My first ever suspension from Reddit was for an anti religion comment. On Reddit. Then after my 3 days were up, the first thread I saw was on the subject of religion, full of people saying worse thing than I had, and in one of the major subs, not even atheism or anything.

I could definitely buy that they’re using AI but personally I always had the impression that they outsource the job and don’t make sure everyone is even on the same page or can read English properly.

Because even the stuff that gets [removed by Reddit] seems to be nonsense a lot of the time. A while ago I saw someone make a post saying something like “Hi guys, haven’t been active much lately. But I’m back and gonna be posting more.” Came back later and it was [removed by Reddit]. So not even that is trustworthy or gives the impression that they actually know wtf they’re doing.

RoboCop, the Alien movies, Hellraiser. Honestly a lot of the old Jean Claude van Damme movies are fairly hardcore for kids, looking back. Probably a lot of movies because I was allowed to stay up until whenever on weekends from pretty young.

These kinds of men that are constantly focused on what it means to be a ‘man’ are the biggest fucking insecure snowflakes of them all. These are the kind of people who act like their entire race and gender is being erased when 1 in 10 Marvel movies don’t have a white male lead. When all attention isn’t on them, they spit their pacifiers out and wail.

Take this election for example. It wasn’t about them. Even if they don’t care about queer people (we know they don’t), it was also about doing the right thing for their mothers and their sisters and their daughters. But because the poor, hard done by white man wasn’t given as much importance as people who are literally getting their rights taken away, they decided join the oppressors and spit in their mothers’ faces.

Not because they’re men but because they’re pieces of shit.

Just went there. Top post is politics, next post is about a touchy feely doctor, there’s a few about body image, more politics, a reminder to not use period tracker apps because the USA government is literally taking women’s rights over their own bodies away, dating advice, more politics.

Looks to me like a women-oriented subreddit for discussing women’s issues, just like it always has. Could you point out some of these ‘femcels’ there to me? Should they be praising the Trump administration, swooning over pervert doctors and sharing Andrew Tate screenshots instead?

Maybe a lot are a bit angry there but I think they’ve got every fucking right to be angry right now. Don’t you?

If you think twoxchromosomes is bad because women there had the nerve to talk about their bad experiences, then actual feminist subs must’ve terrified you.

Based on what I’ve learnt, what’s holding Lemmy back is that a large amount of users are fucking man babies that brigade any women-oriented communities and drive women in general away from this place, while admins just sit back and allow them to. The Lemmy mouse needs a fedora.

I made a post the other day expressing disappointment with these movies vs. how Sonic is portrayed in the games and other adaptations. But I have to say, one thing I’m looking forward to them getting absolutely wrong in Sonic 4 is Amy Rose. The way I see it, the only way to do Amy Rose right is to go against the source material because Sega doesn’t give a flying fuck about Amy Rose and they’ve flip flopped so much on if she should be a hero or just a follower stalker.

The three Roses were probably the best part of Sonic Prime. So I’m looking forward to an actual badass version of her on the big screen.

As in “getting their shit done.”

As a non-American, it’s always looked to me like the Republicans manage to get their shit done whether they’re in charge or not and the Democrats are just there to assure everyone they have a choice in voting and not much else.

The whole thing to me looks like a game of good cop / bad cop. Bad cop comes along beats the shit out you, and then good cop comes along to give you a cup of weak shit coffee as a consolation for your black eye and says something unconvincing about being unhappy with bad cop’s behaviour, before letting bad cop back in to beat the shit out of you some more.

And for every cycle of that, bad cop achieves his goals while good cop just acts as a glorified tea lady that tries to make sure you don’t have any hard feelings about bad cop.

Yup, especially when we’re all being bombarded by the same propaganda in the places that we meet online and spend a considerable amount of time in, we’re all in this together. I’ve seen the discourse about the USA and the culture wars over the last decade in my own country. And from what I’ve gathered through my years of lurking is that shit is darkening the skies and affecting everyone from the UK to Sweden to Australia.

And as far as I can tell, all of our governments have been mostly happy to sit back and watch everything slide into enshittification and misinformation and ruin. Like they all thought the fight was won and the job was done and they could just spend the rest of their lives collecting bloated paychecks and sleeping in parliament. Even Australia’s recent effort to curb social media for children is too little too late I fear.

