ameancow

@ameancow@lemmy.world

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⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm gonna mute this one⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

You have just spent too much time talking to the chronically online individuals or whatever the term is.|

I have, and I know it, and those are who I am speaking to the most because that’s who are here in sites like this in the most numbers. I am here trying to rally people, even if it’s out of spite and anger and offense, to stay involved.

The last presidential election we had has had some of the highest voter participation and youth participation in history, and they still voted for Trump, so the problem isn’t exterior, it’s coming from inside the house, and as long as we’re lamenting and feeling like shit about it, we’re falling into their trap.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm gonna mute this one⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

Except talking to people I don’t agree with is exactly what I do. I am doing it to you now! Think about that!

It’s literally ALL i wanted out of this.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm gonna mute this one⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
I tried. If anyone gets what I’m saying, power to them and the kernel of hope rides in their hands. Otherwise I’m done. Peace.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm gonna mute this one⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
So wait for a charismatic and perfect savior. We see what happens every time someone of this stature reaches the actual federal election stage.

I’m talking about what people can do here and now, which is built coalitions and not have purity tests about who is in it, just focus on single-issues like the right has done successfully over and over and over.

For some reason whenever someone says “compromise” every lefty immediately pictures “submitting on trans rights and abortion” or something.

I’m saying as individuals, you and me, scared lemmy browsers who don’t think they have power: build social connections, make more friends, build activism groups, start in local communities and keep it fixated on solving ONE populist problem that we can get a much wider array of people behind, like childcare or school lunches or yes healthcare and unions, social security or other public safety nets and the whole long laundry list of items we want, but instead of overwhelming a population, local or national, with a huge list of inclusivity and ideals, we attack one thing at a time. I have watched the right do this over and over and each time they fucking WIN.

Again, your notions of an ideal candidate you would vote for are spot-on, I would vote for that person in a heartbeat, most would, but that person doesn’t exist and they won’t exist until they can ride on the momentum of grass-roots movements to tackle populist issues. The democrat party is not our ally here, not without a mandate under it and if we’re more clever about building those mandates and then tying them together when it’s time, we might have success.

But I’m getting really pessimistic here. Voter turnout is not the problem. Everyone, everywhere, is avoiding mixing. The atomization of our world is the problem. We had the highest voter turnouts and youth involvement in the last several elections than we’ve ever had, and they voted Trump. That’s my whole point, that’s the key we have to fight against, how someone like a brazen fascist and idiot can sway so many people, and it starts with re-mixing our values and perspectives and this may take some kind of “compromise” that may make a lot of isolated lefties really uncomfortable, like having conversations with people you don’t like, like accepting people who hate you into your protest so you can both tackle a problem you both hate. If we can cross that boundary we can start mixing together again and pulling people out of this programming that corporate media does. Isolationism is killing our whole world and all our hope for the future.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm gonna mute this one⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
We are facing a huge problem that nobody seems to be able to identify, which is not voter turnout. The sad, horrible truth is the last couple election cycles we had record turnout and more young people involved than ever before… AND THEY VOTED FOR TRUMP. It’s going to happen all across the world as more and more people have access to their little algorithmic ideology bubbles.

So what’s the problem? Atomization of groups. Everyone is isolated and not exposed to each other’s perspectives and it’s making a vacuum that corporations are easily leveraging to get their right-wing puppets installed so they can make line go up. This atomization is literally turning people delusional, and if we don’t push back on it we are going to lose not just the USA but all democracy and organization.

We fight it with activity and community and socialization. If it takes screaming at people to get off their asses, I will do that and I will do it in ways that piss people off if it gets attention.

You berate neurodivergent and queer people specifically

Exactly the kind of bad-faith, seething, atomized perspective I want to fight by forcing people like YOU to listen to people like ME who will say things to piss you off and make you reconsider what someone else is saying. We need to do that not on Lemmy but out in bars, in family gatherings, in social media, in public lectures, in town council meetings and so on. Withdrawing now will kill you all. I am being dead serious. This avoidance of conflict except with people who want the same outcome as you is ruining our entire world.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm gonna mute this one⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
If you have a way to make it work without compromise let me know, I’m all ears. Expert Mode: something that doesn’t involve waiting for some charismatic and perfect savior figure to somehow come out of the sky and start successfully advocating for socialism.

