I’ve been seeing a worrying number of these people on Lemmy lately, sharing enlightened takes including but not limited to “voting for Biden is tantamount to fascism” and “the concept of an assigned gender, or even an assigned name, at birth is transphobic” and none of them seem to be interested in reading more than the first sentence of any of my comments before writing a reply.

More often than not they reply with a concern I addressed in the comment they’re replying to, without any explanation of why my argument was invalid. Some of them cannot even state their own position, instead simply repeatedly calling mine oppressive in some way.

It occurred to me just now that these interactions reminded me of nothing so much as an evangelical Christian I got into an argument with on Matrix a while ago, in which I met him 95% of the way, conceded that God might well be real and that being trans was sinful and tried to convince him not to tell that to every trans person he passed, and failed. I am 100% convinced he was trolling – in retrospect I’m pretty sure I could’ve built a municipal transport system by letting people ride on top of his goalposts (that’s what I get for picking a fight with a Christian at 2AM) – and the only reason I’m not convinced these leftists on Lemmy are trolls is the sheer fucking number of them.

I made this post and what felt like half the responses fell into this category. Am I going insane?

  • frankPodmore@slrpnk.netEnglish
    35·
    7 months ago

    Interestingly, Bertrand Russell made a similar argument about Marxism and Christianity, so you’re not alone in feeling this way.

    I think the tendency you’re describing is real, but it only holds among a tiny minority of people, who happen to be quite loud in mainly online spaces. There’s no significant organisation of any kind that holds those views or is doing anything to implement them as any kind of policy, anywhere in the world.

    Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of evangelical Christians!

    My advice dealing with either is to politely engage, explain your views and, if they start being rude, stop talking to them.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
      4·
      7 months ago

      Bertrand Russell made a similar argument about Marxism and Christianity

      Of course he did. He wrote entire textbooks on philosophy of language that amounted to “X is actually just like Y for some mathematical transformation T”.

      But that’s the thing about mathematical transformations. You potentially lose a bunch of information when you transform an apple into an orange by saying “They both look like fruit to me.” And Russell spent a bunch of time tackling the problem (ultimately unsuccessfully, as evidenced by the modern state of data compression) in a way your average Reddit-tier philosophy undergrad rarely does.

      • frankPodmore@slrpnk.netEnglish
        4·
        7 months ago

        Sorry, I don’t understand the relevance of this comment. I didn’t mention money and nor did OP. I don’t think tankies are better than Evangelicals, either (which I assume is what you meant). I just think the Evangelicals are more of a problem, because of their greater influence.

        • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
          2·
          7 months ago

          There’s no significant organisation of any kind that holds those views or is doing anything to implement them as any kind of policy, anywhere in the world.

          Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of evangelical Christians!

          • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
            4·
            7 months ago

            You’ll make it really hard to have a debate with you because I have an absolutely no idea what you’re saying.

            I think you’re trying to suggest that tankies are some kind of political organization the same as extremist Christians. They are absolutely not. They have no real power they’re basically just annoying online people they effectively do not exist in the real world.