I read about r/celebrities it was the original creator of the sub, who had run it alone for the vast majority of the subs existence. How many more this happened to, I dunno, but I feel for those creators - what a kick in the guts.
I'll repeat what I've been communicating to some friends that are also mods: don't bother with half measures, "the community voted for a joke with John Oliver!" or "technically we are not violating the ToS!" - Reddit doesn't care, this isn't a court battle, they can and will change whatever rule they want.
There's no point in fighting this fight. It's a massive pain to let go of a large community you helped build, but take the little time you still have in control to migrate to Lemmy and don't look back. Link your users here, teach them how to use Lemmy. If doing so means in 48 hours they lock your account, guess what, they would lock your account regardless, "malicious compliance" is fun but isn't a true solution. There's no solution at this point.
@kadu It's not pointless at all. Really it's a warning to whoever wants to start a community. If you do something reddit doesn't like, be prepared to lose what you built, even if following the rules
Looking at some of the protests, I just see it as a final effort to embarrass Reddit. I think they have collectively decided that the only way to inflict actual, financial harm on Reddit is through the IPO or the advertisers.
thus you have some subs surfacing porn to piss off the advertisers, and some subs going private until reddit deciding to break up the mod teams against community consensus potentially damages trust in the website generally to hurt the IPO
I think it will probably have some effectiveness in the medium term, but I also think it could have been more effective if all the protesting subs called reddit's bluff and refused to reopen. The more drastic the action on reddit's part, the more drastic the media attention, IMO.
Funny how they conflate actual slavery with 'wage slaves' which is something totally different and also wasn't different in the south at the time anyway.
Slaves were also not guaranteed food, housing nor even life. Conforming slaves got the minimum of those things so that they could continue being slaves.
Unfortunately, when I was growing up in the south, this sort of bullshit was actually being taught in schools.
I googled the name from the bottom and read some about them. They encourage peaceful nonviolent resistance, voting, volunteering as an Election Officer, knowledge of firearms, physical training, and basic first aid knowledge.
I had never even considered volunteering for an election, which I would love to do. I submitted an application with my local Board of Elections to volunteer as an Election Officer. If anyone else is up for it, I encourage you to volunteer too!
Also, register to vote if you haven’t already. Your state might also be allowing requesting absentee ballots so you can vote early. The DNC probably isn’t holding a primary in your state, but if you register as unaffiliated you can pick a different party to vote for in the primaries. This is a way to express your support for candidates you’d prefer to be elected, even if they aren’t from a party you’d typically vote for. This might vary from state to state, so check out your state’s BOE website.
I've volunteered for election work before. It's actually quite easy in terms of labor required (triggered my social anxiety something fierce, but so does any 'front desk' work), and it's nice to know you're doing your civic duty. In my area, they're always in need of more volunteers. We also got paid.
My wife is a Precinct Committee Person and one of the things we do is monitor ballot drop boxes to make sure nobody is engaging in intimidation. I say “we” because there’s no way I’m letting her go out there on her own…
Kinda tempted to run a dungeon that is the crypt of some famous illusionist or whatever. It’d be mostly empty rooms, but I’d constantly say things like this and maybe have them roll pointless checks now and then.
Or maybe do the fun thing of handing each player a note saying “you are not a mimic”.
Governments and corporations. Not directly, but in how it’s up to us to sort our garbage and sacrifice the thing that used to be conveniences but we’ve now all come to rely on. (Driving, furnaces, hot water heaters, etc)
Wouldn’t it be so much easier to stop these issues at the source?
I don’t remember asking for every single item I buy to be wrapped in plastic, but they do it anyway. Instead of me having to put in the work to find options that aren’t wrapped in plastic, how about we tell the corporations to cut it out?
“Voting with your dollar” doesn’t work when every single option for the necessities of life has the same issues.
Unwrap every item you buy at the store that’s wrapped in plastic and leave the wrappers on the counter. Hopefully others will catch on and follow your lead.
That is the solution even though you pointed out how hard it is.
On the flip side, getting millions of people to act when everything the politicians and companies are doing is even less realistic. How can people achieve zero waste when they don't get to choose how anything is packaged?
How can people achieve zero waste when they don't get to choose how anything is packaged?
Waste is an unwanted by-product of production, that is, it's composed of materials that they has purchased but hasn't been able to transform them into the desired final good. This means it's an expense.
The end of every entrepreneur is to reduce expenses and increase income to have a greater profit. But if they have to face multiple costs in the form of regulations and taxes, reducing pollution will no longer be a priority to them.
In a free-market society, when they don't have to face these bureaucratic expenses and "common goods" don't exist, producers will strive to reduce the amount of product paid for but not used, that is, pollution; AND they will have to respect the property rights of the others who would have the "ex-common goods".
