I joined Lemmy a few days ago and have been reading around. 90%+ of the content I see, even on non-politics related communities, is political in some way. I have no interest in that, so it’s tiring, especially when it’s inserted in the comments of completely unrelated posts.
I have quite extensive content filter list that hides every post containing popular terms related to US politics. Often that means hiding two thirds of my front page. However, what remains is still all politics.
Why is it like this? I have no idea. Maybe they’re trying to keep this place as unattractive for new users as possible.
I don’t want to be political, but the government decided that me existing should be illegal. So now me posting about fashion or makeup or whatever is automatically political now.
Yeah, it’s pretty annoying. Best thing you can do do is sub to communities that don’t have it. As an example, the linux communities are pretty big and low on politics.
A person could post a pic of the sky and somebody would somehow still find a way to insert a Trump comment. It’s a bit insane.
Just throw those people in the trash with your block button man, you have full power here
It is a bit insane, because the world is a bit insane right now, and frankly I think it’s your fault.
Well, not you specifically, and it’s not entirely your fault. But part of the reason tyranny and fascism have gripped power across the globe is that political discussion is considered impolite. It’s offensive to point out how absurd or dangerous a political policy is, so we just avoid the subject. Wouldn’t want to offend a conservative bigot by pointing out other people exist.
And because polite people avoid the subject, only extremists engage in the debate. Nuance is lost, and the crazies take charge of the nuthouse whilst “normal” people, like yourself, fret about people talking about the problem.
It would be fucking fantastic to look at a picture of the sky and not think of how air pollution is being deregulated, how Qatar is buying influence with the President by gifting him an airplane, how space is being monetized by a South African Nazi, or how we’re all likely to die of an airborne virus because the person in charge of coordinating our healthcare response has a brain that’s mostly worm poo.
It would be wonderful to stop talking about politics, but not talking about it has led us, inexorably, to this point. We have a duty to discuss ideas when they affect all of us. We have a responsibility to point out stupidity and ignorance and make conservatives feel ashamed of it. It’s not fun for us, either, but if we were to follow your lead, we will end up murdering children in death camps. Which is exactly where we are.
You can discuss politics without engaging in it 24/7. There is nothing wrong with going to something like reddit or Lemmy and not wanting to add it to the list of places where all you see is politics. It’s easier on reddit, because the sheer volume of content, but it can be done here too.
I don’t personally care here on Lemmy, it’s a better format for discussion than some places (not that I discuss it, though I’ll read it). But in my case, I used to go to imgur all the time. For me it was a place to share memes and other jokes, you got a bit of community, it was smaller than reddit, Twitter, and all that. But it got to be non stop politics. They even added filters you could toggle on to the site, including a political one. It helped but even then the stuff still got through. Over time I stopped using the site and eventually deleted the app as it wasn’t my funny little meme site anymore.
And i largely agreed with the overall community, like most places it was a circle jerk most of the time. But being like this didn’t accomplish anything (as we all can see). At best, maybe some people there didn’t “switch sides” when Donald showed up.
Maybe the poster just wants a place where they can get a break but still be social. They’re not getting at X or bluesky, they’re definitely not getting it on Facebook or threads. Reels, TikToks, and shorts are dependent on the almighty algorithm and aren’t very social for most users. Mastodon, yeah i guess, but i know i find it’s harder to find communities than on Lemmy (plus your points, which are valid, apply there too). Where should they go.
I would say it’s quite literally because a lot of people who post on lemmy are intelligent and intelligent people pay close attention to the problems in the world aka “woke”
This post has a list of casual communities which might help: https://lemmy.world/post/2216085
It’s the zeitgeist right now. The world is falling to dystopia and it’s top of our minds in our communal ride down. But yeah, def nice to be able to disengage /engage with non-dystopia as needed to not go crazy.