The way I see it, the slippery slope that we’re currently on is tolerating nazis and bigots.

Firstly the obligatory disclaimer that I’m not American, just someone that has been watching this unfold on the same world wide web that we all use.

Maybe I’m too radical but I would say fully. Whether they want a white christian nationalist country or just wanted cheaper eggs. Because that first thing was never a hidden objective, it was clear from the start. We had people who find secret illuminati pizza messages on bathroom walls take one look at Project 2025, an actual real conspiracy and go “doesn’t look like anything to me”.

So whether they’re true right wingers, conspiracy theorists, or people that closed their eyes and ears and hearts while convincing themselves that this was all about cheaper groceries; I’d say they’re all equally to blame.

I dunno but I always get the impression that these fucking people that are too cool for school and need to loudly tell everyone how little they care about downvotes every chance they get, are probably also the people that go around using downvotes in bad faith and making the platform a little less welcoming for everyone.

My advice would probably be to just stay away from instances that are populated with the kind of people that use downvotes as a ‘disagree’ button or panic button to make themselves feel better when reading something they don’t understand. Those were always the worst people on Reddit that dragged the experience down for everyone. And it sucks that they’re all here too. And in a smaller pond, they’re going to be making a bigger splash.

I’d find a nice instance and / or communities to spend 90% of my time in and only actually go to places like Ask Lemmy in world when you actually feel like dealing with smart alecs and neckbeards.

Edit: and downvoting people for talking about downvotes isn’t actually funny, it’s just proof that you use downvotes for the wrong reasons. For the meme and ‘disagree’ button.

English or history. They were both subjects in high school where I could not even study and just wing it with walls of text. As long as spelling and grammar and shit were good and in the case of history, being able to refer to key things from the text book occasionally, I was scoring in the 90s. I’ve gone a bit feral in that regard over the years since then but if my path was to be a teacher, I think that’s what I would’ve gone for.

Just want to add that a big deciding factor in that as well is how cool my english and history teachers in high school were. A married couple that I honestly credit with helping shape certain good parts of who I am. I was honestly borderline anarchistic (definitely anti-authoritarian) in my writings and I think they liked it and nurtured it a little bit.

One moment that stuck with me that I never realised the significance of was my history teacher bringing up how schools have a hidden curriculum. How beyond being taught how to behave in society, it also enforces cultural things like one race’s set of norms and standards or teaching boys to behave like boys and girls to behave like girls (which is a line I even specifically remember him using). And I remember being a little bit outraged about the idea of a hidden curriculum and this fucking guy smiled and kept the conversation going and told me more.

Here’s to you Mr. and Mrs. Owen. They’d be pretty old if they were still alive. I’d be either an english or history teacher because of them.

Edit: just for extra context, for high school I went a boarding school in a very Christian and religious small town and it wasn’t the best of times for me, to say the least. There were a couple of decent teachers but most are wrinkled up, mean, dogmatic pieces of shit in my memory. So these two teachers were special.

I’m only a day in of trying to get away from this, and I’m mostly talking about Lemmy right now (but it would also work / help on Bluesky), but something that’s already made a huge difference for me personally since yesterday, is separating the feeds. I woke up this morning and scrolled through content that didn’t make me want to start a revolution first thing in the morning and I’m already having a pretty good day for it.

I decided to cut most news and politics out of my subscriptions, other than maybe some small communities that don’t show up on ‘All’ on a 24 hour cycle. So from now on, my subscriptions will be only things that interest me and not enrage me. And ‘All’ is still there if I happen to feel like indulging in the rage for a little bit.

Also, finding a server that’s more tailored to what you personally vibe with adds a 3rd option in the ‘Local’ tab for a feed that doesn’t destroy your soul piece by piece.

So the ‘Reddit’ experience is still there in the ‘All’ tab, for everything. From rage to cool shit you haven’t subscribed to yet. But you don’t have to spend all day there. You can fill the other two tabs with stuff that makes you smile or learn or that aligns with your interests / career / philosophy or whatever. And spend more time there.

I was doing the same when I gave Bluesky a try, making use of different feeds for different things. Keep the news and politics in its own tab and only go there when you feel like catching up, or if you’re specifically in the mood to rage against the machine.