Why? Because all issues concerning the environment involve conflicts over ownership. So long as there is private ownership, owners themselves solve these conflicts by forbidding and punishing trespass (Coase theorem).
The goal of economical management will always be elusive if "common ownership" exists.
No, blaming the rich psychopaths who own the companies and who happen to be the ruling class of the capitalist political/economic system. These are literally the people responsible for what’s happening.
I mean, “the public” is who is going to do the forcing. Or are you just sitting back and hoping that the capitalist-owned state is going to do the forcing without us rising up?
I guess that could be aimed at what the post is criticizing, sure. I’d call it a stretch to say "We need to ‘eat the rich’ " is doing such blaming. Maybe I misread the “still” in your original comment, though.
Eating the rich isn't even relevant to this topic anyway since the problem is pollution and waste, not wealth inequality. Saying that eating the rich is the solution is saying the poor need to rise up and take stuff, which won't solve anything when the problem is the stuff existing in the first place. Plus it puts the onus on the poor to act, instead of acknowledging that society as a whole should expect their government to regulate companies for the benefit of society.
Most likely I missed the point where eat the rich lost any actual meaning related to its origin like gaslighting or pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.
It is extremely relevant, because the pollution and waste don’t come from nowhere; they come from capitalism and its profit motive. Yes, the oppressed (that’s the whole working class, not just people who are typically categorized as “poor”) must act in order to gain the autonomy and power to be able to shape our environment. The onus is 100% on us. Simply “expecting” the oppressive institutions of nation-state governments to suddenly stop being beholden to the capitalists they were designed to protect and serve is not going to do it. Of course it isn’t “fair” for the onus to be on the oppressed and not the oppressors, but it’s how power fucking works.
Anytime I hear people say dumb shit like this I just start listing all the times anti-abortion activists either successfully murdered or attempted to murder their political opponents in the name of the pro life movement. A hit list of judges, physicians, nuns, retired old ladies that like to knit, they absolutely didn’t give a single fuck about any of this struggle session bullshit wreckers like to trot out to sabotage effective resistance
Then I end with the date Roe got overturned, but they still somehow cannot connect the dots and want to talk about registering new voters or some fucking bullshit
My take home message is it turns out that when white people actually want something they magically know what effective forms of protest actually look like (???!)
start listing all the times anti-abortion activists either successfully murdered or attempted to murder their political opponents in the name of the pro life movement. A hit list of judges, physicians, nuns, retired old ladies that like to knit
The problem is that this form of violence is implicitly endorsed by the state and by a majority of the ruling class. They don’t see it as competition to their monopoly on violence.
However, if leftist groups were to emulate this level of violence it would be condemned by every media outlet for weeks. Liberal politicians would rush to condemn the violence and lay the groundwork to justify an even more violent retaliation.
I’m not saying that violence is never the answer, but if you are not on the side that has a monopoly on violence then you have to be much more aware of how your actions may validate the state’s ability to do violence upon yourself and your cause.
First things first: white people bad! If you have questions I’ll try to answer em, but the settlers in a settler colonial state are unequivocally bad.
With that out of the way, the person you’re replying to is assuming you are already aware and recognize the ways that protest and direct action are coded and racialised in media. Pictures of white people are used with captions about a peaceful protest, pictures of black and brown people are used with captions about them “turning violent” and looting.
The narrative that creates is one where white people are nonviolent and it’s the black and brown people who are associated with direct action.
The point the person you’re replying to is making by saying
turns out that when white people actually want something they magically know what effective forms of protest actually look like
Is that the media narrative about white forms of protest being nonviolent is a lie.
When I, or anyone else for that matter, talk about how white people are bad I’m talking about how the position they occupy in society is bad, not how an individual has committed some original sin of whiteness and must atone.
Whiteness is a social construct used to enforce racialized class society.
A person can no more atone for the classification society created and laid upon them than they can shake off that classification itself.
The thing that is bad about white people is their position in racialised class society in the settler colonial state. An individual white person can uphold all the rules and morals you could name but will still occupy the role of oppressor in the hierarchy everyone lives under.
The usual response people give to me is something along the lines of “well what if a white person fought against racial oppression, they wouldn’t be bad and you would be wrong!” Combined with usually either Lincoln or John brown as examples. Those are great examples of how the settler colonial state will protect itself and will find an outlet for its appetites. Lincoln fought against the Dakota uprising and brown was killed for his insurrection.
I don’t bring that up to make an easy dunk over the head of some guy I made up, but to preempt the response that seems to be on everyone’s lips.
If a person is raised as a certain type of person with every aspect of society behaving towards them with respect to that typification, included in which is the normalization and reification of the relationship that type is a part of, the person will “be” what that type is within that relationship.
