I am so tired of political discussion on the Internet

"agree to disagree". Wow man. I mean, maybe, that was possible, like 15 years ago. Possibly. But are you taking a look around? Israel committing outright genocide. Russia doing it's best to do the same. America gearing up the 4th Reich. There is no room for the benefit of the doubt. There exists entire swathes of people ready to see me and my wife hang for our existence. I will not compromise, and you will have to pry that opinion from my cold dead body.

Wow I hated this. Upvoted.

I just want all of you to be normal.

Normal is what got us here, so I'll pass.

You can either be ‘political’ or you can have politics done to you.

It’s no accident that political discussion is everywhere. The world is in crisis and a lot of us are not willing to go along to get along. So be tired and check out, but don’t complain when the jackbooted thugs knock on YOUR door.

You get an upvote but I hope you realize you’re in ‘politics’ whether you like it or not. The apathy of the masses is why the authoritarians are alllowed to take over.

Incredibly privileged and misguided take. Upvoted.

Just a reminder: This community has a "No politics" rule.

However, as long as the discussion remains around the meta topic of political discussions, as a general concept, you may carry on.

So many people sit here in the safety of Lemmy dunking on Republicans but everyone gets a vote at the end of the day so it’s all for nothing unless you actually change people’s minds.

Depends on which channels and groups you join. I have left IG, X, FB etc. the tone is (still) good on Bluesky, mastodon or lemmy… but naturally only if you unsubscribe any channel that’s too political, and if you block people that you find obnoxious. I downvote a lot too. You could now argue that Ive created my own echo chamber, but it isn’t much different from my life in the 80s; you dont have to listen and argue with everyone.

You guys infect everything with misplaced social justice, constantly finding to ruin everything on the basis of your apparent prejudice.

Absolutely agreed on this one. I like Lemmy because there's no ads and at least mods and admins intentions are honorable. However, amongst the users there's certainly some hostile, nutty, tribal types around. There's a variety of topics about which any comments but breathless support for the majority opinion will get you brigaded and downvoted to hell.

I'm not quite ready to agree that we're the same as a conservative echo-chamber. We don't do nutty conspiracies like white genocide in south africa for example. We don't do double standards on the same scale like accepting fancy planes from terrorists.

I understand the frustation. I hella do. But nothing can be solved by burying our heads in the sand and ignoring politics. Nor can we agree to disagree over the fundamental human rights that are in danger.

The word 'fascism' gets thrown around so much that I'm sure you're ready to shut down and tune me out as soon as I say it, but it's a real threat that is happening. And it must be actively fought, we cannot afford to ignore it.

It's not extreme vs. extreme. It's right vs. wrong.

i mean theres a reason for it.

real life has been made shit for most people and solutions involve politics.

I'm not necessarily sick of political discussion, just the knee-jerk mudslinging it always fucking devolves into (as you described).

You guys infect everything with misplaced social justice, constantly finding to ruin everything on the basis of your apparent prejudice. You can't wait to bring people down, and never the other way around.

I agree, and those kinds of comments need to be reported for at least civility. Being passionate about what's happening is one thing; that's justified, understandable, and shows that there are still good people in the world. However, constantly beating everyone over the head with it, turning every comment section into "Six degrees of fascism/genocide/etc" by throwing out insane troll logic purity tests is another thing entirely.

I absolutely dread diving into any comment thread here when certain hot-button topics are posted.

EDIT: after being so long winded myself I did go read your whole post XP

I’m going to be real honest and say I didn’t read your whole post, but I get and agree with the sentiment. Only thing I’ll add is that, to a degree, the easy creation of those echo chambers is the point of the fediverse. The point of picking your instance is to find like minded users you align with. This actually, to me, makes it feel more “normal,” like you describe. Your standard text and discord group chats feel homey. To me the word I like is “local”. Which is also the term the fediverse uses for browsing your instance. Just by filtering by local I know I’m seeing content from people I would happily join a voice call with, or even meet in person.

Maybe just browse by local more? Maybe move to a niche instance? Host an instance for your geographic area. Or use mastodon and just follow hashtags. These tools are exactly the point of the fediverse, to give you fine control over your feed and make a social media platform designed to be put down. You’ll see the new posts from people and about things you’re interested in and then you’re done. If you want to go find the toxicity of course it’s there, but that is in fact optional!

What is the adage? “If you let a single nazis into your bar, it is already a nazi bar”? We actually can and should be intolerant of the intolerant, otherwise tolerance will be wiped out. If you aren’t having fun because of the people in your particular echo chamber, find a different one. Healthy echo chambers exist, and I generally refer to that as community. I often call my instance and the board I mod “the comm” when talking about them. I think this more local feeling helps people put their humanity back into social media and actually get to know each other. Anonymity really twists certain people, but to me federated social media helps remind me there’s a human just like me on the other end of the keyboard.