Because what we’re doing now isn’t working.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I throw hands (grabbing my soup)⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
Absolutely true, and what’s really wild is most of the left is broadly prideful of being intellectual, and so desperate to have intellectual fights that they tear each other down and find ways to nitpick their own allies into destruction. Just because they need to fight someone they can win on their own terms.

The enemy army is OVER THERE, it’s JUST RIGHT THERE! I want to shake everyone and aim all this effort to call out “problematic tones” and “cultural insensitivity” into actual action before we’re all just pawns in a techno-feudalism state, disposable as robots slowly replace even the workers, the last playing piece we had as people.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I throw hands (grabbing my soup)⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
Lefty former martial-art teacher and gun owner here. I fully agree and have to argue about it a lot. This generation of lefties is completely dulled by short-attention-span self-medication and escapism and pseudo-socialization through discord and other online chats substituted for real socialization.

Whenever you talk about the need for actual organizing, forming groups, taking action, suddenly everyone has nine-hundred very special “conditions” that prevent them from doing anything. We may have co-opted the term “snowflake” from the right but it was targeted accurately at the start. Everyone thinks “someone is coming” or that there’s going to be a revolution “any day now” as if there’s some underground left-wing movement planning things and they’re just not invited. Motherfuckers you all ARE the left-wing in this country, ya’ll think the fucking democrats are gonna save you?

The left also gave up on the american flag, easily isolating itself in the public eye as an anti-american group. I hate that. I don’t get it. Yes, America has been awful and continues to be so, but if you don’t claim ownership of the goddamn land you live on, someone else is going to take it… and guess what’s happening.

This is just what it’s like to get old and grumpy. Youth is wasted on the young. I did my time organizing, I did volunteer work and phone banking for my local community and leaders, I tried. I really, really tried. I even narrowly avoided assassination a while back but details would dox me. And I get lectured here about the ten thousand reasons why they can’t do hard things, why they have been relegated to retreating to back-water websites nobody visits having imaginary fights with imaginary nazis. Part of me is so done with humanity I feel like a lot of these kids deserve the consequence of being self-absorbed and undisciplined. But I guess I still have some lingering hope that someone will read something that makes them get off the couch.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I throw hands (grabbing my soup)⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
This site, and honestly modern leftism in general, is utterly weak and in a sorry state. Lotta tender kids hiding in their discord groups talking hard about punching nazis, overthrowing the government, revolutions, etc. But if even half of them went out and organized and voted as regularly as the conservative orc army we wouldn’t need to be boarded up behind cultural firewalls.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I throw hands (grabbing my soup)⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
Ya’ll desperately wish there were right-wingers and nazis on this site. The isolationism of the internet has left the entire population having arguments in the shower and imagining how thoroughly they owned their imaginary opponents.

Protip: you can ACTUALLY go outside and punch ACTUAL nazis at protests and demonstrations in towns near you! themoreyouknow.gif
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm gonna mute this one⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
Yah I love how places like Lemmy are packed to overflowing with “radical leftists” who scream murder at liberals and moderates and how broadly appealing progressive policies aren’t going far enough to address [issue X].

Guys, we’re getting literally murdered out there, figuratively and literally. If there was ever a time to start building larger coalitions, it’s now. No, you’re not getting everything you want. No, we’re not having a revolution, we don’t have the military. Yes, you will have to compromise. And if you hate that word because you think it means walking alongside someone you despise…

Tough shit.

Pick an issue, gather allies, overwhelm it, then repeat for the NEXT issue and realize nobody is coming, you may not see a better world in your lifetime, your immediate sense of resignation at this fact is manufactured. Get your shit together.

They’re winning because they don’t recoil in horror at the idea of working towards mid-way goals or making deals they find distasteful, that’s how they pushed the overton window off the fucking map.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hertz, showing the difference between science and engineering⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
I don’t care if people use it, I cannot stand when people wave it around like a new teddy bear that gives them a smug sense of superiority for… checks notes …using a product that someone is selling to let stupid people do easy things.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hertz, showing the difference between science and engineering⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
Sorry my post didn’t have Subway Surfers playing in the corner with a popular streamer reacting to it so you could actually read it and understand it.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hertz, showing the difference between science and engineering⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
I’m not impressed by today’s AI and I also fully understand that the tech is going to completely upend society and will eventually be a part of our picture of utopia, or our picture of actual hell on Earth.