Because we’re all a victim to the propaganda that has molded the modern Internet into what it is today
Stick your head in the sand if you want to, but as a trans woman, I need to know when I’m gonna get imprisoned for existing, and never see my family again.
Sorry to make things political.
This. A lot of ‘making everything about politics’ is the reaction of people whose very existence been politicized by those in power.
Apology not accepted. You don’t owe anybody apologies for that, ever. They should be apologizing to you.
You wouldn’t be imprisoned. That would imply due process and habeas corpus.
Enemies of the regime will be disappeared.
I’m not trying to make you feel bad. I just think this is where we are at the moment and I have a hard time not thinking about it.
Yeah, they’re wanting to suspend habeus corpus, so that’s utterly terrifying and I really hope my last moments aren’t spent personally witnessing the CECOT body pile in their backyard.
Same boat as your original comment. I keep telling my wife (cis) we gotta start planning to bailout, but she’s not taking it as serious.
I’m at the point of hoping I just go quick, if it comes. Trying to live my life with more intent and get the things out of it that are important; experience more while time is short, love unconditionally, etc. Very Hallmark of me, I know, but it’s all I can do. Lefties screamed Nazi from the rooftops, screamed project '25, screamed while ripping hair out… it didn’t work, and here we are. I’m trying to be helpful to those I can help, but the political situation on that national level is far beyond my control.
If we gotta bail, hopefully somewhere else lets us in. If we can’t bail, I just hope I’m not tortured before the end. I’ve lived as kind and helpful a life as I could, I think. Struggled when I couldn’t be kind, but I tried. If the end comes, so it goes. History books don’t remember the every day people anyways, we’re already a statistic. I just hope we aren’t a statistic in the Stalin-istic way.
If I were religious, I’d say I’d pray for you, and us. But since I’m not, I’ll just say that I hope things get better for you, and us.
I sincerely hope it swings back to a happier place for everyone. If you can’t live for happiness, love for spite. One day we’ll read the obituaries (of natural causes!) for these awful people and can finally have a breath of ease.
Do try and keep yourself safe. 🧡
I’m doing my bucket list now, before it’s too late. I went to the Oregon Coast yesterday and did the whole Life is Strange field trip, which was fun.
I don’t know how much time I have left: could be a month, could be the back half of my natural life. I’m not gonna waste any of it.
Also I swear to god it smells like TERF in here, someone’s downvoting is cause we’re trans.
We’re thriving and happy and I mix those downvotes in with my tea.
Eh, I hope the best for them too, and that they one day see the errors of themselves for blind hatred. Not much I can do about it. I’ve been out and transitioning for nearly 15 years now. The current hatred has a new form, but it’s not the first time I’ve been called horrible things or told to kms or been scared of politics.
I can’t change anyone’s mind. I just try to live my life on my own terms and be the person I needed. I just see people like terfs as people who grew up in a small town, or had a bad experience with someone like me. Fear of the unknown is a hell of a drug.
I wrote it into a poem once, “I wish you knew me as a person, before you hated me as a perception.” No matter the argument, no matter the conversation, it ain’t gonna change the mind of a bigot. Especially todays works. So I just leave em to it. Block, downvoten, whatever, and move on. Maybe that makes me a coward, I dunno. It’s just not worth screaming to the void, anymore.
Anyway,
Oregon coast seems the tits! I’ve always wanted to see Thors Well nearby like, Newport? I think?
Cheers to a long, uneventful life for you. I hope we may live in precedented times, for the rest of it, and… for once in the past 30 years, maybe.
As a European, I never thought particularly highly of American politics and culture. I never got the whole Americana hype of the last decades. But at least it used to be not fascist and kind of democratic. Seeing the country move towards loosing that is heart breaking. Seeing European countries trying to follow the example is terrifying.
They’re talking about suspending habeas corpus so…
Regardless I still think they’re going to go after the unhoused more explicitly and use less explicit means to push trans people (and others they disapprove of) into that category in order to make excuses for the disappearancess. We shall see I suppose.
