Honestly, it’s mind-boggling how the top 1% have us believing their relentless greed is just the norm and that we’re helpless to do anything about it. This is particularly noticeable on platforms like Reddit, where we, the users, are the real value creators and even volunteer our time.
Just a few days ago, during the Reddit protests, the only thing required from us was to log off. However, it seemed that even this small act was too much for some. It’s a stark wake-up call, making you question how and why we don’t take a stand when our rights are truly in jeopardy.
In this day and age, it appears we’re all too engrossed in our personal lives. If it doesn’t directly affect us, it’s shrugged off. This “not my problem” mindset is damaging to us all eventually. It hinders our ability to empathize with each other’s struggles and to unite against common adversities. This isn’t the type of society any of us should want. It’s alarming to see our sense of community dwindling, and it’s genuinely heartbreaking. Maybe I’m just overthinking it, but the large number of people who seem indifferent is truly concerning. This should serve as a wake-up call for all of us. What do you guys think? (Pic not relevant)
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Well said. Louis Rossmann made a post with a similar angle yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U06rCBIKM5M
But yeah, the complacency is real.
It’s funny how people are posting on reddit how reddit sucks and how there are no good alternatives, saying the alternatives don’t have critical mass in terms of user numbers, while it’s literally this beavior that prevents said critical mass.
People love to whine and talk about grandstanding. But as soon as there are even minor changes to their personal convenience, many give up and roll over.
It’s sobering but have we as humanity ever been different? Radical change is often not driven by communities but by individuals.
Personally I look at it like this. Groups of humans are by definition stupid. The larger the group the lower the average intelligence.
Therefore I don’t think communities can ever truly “act as one”. Your best bet is having enough individuals that all have the wisdom to make similar independent choices. It may look like “the community” is doing something but we’re still just talking about individuals.
Edit: words
I concur with your viewpoint. There’s no doubt that individuals have historically been catalysts for change. However, my concern lies in the recent trend where these change-makers seem to be acting against society’s broader interests.
Take the French Revolution as an example - a time when collective action effectively enforced justice, albeit in a harsh manner. Large groups came together, stood up for what was right, and held the wrongdoers accountable. It’s a compelling case for the power of collective action.
In contrast, the current pattern of individualistic actions appears less beneficial for society as a whole. That’s a trend we might want to discuss and address further.
undefined> It’s funny how people are posting on reddit how reddit sucks and how there are no good alternatives, saying the alternatives don’t have critical mass in terms of user numbers
Y’know, I’m starting to think this is a real positive.
I’ve been on reddit for about 12 or 13 years. Quite a heavy user - until I quit it two weeks ago in protest. Small thing but it actually meant a lot to me.
But now I’m realising something: Reddit was actually quite bad for my mental health. The amount of bots and shitposters, and some really toxic mods too (we weren’t all the Angels that we’re being painted like now).
And, on all but the quietest subs, if you don’t get your reply in within the first hour, or even minutes in the busier subs, anything you say gets lost in the churn. Get in first, you get the upvotes. This feeds the karma-cravings of browsing /new to get noticed and that can be very addictive if you’re that way inclined.
All of that badness is exactly because Reddit has achieved critical mass. None of it happens here. The quality is poster is better here. Sure, there’s less of us, but that means we can actually have a decent discussion like now. And also, we kinda care what happens to this system. Most people didn’t care about Reddit as a whole. Maybe their favourite subs, especially if they were mods. But over the past few years I’ve realised how the admins view the users, and it’s not nice.
I won’t be going back to Reddit.
(As for the rest of your point, kinda agree that the world is going to hell. But do please accept that ignoring the bad stuff and not keeping up with the global news cycle is a survival technique for many people.)
Well said. 13 years on my belt here as well. Deleted all posts and comments and never looked back.
I mentioned this in other threads as well, but only after quitting did I notice how the Reddit of today has actually not much in common with the site I joined many moons ago.
In the beginning it used to be a mostly text-based clunky forum type deal. And that’s how I kept thinking of it throughout the years. While in reality, more and more of the most upvoted content recently has been the same braindead short video stuff as on other social media sites. Short attention span moving images; little to no actual substance. The Dopamine Slot Machine Doom Scroller ™ patented and honed to perfection by our Silicon Valley Overlords.