Remember the funny dub king fu movie, “we trained him wrong as a joke”? Imagine “we trained him to be white as a way to ensure the propagation of class society”
All of what you’re saying makes sense, and I believe you believe what you’re saying.
I don’t know if I buy that everyone that says white people are bad have this much thought going into it. My experience with people suggests that this simply can’t be true, as there are far too many individuals (especially with the access to information we have these days) that seek others to think for them and act according to their declarations.
What you’re saying, however, all adds up. I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said.
It may come as a surprise to you, but my views are not birthed fully formed out of my forehead.
It took years of reading, conversation and consideration to reach that place. A huge part of that wasn’t even reaching the conclusions but was instead figuring out how to put them into words and how to express them under the sort of violence and history averse liberal framework of polite discussion that people expect.
All that is to say: Very little of what I’ve written are my own original ideas and thoughts. Am I letting others think for me? I demonstrably have. Am I acting according to their decisions. I am at this very moment doing so.
So I’d say it’s less important that people have thought and read deeply than it is for them to recognize and accept the correct understanding.
To put it another way, if you holler “think fast!” and toss a ball to someone, does it matter if they trained extensively to recognize that it’s better for them to make that catch than the third baseman or just whipped around and caught whatever was coming reflexively?
It doesn’t matter in that case, but it would be best if a person figure out weather it’s a kitchen knife, water balloon or baseball before they move to make the catch. The analog to our trained catcher there maybe would be a vanguard party, whose members train and study to be able to lead movements and recognize and counter any reactive or reformist tendencies within those movements.
Maybe when a person who doesn’t express it like I have or in the context of the settler colonial state says “white people are bad” it doesn’t matter if they can do so or simply responds “I hate them” when pressed.
The onus is on all people of right mind and heart to hear the cry of the colonized, and not upon the colonized to fit their protest into the presuppositions of their oppressors.
I know this is a late response, I did just forget to respond, but looking through my past conversations lead me back here.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with utilizing information uncovered by others to guide your worldview. I think it’s elegant, why reinvent the wheel?
However, we live in a world filled with people that have been trained by social media to find the fastest route to justifying their personal views.
Think of it the same way as the “20% of the population, 50% of the crime” statistic. Big number better than small number. Small number responsible for bad big number, small number bad. No nuance, no context, they see the statistic and think “me me no number good, but I don’t like black people so this tracks”.
You can clarify all you want after the fact. When your message is “yt ppl bad” you cannot expect that every person reading will go through your detailed and nuanced explanation of why whiteness is bad. The average person will see the surface level and go no further.
Just food for thought. This isn’t just about “the colonized fitting their protests into the presuppositions of their oppressors”. Think about all these white people suddenly behaving like they’re being “oppressed”. I’m sure you’ve heard about it, despite it being fucking ridiculous considering it’s entirely online.
When Billy the inbred sees “yt people bad” do you think he’s going to give a shit when you give a detailed and nuanced explanation of why whiteness is bad ? No, he’s going to take 5 minutes learning what “yt” means, then be insulted. Then he’s going to experience more of that shit, and come to the conclusion that he’s oppressed. But he feels fine! He gets to fuck his sister everyday, if that’s being oppressed then sign him up!
Suddenly, there’s -1 person that thinks oppression is 1) still a problem and 2) really as bad as people say it is.
Seems like a recipe for two sides that hate each other. Don’t know how you see that ending in anything other than bloodshed.
Yeah, I meant to reply initially but things got in the way.
Sure, if something I say doesn’t add up please let me know.
To put it simply, I think statements like “yt people bad” or any of the variants are too reductive for their explanations to ultimately matter, regardless of merit.
If 1 person sees your message, challenges you, and positively receives your explanation that’s great! That is the ideal circumstance. What about the people who don’t think they need an explanation, either because they “know” (in quotes because, again, most people likely have not read as much about this as you) or those that just outright refuse what you’re saying? The reality is that for that 1 person you enlightened to the truth, 100 more people saw it and you do not know if they actually read your explanation.
Not choosing your words carefully might seem fine, because you think having the moral high ground precludes any need. Ideally, yes, this is how it should be. The truth should reign supreme, but we both know it doesn’t otherwise we wouldn’t be dealing with any of this in the first place.
The reality is that how you think it should be perceived is not how it will be perceived by the majority of people who will see your message. Whether they are for or against the message in your explanation. One side sees it as being attacked, the other genuinely hates white people (when the reality is they hate rich people, and it just so happens that the “whiteness” you mentioned is related to being rich).
A place like Lemmy, with such a small community? Makes a little more sense, as these ideas are shared pretty well here and discussion is (for the most part, looking at you Hexbear) ok. On literally any platform with a sizeable userbase (lurkers)? Absolutely not, the net result is ultimately in favor of polarization. Whether they’re feeding one side or the other, it flows both ways.
