FridaySteve
@FridaySteve@lemmy.world
- Comment on Political discourse 11 hours ago:
You’ve already asserted that everything is politics whether I like it or not, including this conversation, and since I don’t get involved in “prove me wrong” political conversations on the internet I’ll just exit.
- Comment on Political discourse 11 hours ago:
You’ve already asserted that there are no valid answers to that question. Why did you bother asking?
- Comment on Political discourse 11 hours ago:
And this is what I mean. Everything is very much not politics but if you politicize everything then by definition it becomes so. People need to stop doing that.
- Comment on Political discourse 14 hours ago:
People need something else to focus on. When everything is politics then politics is everything and it’s stupidly difficult to get people interested in doing anything positive.
- Comment on 2025 Right Wing free speech cancel spree 1 day ago:
You even think you’re expressing independent thoughts right now. You’re not. You’re repeating a script. I was there when they wrote it. I saw them test the best ways to program it into your brain. Your weak, spongy mind sucked it right up because you were desperate for something to hold onto. Doesn’t it bother you that everywhere you go, your existing biases are confirmed? You really don’t understand that’s by design. Who do you think the designer is? It’s you. Rich, powerful people created the environment that reinforces your thoughts and behavior. One day you’ll look back on these wasted days and cringe so hard your neck will swallow your head like a turtle.
- Comment on 2025 Right Wing free speech cancel spree 1 day ago:
Your mind is gone. The corporate culture war has it now. Take my advice, don’t ever leave Facebook. It’s safe there for you.
- Comment on 2025 Right Wing free speech cancel spree 1 day ago:
I’m not going to punch anyone because I’m not a violent psychopath. I’m also not going to post whatever stupid video you’re talking about anywhere because I don’t flag my politics on the internet. I think people who do it need to stop.
Now that I’ve answered your question, answer mine: why did you get on the internet in the first place? Was it to read about culture war politics and get angrier and angrier as the days and weeks and years go by? Because that’s what you’re doing. Did you buy a smartphone and click all the happy little buttons and now you want to spread your opinions about dumb ass politics everywhere? When do you people all get bored and leave? Why don’t you all just go away? When are you going to realize nobody cares?
- Comment on 2025 Right Wing free speech cancel spree 1 day ago:
Don’t get salty. A lot of folks don’t use that anymore, it’s a boomer platform for hate politics.
- Comment on User "threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works" is banning users for downvoting his posts. 2 days ago:
It works on 4chan which has much higher traffic.
- Comment on User "threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works" is banning users for downvoting his posts. 2 days ago:
That’s still disordered and just encourages people to bump their own threads.
Not if posting in your own thread doesn’t bump it.
- Comment on User "threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works" is banning users for downvoting his posts. 2 days ago:
I think really most folks don’t realize how easy it is to design a platform that provokes real discussions and engages users but nobody would go there. Casual users are coming here for enjoyment, not engagement, and they don’t want to see anything that rubs them the wrong way. And we aren’t even talking about algorithmically driven feeds which learn from your behavior and give you content that you’re most likely to interact with, like Facebook, which can actually be dangerous.
These are just my observations. I was here before the internet talking on BBSs. I don’t know why all these people are here, to be honest. When I started out it was just nerds talking to each other. I wonder if people would participate in a discussion board that held all posts and responses for 24 hours before making them public to give people time to reflect on what they just said.
We don’t see each other as people anymore. This is complicated by advanced AI enabled LLMs driven by commercial and political interests, so you don’t even know at this point whether you’re talking to an actual person. But this is what we have now so this is what I use. Listservs were the first great platform I remember enjoying, and I wouldn’t mind going back to that. Usenet was also good.
I just think the days of the average person being able to go on the internet and just say whatever they want, relatively anonymously and with no real oversight and no consequences or accountability for what happens afterwards are coming to an end. At that point hopefully we’ll see less inflammatory politics and engagement bait as more and more people move on, and go back to whatever they were doing before they started doing this, maybe watching cable TV or going to sporting events.
- Comment on User "threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works" is banning users for downvoting his posts. 2 days ago:
You can do this by displaying the threads in the order they were last bumped and pruning / deleting them by the last time they were bumped (age) or thread limit per board, in other words, based on participation. …you don’t need voting buttons.
- Comment on User "threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works" is banning users for downvoting his posts. 2 days ago:
Right that’s what I’m saying, I don’t understand why voting buttons are there except for users to use them to moderate each other. I don’t feel like they’re necessary at all. I participated in online discussions for 25 years before reddit showed up. We didn’t need voting buttons at all and the presence of those buttons removes nuance and complexity from the conversation.
- Comment on User "threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works" is banning users for downvoting his posts. 2 days ago:
I prefer platforms without voting buttons for this reason. People are treating the up and down arrows like “punish buttons” because of the result of pushing the button. Older forum and imageboard style platforms did not have voting. You couldn’t just push a button to register your disagreement, you had to actually make a comment if you didn’t like something, and other users could judge the quality of your response.
In addition, your identity was often only relevant to a single thread, which was on a single topic, so your opinions weren’t portable or traceable. There were no profiles, so other users weren’t able to use your comments on different threads to try to accuse you of intellectual inconsistency. This led to more complex discussions because people are complex.
