Before they mention any backwards conservative bigot views, or throw their trash out the window of a moving a car, or treat minimum wage staff like dirt, I’m afraid to say that a big red flag for me personally is being religious.

And it’s not just because christians seem to be leading the charge in supporting right wing piece of shit politicians. It’s not just because they have looked the other way for decades while priests molest kids but treat drag queens reading books in a public library as the ultimate sin.

It’s from a lifetime of these people telling me that all the cartoons I enjoyed and music I listened to was going to send me to hell. It’s from believing in the first place that anyone different from you deserves to literally burn for eternity and not seeing a problem with that. It’s because of every christian that ever told me that only humans have souls and that other animals are just meat robots to use and abuse. It’s because of my reborn christian hostel master that used to go on long lectures about how KISS stands for Kids In Satan’s Service. And all of the other super racist, super christian piece of shit teachers in that school. It’s because of every christian that I have eaten a meal with that insists on holding hands and saying grace without once asking or checking what my beliefs are, or even giving a shit.

I have a lifelong suspicion and distrust of religious people and nothing that has been happening in the world socio-politically in the last decade has improved that suspicion, in fact it’s just made it worse.

So even if you claim to be a 'left wing christian" (like fucking for virginity) or try to tell me that most christians are decent people, all of the evidence says otherwise and tells me that christians are dogmatic and unempathetic and will support dogmatic and unempathetic leaders the first chance they get. And that makes us enemies.

The same goes for all monotheistic religions but a single out christianity here based on my own life experience.

Wake me up when something gets done about it other than a fine that amounts to about half a day’s profit for them.

My 19 year old self would be sad and hopefully take a different path.

Not sure that I even want to know. I’ve about had it up to here with harmful, nonsense conspiracy shit. I miss the days when conspiracy theories were “did a UFO crash at Roswell?” and not “gay black trans women and George Soros teamed up to turn frogs gay and eradicate white males with the woke agenda.”

I’m fucking sick of this shit. It’s all so blatantly fucking stupid and dreamt up during a meth binge that the only possible reason that people could follow and believe this nonsense (apart from having disability levels IQs) is that their hatred for the ‘other’ is stronger than their desire to not look like lunatic fucking clowns.

Killing is wrong. And bad. There should be a new, stronger word for killing. Like badwrong, or badong. Yes, killing is badong. From this moment, I will stand for the opposite of killing: gnodab.

That women’s stuff community that you helped promote already has some jackass commenting about it being “pointlessly gendered”. Meanwhile ‘Dull Gentleman’s Club’ doesn’t get the same treatment for some strange reason, I wonder why. Honestly this is one case where I hope the moderators do a little power tripping so that these kinds of communities can actually take off without the usual suspects dropping by to shit on them.

Could be one of those that I saw this morning, I guess. In world. It was a ‘reasonable’ post complaining about Trump. I just block them as I see them now tbh. Even the_donald started as satire.

And now they’re apparently starting to set up shop on Lemmy too. Before I blocked it, I saw they’re on their best behaviour too. But mark my words, once the dating and flirting period is over, their shoes are going to come off and their feet are going to be up on the table.

I would’ve hoped that by now everyone would’ve learnt their lesson to never trust or listen to these people again. They flat out lie when they’re talking about things like ‘freedom’ and once they’re in power, they serve themselves and fuck over everyone else in society. And their leaders, that they don’t mind associating with and supporting are a bunch of inbred kiddie fiddlers and have been since long before Trump. And yet here we are again, letting them have a seat at the table.

These people cannot be fucking trusted. And I’m willing to bet that they’re going to be a source of a lot of downvote trolling too, in queer communities and women-centric communities.

From what I’ve heard, admins can’t really do anything about repeat offenders / downvote trolls because of something about scanning through databases or something. But then I also saw a post yesterday about how Friendica reveals the usernames of people who upvote and downvote, so it seems like that information is accessible in the API or framework of the Fediverse.

I used to go to internet cafes to look for cheats for video games. Pretty much all I ever used the internet for back then. Don’t remember many other sites but I do remember a website where you slaughtered the teletubbies in various ways, like dismembering them or slicing them in half with meat saws.

