On the flip side of this, my main account was banned there but my alt account that I’ve also had for a few years now wasn’t. And I’ve even made a post or two with it there in the months since my main was banned, just to see.

And the funny thing is, the last time I was a banned for a few days (I managed to successfully appeal), they also banned my alt account that I had never even posted on before. Then unbanned it along with my main account after my appeal. So clearly their systems are aware that the two accounts are the same person.

I was going to say something snarky about how they’re going to fail because who would pay for social media, then I remembered blue checkmarks.

I know that there’s a teenager advice community of some flavour floating around in the Blåhaj server. But I’m gonna take a guess that the only reason it’s there is because people who can’t just scroll past things were downvoting it. I have a feeling that if an instance or multiple communities for teenagers popped up, the users here would probably terrorize it until it all closed down.

Literally the opposite.

After the French Revolution, parliament was arranged so that the people who supported democracy and freedom literally sat on the left hand side; and all of the freeloading, self serving, bootlicking monarchists that wanted to return to rule by a king or queen sat on the right hand side.

Far right are that but more extreme. They don’t just lick boots but also the assholes of the politicians and billionaires that they worship like gods.

What made me leave Facebook was discovering Reddit. What made me leave Reddit was getting banned lol. What made me leave Twitter (or never actually ever bother much with it) is that it seems more like a big popularity contest than ‘social’ platform to me. Besides, if it was really social, there wouldn’t be a character limit that benefits marketing speak and hashtags more than constructive conversation.

Never saw the point of places like Instagram that are based on being able to upload photos. Big deal, you can upload photos anywhere. And the only time I use YouTube is when I’m in the mood for music videos. I have less than zero interest in watching people’s crappy home videos, it’s like reality TV but even more boring and brain rotting. And I’ve got better things to spend my time watching. Oh, and I tried TikTok but noped out very quickly. I see absolutely no value in being spoonfed content by some shady algorithm as opposed to choosing and curating your own content.

Personally, I do not care if the platform that I’m on uses my data to advertise to me. I fell in with the ‘privacy’ crowd like a decade ago and did my time shaking my fists at big brother but I just don’t care anymore. None of this is new. As long as the people on the platform are the kind of people that I could get along with, I’m fine. And quite capable of using an ad blocker if I so desire. I couldn’t care less if Reddit used my posts in the Xena or She-Ra subreddits to advertise romance fantasy novels to me. There’s more important things to focus on.

social media is only as good as its user base

I’m with you on this one. Honestly I’m starting to consider jumping through all of the hoops required to get going on Reddit again myself. I can make do with few entertainment related subs but I keep thinking about how there’s a reason that no major women’s spaces from Reddit have been able to ever take off here on Lemmy. And the fact that LGBTQ+ communities needed their own instance with downvotes disabled as a solution against vote brigading. It gives this place a pretty dark undercurrent despite all of its supposed left wing fervour.

And then there’s the smart ass sarcastic replies to everything, like you’re experiencing in this thread, that I see in almost every single thread. I’ve seen a new user come to this platform and ask if there’s a gen z community, only to get no answers to the question and a bunch of people going “wHo CAreS abOUT LabElS and GrOUps? Look at me, I’m such a free thinker!” Yesterday I saw someone posting that they wish there were more pop music and sports related communities, only for all the replies to be along the lines of “FuCK pOP muSIc, wHo waNTs to SEe that? Look at me, I’m such a free thinker!” And it’s fucking annoying, if I’m being honest.

I don’t want to feel this way because I love the idea of this platform. But I dunno, I’m missing being able to discuss certain feminist issues in communities where I’m not going to be called a sexist, have people comparing nazism to astrology to try and make a point that women bad too instead of addressing issues that need addressing, and have comments removed.

There’s good people here too. People that have been very cool and encouraging. And who make the effort to actually answer people’s questions about communities without just shitting on them. But to me, those people seem to be a few lights shining in the darkness that covers everything else. And it’s starting to affect my mood negatively.

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It also helps nothing and no one to “both sides” this conversation every time it starts. Astrology and homeopathy doesn’t even begin to fucking compare with nazism. Also, why do you call out astrology but not christianity? One is a dumb little thing involving sky magic that is mostly harmless and the other is also a dumb thing involving sky magic but the followers of that dumb thing are actually very dangerous and harmful to a lot of people that have to grow up with them. Haven’t met too many female priests in my life either.

