Trying Soulseek/Nicotine+ for the first time, and I noticed something...
The only people in the chat seem to be the most racist, homophobic, sexist scumbags. It's like walking into a 4chan convention.. is that you guys? Why is it as soon as anonymity is there, the fucking assholes come out?
If this is the general spirit of piracy, I don't know if I'm interested
i don't go into the chat rooms, but i get about one dm a week from some rando or another who's downloaded something from me thanking me for having whatever shit from 30 years ago they haven't heard in forever, it's honestly been a pretty positive experience overall for me.
like this lad last night
I always thank folks for obscure shit, and then add them to my friends list, open up my whole media library to them, and put them on a priority download list in exchange.
I generally only share music because I have slow upload speeds but I make exceptions for people I am grabbing media from
Did that a few times as well.
Hope it feels rewarding :)
This tbh. The few messages I got were all thank you messages.
why would you use soulseek for chat
My philosophy is that slsk is for the downloads, not the conversation.
Every unmoderated internet space is destined to look like that. Just use it for music sharing and you won't even know the chat is there.
Correct. Reason being:
Don't go in the chatrooms except for private ones is my rule for soulseek for exactly this reason.
If you ignore the chatrooms, you should still be able to use it effectively.
Lots of crossover between 4chan and the general piracy community. First place I actually heard about soulseek was on the 4chan music board. I don't really go there anymore. So yeah, its 4channers thinking they're in good company.
For the record, I have not noticed this as "piracy in general", no. Malware, dubious claims, dubious quality, dubious people, "extra information" that's undesirable? Sure, they all happen, that's part of the whole "get shit for free" deal. People are dipshits and I get how that's really annoying. But... aren't you in it for the free shit? Do you need to engage with the community much?
Racist, sexist, homophobic (etc. - god knows it's a long enough list) are generally "edgy" and therefore automatically hysterically funny to a bunch of people - teenagers and others who might be well represented in piracy for whatever reason. Hell, some of that shit is funny even if you ethically oppose it 100%.
You don't need to participate, agree or approve, just get what you came for and leave the edgelords to their edgelording.
That's honestly super fair. I haven't really participated in piracy since my teenage days, and back then i might have found it funny as well.
It probably really comes down to the fact that teenagers have no money.
17:40:13 [weezzee] IM HAXOR 😎️ 17:44:36 [weezzee] NOW ITS TIME TO WATCH THE MASK ON REPEAT AND MEMORIZE ALL THE LINES SO I CAN BECOME MORE LIKE THE MASK IN MY DAY TO DAY LIFE
I ethically oppose this
I don't even know why there's a chat room function in it. I never use it tbh
You've encountered Gabriel's Greater Internet Dickwad Phenomenon - basically, if you take an average person and remove accountability for their actions, a significant subset of them will turn out to be total dickwads. Much like how lactic acid bacteria will render their environment acidic so that other bacteria cannot thrive, it takes a shockingly small percentage of total dickwads to render an environment so toxic to regular people that the only people who thrive there are other dickwads.
The fact is that the majority of the community isn't like that, but because we exist at the fringes due to the semilegitimate nature of piracy there often isn't a lot of effort to keeping the community decent. Just do what most of us do, download and move on.
Why don't the majority talk over the dickwads if they outnumber them? Why does it only take a few to mess everything up?
Because why would I waste my time shouting at dickwads in some filthy corner of the internet, when I can just go to a space where they're not welcome? It's definitely better overall to stand up and fight but the fight never ends and it's exhausting. I definitely understand anyone who just wouldn't bother.
Fear of association maybe?
Yeah I would just stay clear of the chat. There's plenty of normal people on the network, it's just they don't use the chat either. I've met some cool folks through DM's though.
It's the internet. Youre going to run into people you don't like online. If you want to live in a coca cola commercial I hear there's a whole strip mall of multi billion dollar corporate websites you can use, stick to those.
Frankly I've grown tired of that attitude towards online things, that toxic and hateful behavior should just be something thats expected on the internet. Granted, I've done my time in places like 4chan and am completely able to tune it out. I shouldn't have to bathe myself in that toxic environment just to be able to participate in an online space though. This blase attitude from the neutral online that "its the internet, what did you expect" is precisely what allows fascist and xenophobic communities to grow and thrive unchallenged. I'm just tired of the bullshit. So tired.
You have a choice of where you go and what you do, if you dislike something then don't go there. I never used 4chan or similar and ignoring it is easy for me you just have to stop caring so much
I don't like communists, or leftists in general. I find that theyre hateful, snarky, they enjoy watching people suffer, they dehumanize their political opponents, theyre disingenuous most of the time, they want to control your thoughts and how you fuck your wife and most of them are incognito racist. But I'm on the internet. I'm here, on Lemmy. Why? Because I want to see this project succeed. I don't want to go on Instagram and Facebook, I don't want some sterile environment where all anyone talks about is the weather and the new flavor of Ben and Jerry's.
If you don't want to hang out in spaces where people you don't like hang out, don't. If it gives you nothing of value feel free. But the internet is public, so it mirrors the world. These are our friends, family members, neighbors, the people we used to talk to at the sandwich joint before everyone had headphones in all the time. I don't want to experience the world through a fucking condom.
Yeah, I recently used Soulseek for the first time and it's been great but those chat rooms are shit. Honestly though I'm not using it for chat so after I checked it out and made the same discovery you did, I decided there was nothing to gain there anyway.
Piracy in general is a pretty mixed bag but I don't think those chatrooms represent the community at large. Usually the worst thing people in this community do is just refuse to be helpful. And there are a lot of very generous people who keep this whole thing going.
If this is the general spirit of piracy, I don't know if I'm interested
I don't use soulseek but no, I certainly wouldn't describe that attitude as the general spirit of piracy. I'm mostly familiar with the private torrent trackers. While I've certainly come across fascists (EMPRESS is a good example, they're pretty explicitly transphobic and include a bunch of slurs in their nfo's), I generally come across plenty of libs and even some anarchists and communists. And based on events and how the private trackers are moderated, the staff, at least on the sites I use, they seem pretty alright. For example, I know of at least a couple trackers that ran events for pride month.
And from hanging out in leftist spaces, they seem especially cool with piracy. They're anticapitalist after all, so it shouldn't be a surprise.
My problem with Soulseek is that it only really has music. That's it. I'm more interested in stuff for retro game systems. Not just the stuff that's listed in No-Intro or some GoodSet, you can find those anywhere. I'm trying to find a site that has stuff that isn't just the same sets you see everywhere. But I can't find one.
it’s pretty widely known that its a toxic hellscape there, i’ve typically had great interactions with users in dm’s but the chatrooms have become overrun with toxicity and fascists over the past decade, it’s absolutely not representative of the online music community which is largely left leaning, even on p2p and piracy platforms
i tried it for 10 minutes and nobody ever replied to me
also, anonymity? Isn't direct ip address connection, so easily traceable?
I guess there are also usernames...
Anonymity not needed i guess
I have a somewhat large share on Soulseek. It's fun to occasionally go through the chat rooms and ban all the blatant racists and homophobes.
Welcome to chatrooms, they were always like this its just a lost phenomenon to most people especially those that didn't grow up with them. Ignore and move on is pretty standard practice, I'm on slskd and I've only gotten DMs not sure if it even has the chat enabled by default
Nobody with sense uses the main Nicotine room.
Touch grass.