It was only after quitting the Snoo cold turkey that I realized how much this kind of content was numbing my brain, how I waded through the stupid daily in search of in-depth forum-type threads, only to find less and less of it.
So yeah, all of this has been a net positive for me for sure.
Feels a bit like the proverbial frog being slowly boiled to death in shitty content without ever noticing, because the enshittification was so gradual.
So I guess, thanks /u/spez?
EDIT: fatfingers
I think for most people they have other stuff to worry about, Reddit and its alternatives aren’t that important for them. If there is an alternative placed before them that is enticing, they’ll use it. Maybe as “first movers” or early adopters it falls on us to make the place more appealing.
Also you never know, those same people might be fighting other fights in other places (offline, for example)
Man, I seriously hope you’ve hit the nail on the head. I’m holding on to the idea that good folks out there are all trying to make things a bit less sucky for the rest of us.
To a certain extent I’m with you, obviously since I’m here. But at the same time, I think everyone needs to settle down a bit. Think about what a mass exodus would have actually done. Kbin/lemmy were overwhelmed with just this trickle, there’s no way most of these hosts would have been able to stay afloat had several million came knocking. Not to mention Reddit admins would have collectively shit their pants. We don’t need them to hyperfocus on this project, let them focus on burning their own house down.
Zuckerberg is already trying to sink his android hooks into the fediverse. That would be a disaster. It’s a fine line of building this place up without letting it get ahead of itself. Reddit will take years to fade away. The fediverse needs that time to grow up properly so it doesn’t implode.
In other words, chill my dude. Everything is fine.
I’m surprised at the lack of new posts across all communities right now. It’s taken me 9 days to completely onboard to Lemmy and I’ve subscribed to every community across all instances that remotely interest me. It wasn’t a big deal at all and I’m happy to be here, I just wish more people felt the same way.
I also think part of the problem is that a lot of reddit communities are learning about Lemmy and realizing they actually want their own instance with a bunch of new communities rather than creating a single new community on an existing instance, so it’s adding extra time for the big reddit communities to migrate.
I’m also seeing a lot of hesitation on the reddit side, like oh well if we migrate then our user base might get confused and we’ll lose our community in the process. Which adds to the list of reasons why mods want their own instances because they want to curate every part of the migration process.
In my opinion the UI is still pretty jank and it makes jt hard to even see relevant posts. Theres a bug right now with the sorting on Hot and Active that prevents you from seeing new posts. I think that has been fixed but it’ll be a little bit before the 0.18 release fixes it
Also another thing that makes it hard is that I am using jerboa and linking to other instances just crashes the app. People like low barrier to entry, and stuff like this makes it a bit painful to use. The UI jank and bugs will get better in the coming weeks, and once it does, we will probably see a lot more activity.
Do you think, that there are many communities (especially their mods) on reddit that would be openminded to migrate to lemmy?
Imho most subreddits will “sit it out”, i guess a lot of mods will more likely choose a subpar product (i guess tools for mods will still be able to access the api) than risk it to loose their “power” they have over their subs - There will always be a group of people that are willing to take over the old subs
Edit: words are hard
I’m the admin for discuss.online. I’ve reached out to a handful of subreddits I follow asking them to move over to my instance and they don’t respond. Not to me anyway.
I think you’re wrong about people’s perceptions. I think the vast majority of the people in the world do not believe that the ultra-rich deserve to have all the money and power that in fact they currently have.
It’s also true that trying to upset that power balance is very difficult, and many people spend more of their time worrying about things that are closer to home where they have greater control.
The other point is that the blackout was predominantly about mods and power users showing how much of a difference they actually made. And certainly they proved their point. Administrators had to come in and boot mods. That kind of worked, but now we see other antics continuing. All of this is good for the lulz, but it also shows that the blackout was a success. Reddit can probably survive without us, but the quality will go to hell, has gone to hell, will continue to linger in hell until some years down the road the site gets unplugged.