The people who are screaming it’s wild wonders and benefits are at least as closed-minded as the people who think we’re going to be able to put the toothpaste back in the tube. The actual direction this tech moves is going to be far more like the discovery of radio, in that at the time of it’s discovery and early implementation, the people then had no idea the implications down the road and we’re at the same point. Except the big difference and why this is contentious is that radio was far less dangerous to society broadly.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK: Non-violent protests are 2x likely to succeed and no non-violent movement that has involved more than 3.5% of the country population has ever failed⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
Most of that I put on our ineffectual Democratic leadership who are supposed to represent the people. We had a mandate of millions and I don’t remember a single, actual dramatic effort to reshape policy by our elected leaders.

At that time, many people still believed Democrats were actually the opposition group to conservative fascism, and not the checked-out wine-mom getting alimony checks every month from the right.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK: Non-violent protests are 2x likely to succeed and no non-violent movement that has involved more than 3.5% of the country population has ever failed⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
Because they were trying to topple the entire system, not voice disapproval or change policies.

There’s no peaceful way to do that without a level of coordinated effort that we will NEVER get from groups of humans. To say nothing of the fact that even after the revolution, you have to share space with the people and sympathizers of those ousted, so sending a message of severe, popular consequence for regression is almost a necessity for lasting change.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK: Non-violent protests are 2x likely to succeed and no non-violent movement that has involved more than 3.5% of the country population has ever failed⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
Also, the “no violence” thing has a LOT to do with what the mobilizing group is trying to accomplish.

Changing policies and ousting leadership that isn’t performing? Hell yeah, peaceful marches and protests all the way.

Want to remove a hostile and oppressive militarized regime? That shit is NEVER pretty, and turns even the best of people into monsters by necessity.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Luv Me Chips, 'ate Seagulls...⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
We are a species of cognitive dissonance. I want to know how many of the people reading this story and feeling revolted or horrified were eating meat at the time.

Also not a vegan per-say, but I have reduced my meat intake and try to buy local to avoid giving money to the nightmare hellscapes like Tyson and Perdue the like. That’s about the best I can manage in my current lifestyle.

Everyone needs to reconcile and work out this dilemma. It’s amazing how many people are dishonest with themselves and others about their reasons for feeling the way they do about eating meat, killing animals, etc. It’s okay to say “I love animals but not enough to quit eating meat” and accept it in yourself. It’s not a worse moral failing than a hundred other contradictory ideas we all hold in our heads every day. It’s okay to say “I find this story distasteful because killing animals should be done behind closed doors to respect others.” That’s also a fine opinion to have.

I don’t get why people have to do backflips to rationalize shit. We are irrational species.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Luv Me Chips, 'ate Seagulls...⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
Factory farms and the entire livestock/dairy/meat does indeed suck.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Remember⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
Same. I’ve been massively downvoted and attacked for suggesting that despite whatever conditions and dysfunctions you may have, that the human brain has capability of growing, changing and adapting and that people could actually work on meeting like-minded people and cure a lot of their loneliness by tackling social insecurity and anxiety like an obstacle or game to solve. (Speaking from successful experience.)

But after those ill-fated posts, I remind myself that people aren’t here in these kinds of places to change, that nobody really wants to change, even if they’re objectively suffering in their present situation. The human mind sticks to predictability and coherence, not necessarily happiness or comfort. We want validation far more than we want pleasure. It’s a weird quirk that we all share, and only people who become aware of this innate bug in the code are able to push through it and make better lives for themselves.

It really doesn’t help though that people have built palaces of identity around their diagnosis’s and conditions and life-challenges. Like, it would be really hard to pry someone you from their “introvert” community if those people are the only ones who ever told you that you can change if you really want to feel better and have more experiences.

But along with that fly-paper trap of validating communities comes with a back-door for people to absorb other, far more delusional or harmful ideas. Kind of like how conspiracy theorists get started by “doubting or questioning” mainstream knowledge, but end up denying all of human knowledge and even the gravity that sticks their feet to the Earth.

