where we stayed up late sitting upright at the computer until we couldn’t physically stay awake any longer, that wouldn’t be considered disruptive? I’m just trying to be cozy for my late couple hours of browsing. I’m not going to be going to sleep earlier. This has nothing to do with bed. Bed is a saint. You leave bed out of this.

Yes

The structure of Reddit’s content aggregation and curation leads to a regression to the mean. Things that are broadly agreed-upon, even if wrong, are amplified, and things that are controversial, even if correct, are attenuated. What floats to the top is whatever the hive mind agrees is least objectionable to the most people.

One solution that seems to work elsewhere is to disable downvoting. Downvoting makes it too easy to suppress controversial perspectives. Someone could put forward a thoughtful position on something, and if a few people don’t like the title and hit the downvote button, that post may be effectively buried. No rebuttal, no discourse, just “I don’t like this, make it go away.” Removing the downvote means if you don’t like something, you can either ignore it, or you can put effort into responding to it.

The “downvote to disagree” thing isn’t just an attitude problem, it’s a structural issue. No amount of asking people nicely to obey site etiquette will change the fact that the downvote button is a disagree button. If you don’t want a hive mind, you necessarily need to be able to allow for things you don’t like to be amplified.

Twitter is actually better for this than Reddit because it has the quote function. You can amplify something you don’t like as a way of getting other people to hate it with you. It’s not perfect, but there’s no way of having it both ways. “Reddiquette” was never a real thing, just a polite fiction that ignores the Eternal September world that we live in.

If you have the same structure as Reddit, you will recreate Reddit. Lemmy isn’t going to be different if all the incentives and interactive elements are the same.

In philosophy, it’s called Pasta’s Wager.

I tried opposing genocide but they threatened to put me in jail for antisemitism

There is no evidence that belief in Santa is harmful to children, nor is telling them the truth. They only believe in Santa for like maybe three years, and they’ll figure it out on their own. The vast majority of kids figure it out by age ~7-8. You can tell them whatever you want, it won’t matter either way.

If you do tell them the truth, or they figure it out on their own, be sure to also tell them that even if they don’t believe, other kids do, and being a Santa-truther will not win them any prizes or make them any friends. It’s a good lesson about living in a society.

Elon Musk got me to stop using Twitter.

“Ma’am, please don’t sit on my snack tray.”

If you’re curious, try looking up a takedown video from one of your favorite YouTubers. There are many videos about him as he’s a very weird, sad, awful person.

Note: I don’t suggest going down that rabbit hole if you are triggered by transphobia. He basically made a name for himself as the thinking-man’s transphobe.

Your position is impossible to argue against in good faith when you start with “any Estonian who is critical of both of their occupiers is a holocaust denier”.

I mean this with greatest respect: pointing out Double Holocaust Theory is not arguing in bad faith. It’s arguing that there has been an organized push by antisemites to trivialize the Holocaust by equating it with crimes committed by the USSR. This mostly comes from 20th century anti-communist propaganda efforts. The forces that are trying to push the equivalency narrative are aligned with Nazi ideology or similar. Liberals may not care about the distinction because they figure that they can point at both communists and Nazis as being bad and move on, but doing so only assists the antisemites in their efforts. Point being, regardless of how you feel about the USSR or communism, you are effectively carrying water for Holocaust-deniers by failing to recognize the difference.

To be clear, I am not calling you an antisemite or a Holocaust denier, because it is very clear you are here in good faith trying to sort out this mess, and have been doing so respectfully. I am only trying to explain the argument so that you and others can attempt to make sense of the obvious dissonance between viewpoints. It’s akin to unknowingly using ableist or misogynist language. If you’re ignorant of the issue, then no one should ascribe malice to your language, but upon being made aware of the issue, it’s expected that you should be more careful going forward.

Posting “[hammer and sickle] 10 reasons why we need communism…” is clearly not Kremlin propaganda. Posting “[hammer and sickle] Ukraine shouldn’t even exist, long live CCCP” is clearly Kremlin propanda.

Again, with respect, I don’t think this addresses the issue. I appreciate that you are open to the idea that advocating in favor of communism isn’t de facto Russian propaganda (the current Russian state and ideological bent bears no resemblance to communism). Hexbear users are, at most, critically supportive of Russia for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with Putin or Russian nationalism, and much more to do with criticism of NATO and the US, in particular.

I think what we’re trying to figure out is how to engage when anything that doesn’t explicitly agree with the Western narrative is immediately dismissed as Russian propaganda. As an example, the Snake Island incident last year smelled fishy, but to call the Ukrainian government’s statements about it into question at the time would get one accused of being a Russian shill. We now know that the Ukrainian government lied about it. That’s fair pool, as far as I’m concerned. It’s how you wage an information war. I don’t care if a state wants to lie about things (and states will do so regardless), but I do want to get as close to the truth as possible, and that means critical analysis and skepticism. If there’s no room for that analysis and skepticism then it’s effectively declaring not just an anti-Russian-propaganda position, but rather an active preference for Western propaganda over everything else. That, by the way, is a valid choice, but if that’s the party line then it should be made explicit. It’s valid to say “anything pro-Russia or anti-NATO is banned” but that needs to be said, rather than hinted at. “Kremlin propaganda” isn’t a self-explanatory phrase.

All of that said, I empathize with you in your attempt to make sense of all of this. While there is a lot of friction here, I think most of us are earnest in trying to reach understanding, if not agreement. The above is an attempt to shed some light on what might be causing dissonance. You’re very patient to try and work through this, and I hope I and my fellow hexbear users haven’t caused you too much stress. Most of us really are trying to play ball.

We want you to remain living and growing and learning, friend ❤️

A smooth, voluntary, nonviolent transition to peace and harmony would be every leftist’s dream, but there are institutions with power who have used, are using, and will continue to use violence to prevent it from happening in order to maintain their material interests. Call it whatever you want, but the process of transitioning from our status quo to something better will require dismantling institutions that are capable of defending their existence with violence. It sucks.

midwest.social is also an explicitly leftist server

Then I guarantee you that there are plenty of really smart, thoughtful, genuine individuals on hexbear with whom you will find common cause ❤️

Sorry for the confusion, but thank you for bearing with it (no pun intended) and engaging in good faith. I promise you that, at the very least, hexbear users are real people who are being sincere.