Looks like Europe will finally have something to thank JD Vance for. I have a few suggestions for European politicians he should publicly support next.
(serious note: good job Hungary, obviously the real work was done by the Hungarian people who needed no external encouragement, it was just such low hanging fruit)
I know you meant it as a critique, but the changing part is actually completely right! I guess my distaste for it stems from my distaste for tribalism. I follow topics I care about, and despite largely comprising opinions I agree with through selection bias, I dislike how there’s a set of agreed upon opinions that people are expected to follow, with intense backlash to attempts at nuance or compromise. Naturally everyone from other tribes is considered a horrible evil being who just wants to see your own tribe suffer, and so anything but the most vicious “anti-them” perspective is considered traitorous.
As far as I can tell, it doesn’t matter much which part of the community it is, most seem to have a relatively large proportion of users who seem to delight in the opportunity to tear others to shreds if they perceive some justification. I sometimes wish we could enjoy things together without turning everything into a hateful fight (that somehow always seems to be considered justified because other tribes are supposedly even worse). Maybe I’m just in the wrong place…
I don’t use Lemmy much anymore nowadays because of this. While it’s important an alternative to Reddit exists, so I try to support it, it ironically feels more like a hivemind than Reddit does (ironic because you’d expect the opposite for federated services). I think it’s because switching to Lemmy from Reddit requires either idealism or a Reddit ban, both of which disproportionately attract people who feel good when they verbally attack internet strangers for disagreeing with them on 1% of the implicitly agreed upon joint viewpoints. It also strangely reminds me of the feeling I got being part of an old gaming community that was slowly dying out, where eventually only the unpleasant ones who defined their identity based on it were left.
I’m always happy to see there are also people here who dislike this attitude, though, or even to see neutral posts. There is still hope!
I miss being able to make embarrassing mistakes without the risk of it being recorded and shared with the world. It’s not even that I make a lot of them, or that anyone would care, I just hate the principle that anything could potentially be used against you. It’s more that the threat itself takes the enjoyment out of being outside, like everyone has to be so guarded and fake all the time.
The first time I saw this was in the early days of YouTube and smart phones, some kids had found a video of a teacher who was peer pressured by some people into very shyly singing a popular song, which they put on YouTube. After that nobody took him seriously anymore.
Note: this is for actual small silly things only, the kind that can happen to anyone. I absolutely do not support people who try to excuse their crimes, harassment or bigotry as “it was just an embarrassing mistake when I was young haha”, that sort of thing absolutely should be used against them later.