The theory I’ve seen around is the effort to classify trans people as pornography. And by that, I mean, illegalize pornography distribution to minors punishable by death penalty, classify trans people in public as said distribution, and then execute.
The way Proj. '25 is worded gives credence to that theory. Not to be a ‘the sky is falling’ type of bird, but, it does come across as a goal for the fasc.
To borrow from a reditor’s explanation… They (not me) posted the following:
On page 5, it states the following.
“Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology[…]“
“Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women.”
“Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders.”
On page 554 it states the following.
“Enforce the death penalty where appropriate and applicable.”
“It should also pursue the death penalty for applicable crimes—particularly heinous crimes involving violence and sexual abuse of children—until Congress says otherwise through legislation.”
Block em. I blocked nearly every community about USAian politics and my feed is now quite OK. Also block people who make everything political. There will still be enough out there to interact with, trust me. I’ve blocked swathes of people here and still find it entertaining. Also, do your best to contribute non-political content, it’ll help provide others something to comment on that isn’t political (and of course block those that try to turn it political).
Also, do create multiple accounts per activity. A political account, a non-political account, a gaming account, a botany account, a bird-watching account,… whatever your interests are, make an account for it and curate your content. I have multiple and this is probably my most political one. Others barely mention politics and aren’t connected to this one. Until lemmy or other fediverse software allows creating personas on the same account, this is the solution I find works best.
In other words, there is no real algorithm here that will secretly bubble up certain type of content depending on how you interacted with the platform. You more influence on your own experience than you know.
99/100 times complaints about “politics” is a someone taking offense at being confronted with politics they don’t like.
But yea, if you like reactionary politics, Windows, or AI, Lemmy is going to be a bad time.
or ai
Don’t tell dbshitter that
this is what you get when the loudest mouth on earth gets a second chance to make everything political.
There’s probably a correlation between people who are aware enough of reddit’s practices and policies to want to switch to Lemmy and people who are engaged in or by political discussion.
I’d say lemmy has a stronger “fuck the system” vibe, whatever the topic. Privacy, trans rights, environmental issues, financial oligarchy…
Even the system supporters pretend they don’t these days
Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke’.
Is broke’.
Not to mention almost everything is political these days…
Like, the root cause of most our issues are political and there’s a lot of issues. So it shouldn’t be surprising most topics are tied back to it.
When 1/3 of the country makes the president their entire personality, and hate the other 70%, whether they are LGBTQ, minority, democrats, or just women, it’s going to be hard to avoid politics.
one particular country.
but also a worldwide trend
Yeah, Duterte just got reelected, and he’s in prison at the Hague rn.
Yes, Lemmy is probably 60% people who were banned from Reddit for being overly political.
I didn’t get banned but I definitely would have by now if I’d stayed.
“I want rights”
“I want to not be an open air slave to the billionaires”
“I recognize some deep systemic flaws of our systems”
I guess that’s overly political.
Hell, on Reddit being anti-nazi is considered political.
Nazis were and are a political group. Opposing them is political.
I discovered Lemmy by looking for a Reddit like place where it’s easier to post to (doesn’t have 1 billion filters and rules).
And if you tell other normal people to come here eventually this place will become less extremist
Correct, we need the normie here!
I don’t want the normie here.
First time on the Internet huh?
Well eventually there will be so many normies it becomes reddit then we just have to start over again lol
Idk, but I use Boost and added some keyword filters. Stuff like “trump”, “musk”, “israel”, “slam”, etc. And any time I still run across political crap, I either block the community or the user. Lemmy has been great now afterwards, no politics.
I already had the others, but I am fucking adding “slam” right now. I should probably add a few others while I’m at it.
Lemmy is mostly populated by intelligent people (include yourself if applicable) that fled reddit when the app crackdown began.
As such we talk and some of that talk covers the current situation in the world of politics.
If you don’t want to see any there are plenty of subs you can use.