I am not of the belief that continuing to enable polarization on both sides will lead to a positive outcome for anyone involved. Am I asking you to be prescient, perfectly predicting how every individual person will perceive your words? No, that’s ridiculous. You’d end up never saying anything out of anxiety, and that’s just as bad. But pretending that this kind of rhetoric is somehow acceptable is wrong, especially when we have so many words to choose from.
Am I reading this right? Are you saying basically “you may have a perfectly reasonable, consistent understanding that I can’t oppose in good faith but because other people might not like it you shouldn’t say it”?
I want to also point out that you put the words “white people bad” in the mouth of the top level commenter. If you’re so concerned about people getting spooked by that rhetoric then maybe don’t drag it into a conversation!
What a difference a month makes! It’s like I’m talking to a different person!
You’re right you didn’t explicitly say that I shouldn’t use those words, but when you say that they’re too reductive, they make people feel attacked, result in polarization and are unacceptable it’s hard to reach the conclusion “oh, they’re just saying I should be more careful when using unacceptable rhetoric”. When something is not acceptable I don’t generally consider it fine if used carefully.
And I want to restate theyre your words. If the mere invocation makes people tune out and ignore the speaker, why did you say them?
Isn’t all this predicated on the assumption too that I’d go into long winded detailed explanations when not writing comments on the anarchist memes board of lemmy.ml?
And to connect a string from my earlier comment, I said your reply was confusing and asked you to make it clearer. Difficult to interpret seemingly out of context statements like “we wouldn’t be dealing with any of this in the first place” were what confused me. What did you mean by that? What are we dealing with and how would truth reigning supreme keep us out of it?
Yeah, you completely missed the fact that I referred to the full spectrum of people that will respond to your post. Both people that disagree with you, and agree with you.
Ideally speaking yes, your long winded explanations should immediately strike as true in others minds. They don’t, sorry to burst your bubble.
Also, no, I very explicitly stated “yt people bad, or any of the variants”. I’m aware you don’t read, hence the comment about skimming.
Imagine considering yourself sound of mind when you can’t even handle talking to people that are essentially children. Stay on that high horse.
I’m even more confused now. None of these people who disagree and feel attacked and repulsed by my rhetoric are here. None of them responded to my comments. None of them even downvoted my comments except one on my first reply to you.
Why are you bringing up people who aren’t here a month after the fact?
What other variant of “white people bad” is the topic of our discussion? How are variants germane to our conversation?
There are plenty of people who might not respond well to long winded explanations all the time, and if I were talking to a person in that situation I wouldn’t be talking like I am here and now, because it’s different and we speak differently than we write.
I’m starting to get the feeling that you disagree and feel attacked and repulsed by my rhetoric, which seems like a fair change from a month ago. Is that so?
So you won’t tell me what I’m missing, but will restate over and over again that I just didn’t read?
Come on, I treated you with complete kindness and understanding and never downvoted your replies or assumed you were trolling. If you really think I’m missing a point, please show me the same courtesy I’ve paid you and point it out.
Treated me with kindness? No you jumped on your high horse, don’t act like you were doing me a “kindness”. You’ve made it very clear what your intention was.
Besides which, I was addressing what you got wrong about what I’ve said. You kept willfully ignoring what I wrote. Why would I waste more words on someone that isn’t reading?
I asked if I was reading what you wrote correctly and gave a summary. You accused me of not reading and continued to do so with every reply.
I want to understand what you’re saying. if you think I’ve missed an important point, copy and paste it in front of a “>” so I can see instead of just repeating that I didn’t read.
i’ve tried to be clear and ask specific questions about the parts of your comments that are confusing. i’ll copy and paste em here for you so you don’t have to go looking.
I’m even more confused now. None of these people who disagree and feel attacked and repulsed by my rhetoric are here. None of them responded to my comments. None of them even downvoted my comments except one on my first reply to you.
Why are you bringing up people who aren’t here a month after the fact?
What other variant of “white people bad” is the topic of our discussion? How are variants germane to our conversation?
I’m starting to get the feeling that you disagree and feel attacked and repulsed by my rhetoric, which seems like a fair change from a month ago. Is that so?
Why are you bringing up people who aren’t here a month after the fact?
Yes, I addressed this. If you’d read what I said, I very clearly stated that on Lemmy it’s likely fine. On any major social media site, it isn’t.
What other variant of “white people bad” is the topic of our discussion? How are variants germane to our discussion?
The exact comment that sparked this entire thread. It’s germane because it is literally the point of the discussion? Do you understand why I’m claiming you don’t read?
I’m starting to get the feeling that you disagree and feel attacked and repulsed by my rhetoric, which seems like a fair change from a month ago. Is that so?