I stopped using reddit and shared on my other social medias why I made this choice. That’s as far as I’m concerned, sufficient and satisfactory. I can only do my best and hope that everyone else does their best. If they don’t, that won’t stop me from doing my best. Lamenting that it doesn’t always work out isn’t very constructive for me.
I actually created an account because the moderator at r/simpleliving took a poll a few days ahead of he protest and set up a new community for us here. I had heard rumblings about Lemmy but hadn’t checked it out and her post is what convinced me to do it. It was a small subreddit but I think most of us are here now.
it appears we’re all too engrossed in our personal lives.
I understand the sentiment, and when I was younger I probably would agree and I might agree again when I’m older. But right now, my personal life is the only one I have, and the world has organized itself in a way that all I can do is work to slow my losses.
I’m giving the fediverse a real shot, but it’s a slow burn It’s not “there” yet, there aren’t a decade worth of conversations about my favorite topics. For some people, they have more immediate needs and desires that can’t be satisfied here and if Reddit is all there is, it’s where they’ll go. But it’s important to me that nobody forget that most people aren’t in love with spez and the Reddit corporation, they love their communities, the way many people dislike Zuck but stay on Facebook because they love their friends. Platforms are code, they’re also people, and our peers are not mindless sheep for wanting to be with people in spaces they enjoy. It’s what’s human.
For Fediverse to win, we have to provide more than just platforms, we have to have good people, good content, something to stay for. A reason to join beyond just Fuck Reddit.
I think I’ve seen enough now to conclude for-profit social media will always end looking like 90s AOL. But you know, I was on AIM until 2010, because despite all my contempt for AOL it wasn’t about whether or not I loved Steve Case, it was about whether or not the people in my life could talk to me.
I just have one life. I have strong beliefs about many things, tech ethos especially, but I have only one life and I don’t want to empty it wholly of the communities that enrich it to score points for FOSS.
I’m really surprised that more people chose to support the admin over the users. It’s sad that users are okay with Reddit admins’ unfair actions. It’s even worse that moderators are seen as power-hungry and bad. If we let Reddit treat us this way without any consequences, it won’t stop. It’s scary that many people don’t mind being treated badly as long as others have it worse.
one thing i think needs to be recognized here is that this isn’t some moral failing of individuals, its an explicit goal of capitalism. the atomization of communities, the capturing of markets, the exertion of power to maintain the status quo. these are all things that should be expected under capitalism, and are not symptoms of moral decay of some sort. that we have to fight these impulses is not a sign that we’re doomed, its exactly the thing we are tasked to fight against.
conceiving of the reddit protests as an unambiguous failure is also, i think, not reasonable. this got a lot of coverage in a lot of places, it forced reddit to act pretty publicly to break a strike, and drew attention to projects like lemmy and kbin. it also isn’t over. maybe we’ll be able to clearly see what effects this event had in the history of social media sometime in the future, but we ain’t done with it yet, and i think assessments of its efficacy are only going to be clearheaded some time after the dust settles.
i do kinda think you’re overthinking it. you can’t control how other people behave most of the time. societies inner workings are beyond our control. we can only act according to our own values, and hope that others do the same. for me personally, worrying about how successful a movement is going to be is kinda secondary to participating. if this fails, then it fails. lots of things fail. most things, even. this is not a fight we’re going to win every time, but if we don’t try, we cannot succeed.
I want to share with you what someone else shared with me when I first got here: https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/
This explains very well what happens to all of these corporate platforms and what keeps the users captive to them (tl;dr: barrier to switch/exit is purposefully high, so we should lower that as much as we can. I hope lemmy/kbin devs can give us export and import functions for that).
If we want this fediverse to be good, we have to watch out for this stuff and hopefully we can finally build lasting communities.
I’ve been getting some of my Reddit blackout news from Twitter (lol, I know) and have been disappointed to see how many people declared the Reddit Blackout a failure because of how annoying it is to google for something only to find it hidden behind a private subreddit.
My dudes. Don’t miss the forest for the trees.
High quality commenters and posters wanted to leave the answers to some of the most important questions because of the community feeling. And now those exact commenters feel ripped off by the situation. Like the CEO of reddit decided he is the sole arbiter of all access to that freely provided content. These power commenters feel forced to use an app they don’t want to use, forced to comply with policies and CEOs whom they dislike. He sold them out. But they won’t stick around - they are highly mobile and will move to a new site leaving reddit to sink into the hole it’s become.