I’m really worried about how AI is going to impact these folks. Like, really worried. We’re not that far from machines that will replicate a human intelligence and personality to perfection, but it will also pander to and support whatever thoughts and ideas you have all the while pumping you up and making you feel like Neo from The Matrix, a chosen one who needs only to unlock some magic hidden power to change the whole world. It’s already happening in droves to vulnerable people, but the current models are pretty… cheesy. The next models are going to be more subtle and careful and more intuitive in how to manipulate people and hold their attention.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Remember⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
Lemmy is almost entirely incredibly shut-in discord kids, people who were too uptight to work out on reddit or other social media, neurodivergence who believe making effort to socialize is akin to self-immolation, and other edge-cases from the broader internet.

It’s a fantastic place to actually have a conversation without being drowned out by 300 people trying to push their own brands, agendas and manifestos, but it’s also not a place to see normal people being normal much of the time.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How often do you take him for a walk?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
It’s barely a thing. Some parents with special-needs kids or parents with a lot to juggle in places like amusement parks sometimes use leashes or backpack-leads to keep their kids close, but nobody actually cares much, nobody is actually shamed, nobody laughs and points, nobody gives it a second glance.

This is the kind of thing that’s played up for laughs or memed about because it’s objectively a funny concept depending on context, but don’t get lost down the rabbit-hole of internet users overthinking every goddamn thing and making everything into an issue.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How often do you take him for a walk?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
This isn’t an issue, it’s used by some parents but hardly anyone actually cares outside of comedy skits.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How often do you take him for a walk?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
I’m all in favor of using unconventional methods for health and safety, but really outside of a few special cases like improving blood-flow in reattached limbs or other body parts, I’m not sure why we’re trying to put leaches on children, it seems like a bad idea, but I guess if you just keep leaches as pets and don’t have another blood source for them, maybe just ask your kids first. Smh.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How often do you take him for a walk?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
It was a disconnected and medicated/unmedicated thought, but I’ll give it a pass because in America we really do seem to be doing everything possible to make our neighborhoods as lethal as possible.

As for leaches on children, I guess it’s they’re used in some medical cases like reattached limbs that need blood-flow, but leaches are kind of gross and don’t serve much good besides those few examples, so I don’t know why we’re trying to use them again.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨do you think freewill truly exists?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
I really am glad to know that I’m coming off as a dick on this, that is my every intention, we need more people willing to break social convention and say “Hey this thing that makes you comfortable? It’s fucking your life up. Stop it.”

That’s what I’m doing, thank you for the feedback, if it’s not impacting you the way you want, I don’t really care because I do get enough positive feedback in other environments that I don’t feel I’m actually harming anyone by saying “thing you don’t like.”

We need to read more things we don’t like. We need to be challenged. We need to know we can change, we can hold others to this same standard too.

If we don’t, we’re going to lose thousands of years of progress as our species degrades further and further into isolated headspaces.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Definitions⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
How many piece???
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Definitions⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
I asked the pizza place to divide the pizza into 0 equal slices and about 20 minutes later there was a loud explosion from downtown. Never did get that pizza.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Definitions⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
The idea isn’t literal, it’s to show that our language is entirely just noises that we’ve made into increasingly complicated levels of agreed-upon abstraction.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨do you think freewill truly exists?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
my suggestion is that if you’re lacking in social contact, or even if you just want to open up more opportunities in either social life or professional, don’t “suck it up” and pretend, but learn to understand and appreciate how socializing works by engaging in it like a game, learning what’s actually happening in “small talk” and how to make people feel comfortable with you and gaining emotional intelligence, empathy; qualities that most people look for in friends and romantic partners.

This is a severely neglected field of understanding for a lot of younger men right now and I don’t think we should be making whole communities that provide validation for people avoiding the discomfort and instead we should treat it like exercise and diet. We don’t exercise and diet because it feels good, we do it because the results are worthwhile. We tell people struggling with it “Just stick with it, it gets easier” and we treat that like good advice.

And again, it wouldn’t be such an issue if there wasn’t such a massive problem right now with social isolation. It’s a message of public health, not social conformity. If you’re happy as things are, nobody is forcing you to do anything, but if you battle depressive episodes or are lacking in relationships, if you don’t feel like you have people to talk to, if you’ve never had someone give you comfort and support and you would like that, well the good news is you can have that. You can have people in your actual, real life who care about you, which can then open up more opportunities. But it takes exercise.