You can also do what I do which is block the orange turnips name so you don’t see the posts.
Lemmy is mostly populated by intelligent people
Hey I will not accept such slander!! I’m an idiot!
(include yourself if applicable)
Oh nevermind, carry on. :P
You outed yourself by demonstrating reading comprehension, sorry
What is this “reading comprehension” thing? Is that like when you copy and paste something into ChatGPT?
I don’t understand what you said and that makes me angry!
Can I block a term? How?
Content Filters. There’s are lot of communities dedicated to lemmy how to’s and it’s kinda dependent on the app you use where to click specifically.
Some apps (e.g. Voyager/Thunder) and web frontends (Tesseract? not sure which tbh) enable keyword filtering.
In the case of the apps, it’s found in settings under filters & blocks or filters, respectively. Unfortunately I can’t recall which web frontends enable it for sure, but I do remember there seemed to be fewer of them that did last I checked.
Percieved intelligence is subjective. See this paper where 65% of Americans think they are smarter than average. The math doesn’t add up.
Yeah, but like, I’m smart enough to know I’m not in that 65%, because I’m smarter than average.
Maybe if some orange turd wasn’t busy fucking up everything from board games to airplanes politics wouldn’t come up so much.
Hard to have a conversation without it when there’s a massive tariff on every single product related to work, hobbies, and even just living.
It’s not like tariffs are going to disappear only if people talk about them 24/7.
Not expending all your mental energy in thinking about it and just enjoying life, hobbies and other topics is probably one of the best things you can do. Why do you think orange guy makes the statements he make. It’s not because he is stupid (even if you want to think he is stupid) is because he knows his opposition gets triggered by it. And if you are constantly thinking about it you’ll destroy your mental health and the mental health of those around you. Exhaustion is their goal.
I’m luckily not American, but I’ve gone through my share of idiotic rulers. And my best advice is not letting your life to orbit around them. They will come and go, but the years you lose thinking about them all the time don’t come back. Talking to Americans nowadays is disheartening seeing how many stress people are taking and how they move into more stress instead of trying to disconnect and move away from it.
Just live life.
The problem is that they’re actively impacting your ability to participate in many hobbies, or eating up funds on necessities that force you to forgo other things entirely. It’s not that we’re just repeating “tariffs bad” when talking about them, it’s that they’re actually factoring into decisions being made in order to live our life.
Yeah, I know. I have my struggles in life. In my country disposable income and quality of life for the working class have been in constant decline for years (even with a socialist/communist government). But after so many years in politics, I found out that letting it consume me doesn’t change anything. I do what I can do to be better, but the rest of the time I focus in my life. It’s already hard enough by itself to making it harder by letting it consume all my mental focus.
I was on a discussion board for anime figurines and people started posting screenshots of their order checkouts showing tariffs nearly doubling the cost of their order. That caused a conundrum because people started talking politics and that’s not allowed according to the board rules. But what are people supposed to do? Can they talk about increased prices or is that political? Do they just have to pretend prices have skyrocketed for no reason at all? Can they even mention prices are higher than before?
If you don’t restrict things then you’re allowing discussion of politics. If you do restrict things then you’re preventing normal discussion because of politics. It’s unavoidable.
Even something as simple as suggesting “Hey, these figures are made in Vietnam instead of China, so they’re lower cost right now” is political. It is, as you said unavoidable.
It really is tough to talk about anything else, and even when you do talk about it, it’s more of an exasperated sigh than a conversation.
In times like this, ‘anti-politicals’ would cry that even talking about LIVING is too political for them. Politics is living, folks, get off your armchair with your heads in the sand and take a look outside. Shits fucked up right now, and talking about how fucked up it is isn’t too ‘political’. Not talking about ‘politics’ is ignoring the world around you and how it affects the every day person.
Exactly this. Sure it is exhausting, but it is necessary. Even more so with this current administration.