You started to get this feeling because you didn’t read what I wrote. I’m sorry I didn’t perfectly MLA format my essay for you, Mr. Debatelord, I’ll do it better next time (I won’t).
You completely assumed I was disagreeing with what you said, when the reality is I’m talking about how the thread is perceived as a whole. You would have understood this if you read what I wrote.
i didn’t ask why you were bringing up people who aren’t here after the fact in response to your statement that on lemmy it was probably okay, i asked it in response to your claim that you were referring to all the different people who would respond to my post. i was asking it because after a month, only you had responded to my post and we had a perfectly fine conversation. even looking at the votes there was no indication that anyone had a problem with my comments.
in direct response to it being likely fine i asked if all this was based on the assumption that i’d talk this way everywhere.
I was asking those questions because it seemed like you were trying to construct a situation where your reasoning held but i didn’t want to make that assumption and accuse you of that so i asked you to elaborate instead.
I wasn’t able to find any variant of “white people bad” in the top comment. if you can point it out that would help me understand. i’ll quote the entire comment here so you don’t have to go looking:
Anytime I hear people say dumb shit like this I just start listing all the times anti-abortion activists either successfully murdered or attempted to murder their political opponents in the name of the pro life movement. A hit list of judges, physicians, nuns, retired old ladies that like to knit, they absolutely didn’t give a single fuck about any of this struggle session bullshit wreckers like to trot out to sabotage effective resistance
Then I end with the date Roe got overturned, but they still somehow cannot connect the dots and want to talk about registering new voters or some fucking bullshit
My take home message is it turns out that when white people actually want something they magically know what effective forms of protest actually look like (???!)
your formatting and structure wasn’t what made me think you were the one who felt attacked and repulsed, it was your use of offensive stereotypes when describing a person i actually needed to orient my responses and thought towards. what i’m specifically referring to is using broken english and invoking “billy the inbred”.
later on, your continued suggestion that people on other social media sites and who would read my comments would respond badly to “white people bad” combined with the fact that I couldn’t find any example of it in the top comment made me think you were bringing something you disagreed with into the conversation and trying to put it on someone else to make space to talk about it (think someone who blames something incidental on a political issue or party: I stub my toe and blame the reTHUGlicans, etc), which dovetails with the idea that its actually you who has some problem with the rhetoric.
but it would have been insulting to assume the worst so i asked questions instead to gain a better understanding.
Edit/tldr: The topic could not have been more meta, and instead of treating it as a meta commentary; you acted like you took it literally and behaved as if I was throwing up strawmen or secretly disagreeing with you. This is why I scoff at the idea that you want me to think this is a conversation, when that was very clearly never your intent.
Can you tell me where I brought up other social media platforms? Because if you had read what I wrote you’d have seen that it was immediately after talking about how others would perceive your post.
To put it simply, I think statements like “yt people bad” or any of the variants are too reductive for their explanations to ultimately matter, regardless of merit.
Nothing about what I’ve said has deviated from this message.
By the way, no I chose my words carefully. I never stated that this post or these comments would be seen on other platforms. It seems like the only issue you have with what I’ve said is that I didn’t preface it with “If you speak like this on other platforms.”.
Beyond which, you realize that before this conversation it wasn’t like I was totally unaware of what oppression was? It’s not like I lived in a bubble, I just don’t like how conversations about this topic always become racially charged despite that never being the real problem.
It’s funny to me that you refer to any of this as a “conversation”. Obfuscating my points by conflating both of my subjects (you and the person who sparked the thread), being “confused” despite the fact that I was very clear with my words, arbitrarily deciding that I must just disagree that oppression is real; all of these things point to debatelord tactics. I am mortified for the people you speak to regularly if this is the shit you put them through during “conversation”.
Lastly, what point is there in trying to refine the opinion of someone who is already aligned morally with you? Why, if we’ve come to a point where we have an understanding, would you point fingers and act as if anything other than complete acceptance of your message is incorrect? Why is there no room for refinement of your perspective? What makes you think that this is any kind of meaningful discourse? Especially when you take into consideration that your response implies that you don’t speak like this on other platforms?
On literally any platform with a sizeable userbase (lurkers)? Absolutely not, the net result is ultimately in favor of polarization.
and later on, clarifying that this was in reference to social media platforms:
Yes, I addressed this. If you’d read what I said, I very clearly stated that on Lemmy it’s likely fine. On any major social media site, it isn’t.
and to your point i did notice that you said that in reference to how people not on lemmy would respond to a post on lemmy. the underlying assumption that i would use the same language reasoning and approach on a different platform is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. people post differently in different places and frankly they probably don’t go 20 replies deep over it in most.
but that’s not at all my only issue or misunderstanding with what youve written.