Furthermore, on a platform like the one we’re on, if enough people click the “punish button” then the platform makes the comment less visible, requiring an extra step to be able to see it. The purpose of voting buttons is to shape discourse into what’s most agreeable, and homogenize it into what’s agreeable to the most people. Complaining about users “misusing” the voting buttons is something that happened a lot on reddit in the early years. People didn’t realize that they were working as designed.
- Comment on User "threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works" is banning users for downvoting his posts. 2 days ago:
But why does a platform have logins, persistent identity, and voting if the users aren’t intended to use that to moderate the conversation and push comments that they feel don’t belong in the discussion to the bottom of the thread and ultimately hide them? Why not present threads in bump order with users identified with a single thread ID inside threads?
- Comment on tool to make an stl from 2D image? 5 days ago:
Displace modifier in blender
- Comment on 5 tomatoes 1 week ago:
No acknowledgement at all that I literally just answered your question?
- Comment on 5 tomatoes 1 week ago:
1 BTU heats 1 pound of water 1 degree Fahrenheit.
- Comment on gaming 1 week ago:
What are these? Do they hang on a wall? Do they have stands on the back like a picture frame you put on your desk?
- Comment on There is no good way to answer a request beginning with "do you mind if I......." 1 week ago:
You could take the question for what it is - a person’s polite way of acknowledging you in their orbit and that their actions may affect you. This is an extremely rare attitude. Most people express entitlement instead of kindness. If people around you are actively trying to be less self-centered, the best way to respond is by acknowledging that they are being considerate and answering their question. Pretending not to understand what they mean is the last thing you want to do. Always support and encourage behavior you want to see more of. You have more words than “yes” and “no” and while that question literally suggests a binary response, you can always feel free to use your communication skills.
- Comment on Make America Great! 2 weeks ago:
The president is the leader of one branch of our three branch system. Cooperation between Mexico and the USA and Canada and the USA is generational and extends across various diverse dimensions like scientific cooperation, infrastructure protection, border security and law enforcement, fire protection and prevention, trade, and food safety, among others. It would take much much more than one presidential administration much longer than four years to make meaningful progress toward the goal of destroying all these cooperative agreements at all levels of government that took generations to build.
Donald Trump sucks but he isn’t America, nor should we be judging any country by the actions of its corrupt billionaire leadership.
- Comment on Make America Great! 2 weeks ago:
Spicy take incoming: it’s pretty great right now. We’re a continental country rich in natural resources. We’re very friendly with our only two major neighbors, Canada and Mexico, so tits hard to imagine us being attacked over a land border. We have tropical beaches and snow sports 365 days a year, and they all speak English and take dollars. Our universities are some of the best in the world and graduate Nobel Prize winners in arts, sciences, and mathematics. Yes the current American experience sucks but for a lot of people it always has and has even sucked worse. We’ve experienced massive civil rights expansions over the past three generations.
If you think America sucks you’re right, and always were, and always will be, but if you can’t think of anything nice to say about it then you’re just not paying attention.
- Comment on I saw what you did there 2 weeks ago:
I can think of five reasons you shouldn’t do this.
Whoops now I can only think of 4.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 weeks ago:
- Comment on Given gelatin's source, it makes more sense as a savory dish than a dessert 2 weeks ago:
Savory gelatin tho… I’m so glad I was born too late to enjoy a 1970s midwestern potluck dinner party.
- Comment on The Browser Wasn’t Enough, Google Wants To Control All Your Software 2 weeks ago:
Look up Microsoft in the early 90s and how we all got through it.
- Comment on I made a custom arcade stick 2 weeks ago:
I think you made the right choice with screw into plastic and captive nuts. If you’re not going to take it apart, I think that’s plenty. I recognize people like their heat set inserts and they’re great for panels that need to be removed from time to time but for me, I prefer to screw it and glue it for most things, and captive nuts for the rest.
- Comment on Are you not entertained? 2 weeks ago:
I really don’t think you’re being fair. I was in chanology in Clearwater, Arab Spring in Rabat, the second Penguin Revolution in Santiago de Chile, and countless major demonstrations in support of worker rights and LGBT community issues all over the world. When I come on the internet (as I’ve done since 1994), I don’t want to endlessly talk about politics with the normies here. I want to talk about normie topics like cooking, cats, sports, and Taylor Swift. I save my outrage for real world actions.
According to you, I’m practicing an attitude of acceptance with regard to the state of the world because that’s all you see and hear from me. What do you think that says about your worldview and your outlook on people?
- Comment on Are you not entertained? 3 weeks ago:
I think we’re at a point where we can all agree that having interests beyond what’s serious and exigent is healthy and reasonable. Now we need to get past the idea that not liking something that’s popular (like sports and entertainment) makes you better than people who do. It doesn’t make you better.
People who like Taylor and Travis and want them to do well are not automatically complacent in other areas of their lives. They don’t have their heads up their asses for this reason. They have nothing to be ashamed of, talking about topics that, in your opinion, are useless drivel. Especially here, on the internet.