I think you are underestimating the effect. I’ve learned a whole lot in my year and a half here. Enough to develop a decent understanding of what’s going on and what concrete actions I could take in my corner of the world. I think we can’t expect action without understanding of why act and what action. I think discussions here help with that. For all the people who post and comment, there are many who read, learn go find out more, and so on. Some of those would take action that they wouldn’t have otherwise. If we don’t platform that do this, if all there is are corporate platforms that keep people unaware of even the basics of what’s happening beyond the reporting, then the number of people who’d act in some productive way would be even lower.
Comment on You Can Post Your Way Out of Fascism if You Own the Means of Posting
PugJesus@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I wouldn’t place any high value on what we’re doing here. At best, you should view this as bitching about the news at the local college-kid frequented coffeeshop. Yes, there is an element of raising awareness and discussion - it’s not useless, but ultimately, it’s not going to play a major role in getting us out of this shitshow. We’re discussing matters because it brings us some relief to do so, first and foremost.
avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
To be fair I think lemmy kind of radicalised me. When I got here I felt like a left wing outcast on reddit, but I was in reality more like a dem soc type.
After a year here, I’ve been enlightened so much on online privacy and FOSS and stuff, learnt a lot about leftism and cool movements like solarpunk, and now find myself using the label “anarchism” to describe my political views. Lemmy has definitely slowly radicalised me and taught me a bunch of stuff.
(I can’t imagine what lemmy does to people who join instances like HexBear…)
WrittenInRed@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
Same thing here. I was always vaguely left wing/pro FOSS/etc, but joining Lemmy introduced me to solarpunk and a much more anarchist/radical community in general. Since I started using Lemmy during the reddit API stuff I relatively quickly went from wishing I ate less meat -> vegetarian -> vegan and from vaguely anti-capitalism -> anarchist. Now I’m learning to hand mend my clothes and joining local mutual aid groups lol.
Just posting about bad things happening shouldn’t be the limit of what action people take (unless that’s all they can do obviously), but it’s also far from completely pointless to try and spread awareness of stuff like anarchism/anti-capitalism or ways you can make an impact/support others. Movements and ideas can’t spread if no one is talking about them. Plus posting about actual concrete actions you can do is super useful to anyone who wants to do something but doesn’t know how to start.