Fascism relies on traditional gender roles and that has less appeal to women who would lose rights and power compared to men who would theoretically gain power. It’s less “there’s something wrong with the men” and more that fascism itself is designed to appeal to men.

Oh, is it? So what you’re telling me is that fascism appeals to men more than women because men don’t give as much of a shit about other people’s rights? Fascinating. Totally means there’s nothing wrong with men that needs addressing or changing. Sure.

Edit: in fact this whole fucking conversation is stupid considering that the stats are there at the top of the post for all to see. There is clearly a fucking problem. And the way to fix that problem is to actually address it instead of comparing it to astrology and calling it a day.

Edit 2: the moderators here in this community are actually fucking pathetic. Actually cannot see a good reason they removed my most recent comment too now. And I’m realising that this place is actually kinda worse than Reddit in this regard because it even removes the comment from your own profile. And these fucking moderators don’t notify you or give you an actual concrete reason with whichever word or phrase broke the fucking rules. Dodgy as fuck. They’re actually just out to control the conversation.

Which is very Reddit of them. It’s easy to forget that a lot of people here are ex Reddit moderators that pissed the users there off so much that no one was willing to join them in solidarity with the API debacle. Guess I’ve found my first Lemmy community to block.

You aren’t being funny here.

Good thing I specifically said I wasn’t trying to be funny then. I suppose you’re right though. There’s absolutely nothing to be learnt from 11% of women versus 26% of men supporting nazis. It’s a mystery. Martian shit.

Lol what the actual fuck. Also, wasn’t their president groomed by his teacher when he was a teenager, who he is currently married to?

Even if they don’t have registries, I’m sure they could’ve done better than a four-year suspended prison sentence. I’m sure they could’ve also achieved not allowing him to work with children ever again. Unless they also don’t have things like IDs and telephones and email. I suppose if smoke signals are their only means of communication, then it’s understandable how someone caught with CSAM was allowed to keep working with children in “prestigious” hospitals that willingly hired him.

IMO, the judge that sentenced this guy to a four-year suspended prison sentence needs to be investigated and publically disgraced too. Same with the hospitals that hired him.

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I don’t know about the conservatives but the press and ‘centrists’ will probably go “Hmmm maybe it’s just autism. Surely he didn’t really mean it. No, can’t be. I can’t think of any past behaviour of his that would make this seem intentional. Autistic people do nazi salutes and say heil hitler all the time.”

I knew this kind of shit would happen. This is why it’s important to keep an eye on US politics and why US news always kinda fits in ‘world’ news. Because like it or not, we all seem to be under the spell of the USA’s influence.

Take these European variety ass flies following the waft of stink coming from Donald Trump’s backside for example. “Make Europe Great Again”? Apparently Europe is joining China in the game of making cheap knockoffs of famous American brands. Or maybe it’s just going full circle, considering that MAGA is just a knockoff brand of Nazism. Which was long ago but not long ago enough for everyone involved in it or brainwashed by it to have shuffled off this mortal coil yet.

Haha I use adblock (uBlock Origin to be specific) in Firefox but I was talking about the app in particular. I actually have a hosts level ad blocker installed too but it’s disabled a lot of the time because every now and then it breaks something and I’m too lazy to toggle and reboot any time that happens.

Honestly though, I didn’t mind Reddit ads that much. I’ve spent the last few years questioning gender and shit and honestly, watching targeted advertising try to figure me out on various platforms has been oddly fun and affirming in a lot of cases that I’m on the right track, in the right place and asking the right questions.

Not that I’m defending it, no ads is of course better but I’ve seen much worse and more obnoxious styles of advertising than the way Reddit handled it. For all their faults, if they had to go down the advertising route, at least they managed to keep it somewhat more classy than almost everyone else.

I remember the cheat but not the exact game lol. Definitely Sega Mega Drive though.

ABRACADABRA (R for d-pad right, D for d-pad down).

Going by a Google search it could’ve been Vectorman or Ecco 2. Or both because I played both a lot back then.

I only noticed this in my feed now, so I’m late but I guess that’s how it is on a platform with relatively low activity.

I also used to “fall in love” easily when I was young, so I feel like I can have quite a bit to say here. It’s going to be a long post though.

