My experience with the Fediverse has only been through Mastodon, through which I struggled to find a community I really gelled with. Either it was supper overwhelming with meme posts or NSFW, or it was too chill to the point of nothing. Or, it was hyperfocused like FOSS/Linux and became uninteresting after awhile. May try again, but I think I will explore the other fedisites like Plemora or Calckey to see if I like it better.
I love the pace of a forum. I grew up primarily with GameFAQS and some lucid dreaming forum, and honestly it was very formative in teaching me how to write and use critical thinking skills, as well as how to respond to a variety of temperaments. I stopped participating in online forums awhile ago, and while I loved Reddit as a resource, I never felt inspired to participate. In the same way, there are an incredible number of forums dedicated to a certain topic, and are extremely valuable, it would be annoying to make an account for all the things I am interested in.
I like what lemmy is becoming. Glad to find system that makes interacting with people enjoyable.
I’m from Mastodon and trying Lemmy to explore more of the fediverse, liking it so far too 😃. My Mastodon feed is almost all politics so I’m liking the different content on here.
Ug. Yes. Politics is important and inevitable but ultimately exhausting to look at. Just impotent yelling across the ether.
An analogy that I have been using is that politics is like linguistics. It is useful to study language in a granular way from morphemes to phonetics to syntax to discourse analyses, and everything in between. The structure of a language is fascinating, it helps to discover its relationship to other languages, and it can reveal profound things about the cultures that would otherwise be lost.
Yet, studying linguistics does not make anyone better at learning to speak, read, write, and understand other language. It does nothing for fluency. Nobody learns a language to only talk about the language, they do it to connect to other people or to experience art and media in its original form.
Political discussion is not action, by itself it does nothing to improve the world, it only serves to bias us and disort reality.A person can only hope to be inspirational and change the minds of the prejudiced.
… sorry for rant there. I have way too many opinion about politics for someone who does not care to see it either.
Ehh, i mean it definitely does do that, but political discussion is also important to guide action. We can see plenty of political action that gets nowhere and does nothing, because the people instigating it do not have a solid theory of how political change is accomplished. Political discussions are how that understanding emerges.
That being said the internet, especially platforms like mastodon that encourage short posts, is rarely the best place for productive political discussion.
I admit I am being closed minded here. I just cannot see having a beneficial discussion of politica with all the hair triggered reactions and noise.
Fuck, it used to be that the anonimity of the internet empowered people to be piss-stained jerks. Seeing all the hate and ignorance put to faces is overwhelming. People think free speech means they are entitled to others people’s attention and personal lives. I do not need to participate in that shit, and I definitely never want to look at it.
Personally, I need to be more informed about political theory. There does appear to be an optimal way to things for effective action. I want to be useful in making the world a better place.
I agree that political discourse can be exhausting. That exhaustion will frequently lead to frustration. It’s frustrating to repeatedly engage in an activity without seeing regular progress towards your goal.
I firmly disagree that political discourse “does nothing to improve the world.” Without discussions, which will often involve disagreement, there are fewer opportunities for personal engagement in the political process. As with formal schooling, a personal engagement in the subject matter can help develop a person’s comfort and confidence with the subject, refine their understanding through overcoming obstacles, expose their ignorance of specific areas, and promote continued social engagement in a community focused on learning.
Greek forums, French salons, and taverns all around the world served as physical communities for political discussions for contemporary and future political leaders. They were part of the birth, rebirth, and refinement of democratic ideas that became ideals. Some of which became laws.
Online political discourse is now possible. It is cheaper and easier on an individual level to engage in an online discussion than an in-person community. It’s a mixed bag. There are many examples of bad online behavior, but anyone who reads this post is probably looking for something that is for some reason difficult to find offline. My personal politics are influenced by a combination of offline and online experiences, and I’m glad for both kinds of experience.