I don’t think you’ve deviated from your message, i’m trying to understand why you brought it up in the first place when the top commenter didn’t ever say it. i’m trying my best to do so by asking you what you think as opposed to making assumptions and putting words in your mouth.
am i correct in saying that the topic in question that you don’t like becoming racially charged when race is never the real problem with it is how teaching that social change is achieved by being reasonable is a form of whitewashed history?
Do you think Lemmy has a sizeable userbase compared to other platforms? Because I don’t. It’s grown considerably, that does not make it large enough to be directly compared to something like Reddit, Xitter etc.
My only comment to your next point is: why try to convince others that are morally aligned with you? Why waste your time talking to people who won’t disagree with you?
I brought it up in the first place as a meta commentary on how threads like this are perceived on larger platforms. This is not the first time a debate like this has happened, it will not be the last. I was merely examining how something like a reductive statement can backfire unintentionally.
For example, I agreed with everything the original commenter stated. Right up until they brought up how “white people suddenly know how to protest when yadayada”. This statement is what I’m talking about when I say “yt people bad or variants of”. Granted, with explanation the statement makes perfect sense. Without explanation, as is the inevitable conclusion of most reductive statements, sparked the talk about lurkers.
am i correct in saying that the topic in question that you don’t like becoming racially charged when race is never the real problem with it is how teaching that social change is achieved by being reasonable is a form of whitewashed history
You aren’t correct until you make this paragraph make sense. I’m not implying you should be reasonable with fascists.
It’s a hard sentence to parse. I tried to write it a bunch of ways to avoid using “scare quotes” and that’s the best I could come up with.
I’m asking if the topic of this thread, that the conception of social change as achievable through being reasonable is whitewashed history, is the topic around which conversations “always become racially charged despite that never being the real problem.”
With that out of the way: how is
My take home message is it turns out that when white people actually want something they magically know what effective forms of protest actually look like (???!)
White people bad? I just can’t figure out how to get there.
As to why I’d try to convince someone morally aligned with me, first of all I’m not sure that you are and second I’m not trying to convince you of anything, I’m asking you questions to try and understand your views. I was explaining before how it would have been fine if the top comment was “white people bad” even though it wasn’t.
I don’t think lemmy is comparable in size to the big social media platforms. I do think that if what I said was as upsetting as you say, there would be a lot more downvotes on it. I don’t think lemmy has the same ideological makeup as the big social media platforms, but look at my response to your glib categorization of the top comment as “white people bad”: 7 to 1 versus your 3 to 7. Even accounting for wildly different ideology here, surely the sub-humans you described earlier are on lemmy in greater proportion than one in eight!
Ok, for one thing it’s more like a paragraph than a sentence. For another, I’m not saying you should be reasonable with the people in power. I’m saying you should be reasonable with the idiots who outnumber you. Because yes, the average American reads at about the 6th to 8th grade level (looked it up to verify after the other response, was a little off). If you genuinely believe that a person who reads at that low of a level looks beyond surface level, I don’t know what to tell you other than you are optimistic verging on naive.
My take home message is it turns out that when white people actually want something they magically know what effective forms of protest actually look like (???!)
Tell me why being white is relevant after the rest of their message when white people aren’t the only ones that are anti-abortion? Tell me exactly why.
Ah yes, big number better than small number. You sure did get me, wow.
Reading level based on school grades has everything to do with a persons vocabulary and ability to parse complex passages. It is not an indicator of a persons ability to understand complex ideas or think deeply.
Being white is relevant because the top poster is talking about
all the times anti-abortion activists either successfully murdered or attempted to murder their political opponents in the name of the pro life movement.
Those people are overwhelmingly white. The top poster isn’t talking about people who line up on one side or another, but people who take direct violent action. When it comes to anti-abortion activists those people are white.
The top poster isn’t saying that white people are bad, they’re saying white people know that direct action works and are allowed to use it. That is descriptive of a trait that the racist settler colonial state has, not some hive mind all the white people tap into and use to coordinate their actions to avoid repercussions.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about when you say you don’t think we should be reasonable with the people in power, I asked if the topic of this thread, that the conception of social change as achievable through being reasonable is whitewashed history, is the topic around which conversations “always become racially charged despite that never being the real problem.”
I didn’t reference a bunch of Reddit crap to “get” you. I brought it up because it represents a real life measurement that ought to bear out your thesis that people can’t stand what I say but it doesn’t seem to.
Reading level has everything to do with critical thinking. The fact that you’ve even tried to suggest otherwise completely proves that I’ve been wrong in trying to converse with you.
I finally understand what you’ve been trying to ask.
Is the idea that " ‘change can be achieved through being reasonable’ is whitewashed history" the topic around which conversations ‘always become racially charged despite that never being the real problem’.