I think most popular online social spaces—here included—are unconducive to the kind of long-term, active effort conversations between individuals that might change someone's mind. Instead, we gather as many as we can and just start shouting.

Shout it loudly into every medium and hope your fiefdom's propaganda, however meager, pulls in some people over time. It's all about that noise, because noise means engagement, and engagement is the de facto cost-effective tool in social media. Honest conversations are high-cost, dubious reward. They're tiring. Jading. Hardly worth it. So, broadcasting ideas it is.

It's fundamentally the same method the ruling class has used, and continues effectively using, to influence the world in any scale that actually matters, except they reach hundreds of millions every day while we dozen thousand few shout at each other in a dark alley.

Regarding online behavior, you might consider that Lemmy has largely failed to fix it. I posit that it barely ever tried, but also that it's an extremely difficult problem because the root cause is us.

If people bring up politics where it has no place I just block them. I am very generous with the block button. Try me lol

I disagree, and for that reason, upvoted.

Hello, other side of the rock here. Did you just become self aware? Everything is inherently political in society and normality is subjective.

Everything is political.

Don't like politics? Don't engage with anything or anyone.

The only thing special about Is Lemmy is it hasn't attracted the masses yet. People love to complain there is not enough people here, but coming from Reddit, Dig, Facebook, Myspace, etc I can say more people will just make this place worse.

There is plenty of love but also plenty of hate. There is a reason politics and religion discussion are banned in bars.

As always your take is garbage, but that is the result of GIGO. You are a product of what you see and interact with. You can't rise above the quagmire of shit we are all in, and that is the point. You are a product of what you are around and putting on the blinders does not help.

We are all stuck in this together, we can't exist without each other. People much greater than me have already laid all this out. Take a break, step back, and make some room to breathe. We are only here for a short time and the only thing that you can truly moderate is your life for brief moments.

The world is going to take you for a ride whether you like it or not. You will be influenced whether you like it or not. Your life will come crashing down through no fault of your own. Take what little control you have and run with it. Here is wishing a little bit of peace and happiness in your life, good luck and goodbye.

Just block em. Block a couple dozen communities and super-posters and give yourself some space to breathe. There's some fun stuff on lemmy when every other post isn't about Trump

What you're complaining about are symptoms of the flaws in our societal systems. Neo-liberalism is primarily about unfettered individualism. A system that prioritizes individualism and competition will tend to breed tribalism, dogma, and contempt. What do you gain by complaining about the symptoms?

Imo, we all hate the current political paradigm. We can't fix rage and frustration by raging at the rage. Until we all move onto something better, the only thing we can do (as individuals) is educate ourselves enough to better engage in these conversations - with thoughtful arguments, patience, kindness, and verifiable information. Be the change you wish to see.

People are gonna people. The method by which they people doesn't change this. Find a real, physical group. It'll end up the same as a community on social media.

Bruh. Turn off the screen and go outside then.

Lemmy is quickly fostering extremism.

Examples?

Start using the block feature. Honestly I did that when I was active over in Reddit and I do it here too and it makes for such a better online experience.

Doing that I've found that I can have these reasonable discussions, even with those few of the more far left .ml folks that don't mind discussing actual ideas and facts.

I think another key is that unless you're wanting to vent, which I get sometimes you just want to do it, avoid going back into threads rehashing the same topic, they're going to be full of the same people that haven't changed and you've said your piece, they're just actively looking for that fight and echo chamber, downvote, block and move on.

Not that this is a means of discourse, but there's a newsletter I've gotten a lot of value from: Tangle.

The whole idea is to give a "facts first" assessment of the news topic of the day, followed by what prominent voices from the left and right are saying about it, followed by an editor's take (usual guy has his biases, but I've always found his take sensible, even when i disagree with it). Its pretty US centric, but when they cover international news, they tend to include a section for international takes too.

They do a free daily newsletter and podcast Mon - Thurs, then a premium only letter on Fridays and Sundays. The Fri/Sun ones are mostly interviews.

Link for the lazy

I couldn’t agree more. On average, the people commenting on these threads are out of their minds. They’re constantly on the hunt for “the other,” and the moment you start making noises that don’t perfectly align with the accepted beliefs of the hivemind, you’re viciously attacked and practically forced to defend yourself against completely baseless, bad-faith ad hominem accusations.

EDIT: See the replies from FelixCress below to my other comment for a perfect example.

I even made a post about this around a week ago, asking whether a heavily moderated community exists where bad actors would be immediately shown the door. Unsurprisingly, I got attacked for that too - and was implicitly accused of being a fascist and a rapist, because of course only such people would want to have serious conversations with others capable of civil discourse, while everyone with a functioning moral compass apparently wouldn’t be able to participate - as if pushing back in a reasonable, polite manner isn’t even an option.