If you’re anything like I was, it almost feels like what being bipolar must feel like because you’re fully aware that you’re behaving badly but it’s like the chemicals in your brain have gone haywire so you’re not completely in the driver’s seat. And I just want to say, that’s not ‘love’. It’s a slow release poison that is killing you and any chance of love.

Personally I actually just bowed out of relationships for a long time because I knew that I was the problem that needed to solved first. I would maybe suggest making the conscious decision to stop thinking of relationships or “possible future partners” as even being a goal for a while. Make friends along the way but the person that you need to get to know first is yourself. And don’t completely shut yourself off to having a bit of naughty fun once in a while either. But don’t ever expect it or feel like you’re owed it and if it comes along, do it with the mentality of no strings attached as a default instead of immediately seeing wedding bells in the future.

Just be careful though because once you learn to be happy in your relationship with yourself, it can be addictive. I kept it going for a little too long myself, so now I’m at the point where even though I wouldn’t mind having a special someone, the idea of sharing a bed and a cupboard etc. kinda repulses me. I’m going to have to find a very specific kind of person that wants both love and independence at the same time at this point lol.

But that’s part of finding out who you are. In fact part of my problem is that I’m at the very least aromantic. I just do not know how to receive or give the same cues that everyone else seems to be tuned into. So I mimicked my idea of ‘romance’ from romcoms and shit. And (metaphorically speaking because I wasn’t quite that bad) I thought that serenading her with a guitar outside her window or chasing her down at the airport was how it was done and not borderline stalker behavior in the eyes of the person being ‘serenaded’ or chased. Also (and it took me a long time to come to this conclusion because I come from a country where we weren’t educated on all this stuff), I have come to find that I am actually somewhere around non-binary in the gender spectrum and I think that people around me could tell that I wasn’t completely cis long before I knew.

That’s my journey though. You need to find your own answers. My point is that now I am better equipped with the knowledge that I need to try again. Some people have it all figured out from the start, some of us take a while longer.

Aaand sorry to keep going on but I’m also going to punt Relationship Anarchy. It’s actually more about polyamory but I think that there’s a lot of good ideas in here that can be applied to monogamous relationships or even just friendships. Namely as far as your jealousy issues go, I’m going to quote two sections.

Love and respect instead of entitlement:

Deciding to not base a relationship on a foundation of entitlement is about respecting others’ independence and self-determination. Your feelings for a person or your history together does not make you entitled to command and control a partner to comply with what is considered normal to do in a relationship. Explore how you can engage without stepping over boundaries and personal beliefs. Rather than looking for compromises in every situation, let loved ones choose paths that keep their integrity intact, without letting this mean a crisis for the relationship. Staying away from entitlement and demands is the only way to be sure that you are in a relationship that is truly mutual. Love is not more “real” when people compromise for each other because it’s part of what’s expected.

Trust is better

Choosing to assume that your partner does not wish you harm leads you down a much more positive path than a distrustful approach where you need to be constantly validated by the other person to trust that they are there with you in the relationship. Sometimes people have so much going on inside themselves that there’s just no energy left to reach out and care for others. Create the kind of relationship where withdrawing is both supported and quickly forgiven, and give people lots of chances to talk, explain, see you and be responsible in the relationship. Remember your core values and to take care of yourself though!

And that is that. Sorry for the essay.

Reddit is definitely trying the ragebait thing from what I saw before I left. With however the algorithm works there these days, /r/all actually got pretty good at showing me more of what I’m interested in (same as adverts to be honest, I did not mind getting random romance fantasy novels and shit advertised to me), which made me even more suspicious every time it would slip /r/conservative into my feed, even if the post only had like 10 upvotes.

And maybe it’s just in my imagination but I would especially start seeing subs like conservative after literally just being active in subreddits that shit on conservatives. So it felt a lot to me like Reddit’s algorithm was actively trying to bait me at times to get into fights in places I should just ignore or block.

Is this guy just a little ass fly hanging around Trump’s crappy nappy or something?

Yeah as someone from a BRICS nation, I would not trust or put my faith in these people any more than I would American institutions. And I feel pretty confident in saying that even if a BRICS backed currency became dominant, absolutely fuck all would change in the quality or cost of life for the majority of people and the only ones that would be smiling would be the fat cat piece of shit politicians and elites that are already smiling.