Just so we’re clear, there are more ways to use quotes than scare quotes. No, the answer is no. People are primed to hate these days, it doesn’t really matter if you’re white skinned or otherwise.
And, if you read what I fucking wrote for the 15th time I actually did answer you. Very clearly. Being reasonable with the people in power is not how change is achieved. Violence is, and the whole god damn point of what I’ve said is that violence is a pretty bad fucking solution for all of us when it’s pointed at the wrong people. Especially at such a critical juncture of human history.
I’m not engaging with you further on this. My advice to you is stop skimming when you read.
I can think critically just fine despite not having literacy in hundreds of languages. If literacy were correlated to critical thinking skills the person with the most languages under their belt would be the best critical thinker.
So if the topic of the thread isn’t the thing that becomes racially charged, what is?
Yes, in fact, learning more languages is correlated to stronger critical thinking.
By the way, are you English as a second language? I’m curious because many of the things you’re “misunderstanding” actually seem like language barrier issues.
To your last question, as it turns out, I can’t decipher what the fuck you’re trying to say. It is nonsense. I’ve tried to translate it for you, but then I answer and suddenly your question shapeshifts and seems completely unrelated to what I thought you asked.
You said you finally understood what I was asking a reply or so back. It was in reference to my question about what becomes racially charged. I asked using a simple yes or no format and you said no, but now I’m asking in a more open ended way: What is the topic that “always become(s) racially charged despite that never being the real problem”?
Yes, I assumed I understood what you were trying to say. Unfortunately the logic of what you’re asking shifts the same way the direction of your goalposts do. And I’m certain it’s because you haven’t taken the time to read what I’ve said.
There is no specific topic. Racially charged topics are, and they always have been, a waste of fucking time. The second we moved past phrenology should have been the end of this notion that physical traits determines societal value. It doesn’t matter what your perspective is, race is a made up concept that shouldn’t define who you are.
It doesn’t matter if you think you’re proud as fuck to be white under the umbrella of “whiteness” or proud as fuck of being black under the umbrella of “blackness” or whatever other words you arbitrarily assign to this issue. If that pride leads to innocent people being hurt, you are always wrong.
The reason I’ve asked what topic you were talking about so many times is because you said
It’s not like I lived in a bubble, I just don’t like how conversations about this topic always become racially charged despite that never being the real problem.
I wanted to know because the topic of our conversation and the post were commenting under and the top comment we first started talking about are all things race is pertinent to. I didn’t want to assume that you had regressive, essentialist liberal ideas about race, so I asked.
Since you gave voice to your ideas about race: can you expound a little on how racially charged topics are a waste of time? We can’t change our history and remove the social construct of race from society and it has had material effects that anyone can see. Are those effects and their remuneration racially charged topics? If they aren’t, what is?
In response to your edits: I don’t think we’re morally aligned and I don’t think the average person is incapable of understanding that “white people bad” doesn’t mean white people are bad because of their skin color but instead means that the position they occupy in society is bad.
Where did I decide you believe oppression isn’t real?
If it’s driving you up the wall this much, stop replying. Click the check mark instead of the link and don’t worry about it.
You think that the average person, keep in mind the average person in the United States reads around a 6th to 8th* grade level, will read further than white people bad? That, my good person, is blind optimism.
I’m starting to think you disagree and feel attacked and repulsed y my rhetoric
People think contradictory stuff all the time. I didn’t even realize it was contradictory until you explained that my assumption that you were the person repulsed would mean that you also think oppression isn’t real.
I’m not even sure that I agree that one flows from, implies or requires the other but it wouldn’t be the end of the world if it did.
assumption that you were the person repulsed would mean that you also think oppression isn’t real.
Here is proof you do not read. “Disagree and are repulsed”. Disagree. You very clearly stated that you, for some reason, think I disagree with your message.
Edit: sorry, sorry. You said you were beginning to think. Lest I be guilty of the same thing you are. Although, truth be told, with how clearly adversarial you’ve been I doubt that the distinction matters.
Yeah I said that, but I don’t believe that people have internally consistent ideas. Like I said, you could disagree with me and feel repulsed by my words and still believe that oppression exists. It’s not a problem, no one’s gonna whip out the uno contradiction card.
It’s not a debatelord tactic to accept the possibility that people can hold different ideas at the same time and try to understand them instead of boxing them into a corner and whipping out logical fallacy words.
I’m not being a debatelord when I entertain the possibility that you could think two things that are in opposition at the same time.
You’ll have to forgive me for reading you extra carefully and responding based on that. I don’t want to come across as having only skimmed your well thought out responses.
What are the goalposts here and how does someone score? I’m not thinking like that, I’m just trying to understand someone who seems to have an interesting viewpoint that’s different than mine.