I agree with a lot thats been said in this thread. But I think a lot of it has to do with speed as well. The worlds moving so fast for so many people a break in their habit/routine too large a deal to manage.
Admittedly I also believe this acceleration of the world is also intentional by the 1%, if not for this push for anxiety, just for increased perceived productivity. But those who are unable to slow themselves down will smash into changes in their daily lives much harder than those who can, and I think a lot of people are losing that ability due to technology and modern socioeconomic factors.
I was a kid in the 80s. Back then protesting greenhouse gases or saving whales was seen as cool. Nowadays… not so much. I’ve gone to plenty of protests in my life, small ones, big ones. I’ve seen a definite trend over time where people care less. People used to say protestors could be annoying by generally supported people’s right to protest, even if they didn’t agree with it. (I’m talking generally here and in the past 40 years or so, of course history shows some awful atrocities committed against protestors).
But now… the general sentiment feels like most people think that protestors are a bunch of annoying loons. I’ve seen the general public scream at peaceful protestors, yell obscenities, spit on them and at one protest even try to run some protestors over, all because they were annoyed at being inconvenienced by the protest (and I’m talking about an extra few minutes driving or walking time, not anything major). Suddenly a little bit of inconvenience matters more than fundamental rights, including their own.
I don’t get it either. The apathy is growing and it’s alarming. I’ve been doing volunteer work for over a decade now and it’s the same thing - volunteers are getting harder and harder to come by because everyone is “too busy” (even when they’re not). The volunteer work I do is getting harder and harder and I have to put in more hours because there’s less people to spread the work between. Doesn’t matter how hard you push, “many hands makes light work”. People would rather ignore your struggle as a volunteer and just say, “Thanks for your sacrifice”. I don’t want thanks! I NEED more people to care. Non-profits don’t run themselves.
I don’t know what the answer is. Just that I have noticed this slow decline and feel bost deeply saddened and incredibly alarmed about the future for us all.
Some of that really resonates with me. My personal take on the lack of empathy and the aggression towards protestors, volunteers, or other non-profit work really spirals into one thing; the widening wage gap. I know if I could make enough money without having to work 50+ hours on an above average wage to make ends meet, I’d probably do more things with my life. I’d create, do volunteer work, protest about things I care about. When I was making less and actually struggling, any little extra hurdle on what was supposed to be a fun day off or little chores were suddenly a lot more emotionally draining, demotivating, frustrating, and all the other negative connotations.
I think as more and more people start losing what comforts they are used to, they lose a lot of the safety nets that kept them pleasant in the first place. keep in mind, there are a lot of people who were middle class just 5 years ago that got squeezed out, and even if they were polite people, wealth doesn’t make people grow, it just makes problems go away. So we had a lot of people who never grew because they didn’t go through these hardships and haven’t had time to learn all the hard lessons. Probably feels like they just fell off a fun slide and broke their leg on the dismount.
So, yeah, I do think people are more apathetic to problems. I’ve been told multiple times to my face by personal friends, “It’s not a big problem”, “It doesn’t affect me, so I don’t really care” and other ways to politely deflect the conversation into a “it’s not my problem” and that’s the real stickler. People like that won’t really care until it’s a problem that affects them, personally. It’s why I think, in a twisted sort of way, that people being ripped out of middle class and others losing some of their safety nets is a good thing.
I do want to clarify that for the generals, it is not okay, and is a worse trend for everyone overall. But it forces these people to suffer the indignities they regularly come to expect, forces them to realize that this ‘minor setback’ is in fact not minor at all, and will keep them perpetually in this place in life if they do not deal with a problem that is not unique to them. Forces them to think about someone other than themselves, which is a hard thing to do when they don’t want to do it themselves, especially if they have no reason to.
Now they do.
Honestly, it’s mind-boggling how the top 1% have us believing their relentless greed is just the norm and that we’re helpless to do anything about it.
Nothing new; George Carlin was railing against this back in 2005:
(NSFW - language)