After that, my first social uses of the internet were MySpace, a forum for metal and alternative music called MakeSomeNoise (named after a magazine that came out in my country) and the chat rooms on The Offspring’s website.

I was going to say something snarky about how they’re going to fail because who would pay for social media, then I remembered blue checkmarks.

Bad Religion - I Love My Computer

Mulder documentaries? Like the X-Files?

Literally the opposite.

After the French Revolution, parliament was arranged so that the people who supported democracy and freedom literally sat on the left hand side; and all of the freeloading, self serving, bootlicking monarchists that wanted to return to rule by a king or queen sat on the right hand side.

Far right are that but more extreme. They don’t just lick boots but also the assholes of the politicians and billionaires that they worship like gods.

Fuck ICE. What the fuck are they going to do, deport from my country that isn’t the USA? This makes me feel like I start saying “fuck ICE” on the regular, just to give them more work to do with this thought police shit.

social media is only as good as its user base

I’m with you on this one. Honestly I’m starting to consider jumping through all of the hoops required to get going on Reddit again myself. I can make do with few entertainment related subs but I keep thinking about how there’s a reason that no major women’s spaces from Reddit have been able to ever take off here on Lemmy. And the fact that LGBTQ+ communities needed their own instance with downvotes disabled as a solution against vote brigading. It gives this place a pretty dark undercurrent despite all of its supposed left wing fervour.

And then there’s the smart ass sarcastic replies to everything, like you’re experiencing in this thread, that I see in almost every single thread. I’ve seen a new user come to this platform and ask if there’s a gen z community, only to get no answers to the question and a bunch of people going “wHo CAreS abOUT LabElS and GrOUps? Look at me, I’m such a free thinker!” Yesterday I saw someone posting that they wish there were more pop music and sports related communities, only for all the replies to be along the lines of “FuCK pOP muSIc, wHo waNTs to SEe that? Look at me, I’m such a free thinker!” And it’s fucking annoying, if I’m being honest.

I don’t want to feel this way because I love the idea of this platform. But I dunno, I’m missing being able to discuss certain feminist issues in communities where I’m not going to be called a sexist, have people comparing nazism to astrology to try and make a point that women bad too instead of addressing issues that need addressing, and have comments removed.

There’s good people here too. People that have been very cool and encouraging. And who make the effort to actually answer people’s questions about communities without just shitting on them. But to me, those people seem to be a few lights shining in the darkness that covers everything else. And it’s starting to affect my mood negatively.

No one looks at or cares who the moderators are when they post anything anywhere, EVER! NEVER EVER EVER!!!

Yup. I wish that it was possible to make it clear to moderators just how little of a fuck the average user gives about them. Because they generally seem to have delusions of grandeur and think of themselves as the most important people around. Which is fucking bullshit because without the users that they dismiss and treat like dirt, they wouldn’t have a platform where they get to inflate their egos in the first place.

I actually made a post about this elsewhere but I’m gonna mention it here too. The reason the API thing on Reddit didn’t cause every user to come here is because the moderators there made it all about themselves. To the average user, the whole ‘protest’ looked a lot like the people who treat users unfairly whining and crying about the admins treating them unfairly. And I can tell you, there was little to no sympathy for them. All they did was cry about their modding tools while locking entire communities that thousands or hundreds of thousands of people make use of. And they pissed everyone off.

I know that personally a big reason the API thing didn’t do much for me in my decision to leave Reddit (or not) was because the same people that forced me into using services like reveddit because they like to silently remove people’s comments without notice or a trace, were suddenly asking me for solidarity and to feel sorry for them. And at that time, my feelings towards the situation and the moderators who were crying about it was “go fuck yourselves.”

I don’t know about the conservatives but the press and ‘centrists’ will probably go “Hmmm maybe it’s just autism. Surely he didn’t really mean it. No, can’t be. I can’t think of any past behaviour of his that would make this seem intentional. Autistic people do nazi salutes and say heil hitler all the time.”

You are a shining light in this place when it comes to promoting growth. So just so we’re clear, because I’ve discussed features and stuff with you a couple of times now, I was not picturing you when I made my comment here. You’re more or less carrying this place on your back as far as guiding and encouraging new users goes. So also thank you, you rock.

And yup. I’ve seen you promoting this community lol and I’m already subscribed!