Oh my responses were written hastily, mainly because I have other things to do. Especially better than talking to someone who’s clearly only interested in winning the “conversation”.
Who knows? It’s your game, I’m not the one making a mountain out of a simple concept. I’m also not the one cherrypicking.
I’m not trying to win, I’ve only asked questions to try and understand you. In response I’ve been accused of skimming and not reading multiple times, called names, cussed and insulted.
I want you to understand that this isn’t Reddit and I’m not trying to get you. We’re not having some kind of fight where someone wins and the other person loses.
They don’t really bother to hide the fact that their primary reason for existing is trollng and brigading, do they?
Edit: Here is proof that “dunking” is their term for organised brigading, where a hexbear member is posting a comment in another instance on hexbear “if you wanna dunk”.
I mean, did anyone doubt that? There was a post about the Ukranian war not long ago where almost every single comment belonged to hexbear users, but nah, they weren’t brigading at all, it’s just a coincidence that they were the only ones who had anything to say.
Explanation: Antoninus Pius is one of the “Five Good Emperors”, a series of five Emperors in a row who were well-regarded by history. Antoninus Pius got his name (‘Pius’) because he was a good and loyal son to his (sometimes mercurial) adoptive father, the Emperor Hadrian. He proceeded to embark on no major military campaigns, and spent the next two decades of rule investing in public roads, bridges, aqueducts and other systems for publicly available water, and welfare measures for the poor, including for orphans (not an actual orphanage; the original pic is a little inaccurate but they’ve got the spirit). He reduced taxes on areas experiencing hardship, funded the arts, medicine, and philosophy, and still managed to have a massive budget surplus by the end of his reign.
He brought to the Empire extensive legal reform in all areas, increasing the rights of slaves against mistreatment or murder at their masters’ hands and ensuring that when a man’s status as a slave was in doubt, one was to err on the side of freedom, not slavery. He also significantly reduced the use of torture in the Empire (reduced, not eliminated, because ultimately, as with slavery, the past is still a really shitty place). He had a warm relationship with the Jews of the Empire after his predecessor, Hadrian, quite famously… did not… and put Christians under his personal protection as Emperor (a state of affairs which sadly would fade after a few Emperors).
Not only that, but his two adoptive sons who became Emperor after him both remembered him very fondly after his death as a man of good humor and great patience, who enjoyed fishing and watching comedic plays and boxing matches. Man was probably one of the most wholesome human beings to ever become the most powerful man in the world.
when a man’s status as a slave was in doubt, one was to err on the side of freedom, not slavery
i have a new hero, that's awesome.. what an Eternal Dude this guy was.. a real example to follow, and there must be a long list of kings and so forth who genuinely measured themselves against him..
Unfortunately, while he is remembered as a wise and fair Emperor, he is generally overshadowed by his more militarily active predecessors, Hadrian and Trajan, or by his adoptive son, the Philosopher-Emperor Marcus Aurelius.
sorry to double reply, but i really wanted to make this other point because it bugs the hell out of me personally..
he is generally overshadowed
it's great that you chose those words.. it's true, he is eclipsed by them in history texts, written by historians.. this is obviously due to the fact that historians are obsessed with conflict.. there is nothing interesting to talk about when everyone is living a nice, peaceful life.. especially if it lasts a long time..
Tolkien explains this concept incredibly well in the foreword to the Hobbit, i think.. he says something like, "good days are nice to live, but nobody wants to hear you talk about them.. whereas everyone wants to hear a scary story.." historians like to talk about dragons..
as you are demonstrating here, thank you.. perhaps i should have said that Tolkien suggests it's hard to get a hobbit to listen, unless there's a dragon..
There are some really fascinating fields that have emerged since the revival of history as an academic discipline in the 19th century, and especially since the second half of the 20th century. Some really great work on the social fabric of past societies, rather than war, politics, and tabloid gossip that usually gets recorded.
Not that any of that is necessarily bad, I love reading about that too, lmao, but it's nice to have a wider view of things!
great work on the social fabric of past societies,
yeah, this is what i'm talking about, and how that social fabric has progressed, and is still progressing as a thing unto itself.. specifically in spite of war, which hates civilization..
thank you for adding that further context
that's why i loved this post right away.. it's about one of the guys whose life was totally committed to that fabric, and we still owe this guy today in a way we don't understand well..
thanks for adding that BRUTAL Roman context lol.. but i also want to make sure to shout the guy out for this one as well..
He reduced taxes on areas experiencing hardship, funded the arts, medicine, and philosophy, and still managed to have a massive budget surplus by the end of his reign.
this is what people need to understand.. most other Roman administrations were nothing but sieves because of their more typical behavior..
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