I don't think that's called an accent, that's an affectation.
I think we have to focus on individual action AND hold corporations accountable. The thing I see over and over is people blaming one or the other, but many corporations only pollute as much as they do BECAUSE of individuals using their products or services (see the plastics industry for one example). I do believe that corporations should be financially liable for helping cleanup of any waste they create.
Oh, and outlaw private fucking jets.
Geoengineering can work on a limited scale (cloud seeding, blasting ocean water into the air, etc.), but especially in smaller countries, would require buy-in from neighbour countries to avoid conflict. Some of the solutions I've seen presented are pretty massive in scale and would need nearly the whole world involved to accomplish.
As someone who had forestry and ecology in high school, I think environmental impact education would be valuable in a class focusing on life education (in Canada, we called it Career And Life Management or CALM for short at the time). Of course, some thing has to be given up to do that, and I would suggest rolling back a lot of the mathematics requirements and placing them in college courses where they used to be. As an anecdote, my grandfather worked with the Canadian Space Agency and was stumped by my grade 10 math homework 25 years ago. He said a lot of what I was learning in Math 10 was stuff that was in advanced courses in college when he was younger. One of these skillsets is far more useful broadly in education and life...
Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!
This weekly thread will focus on Climate Change. We're not going to discuss if it exists (it very obviously does), but what we can do. I've seen a lot of blame thrown around, but not much on what can actually be done so I'd like to get some ideas on that front.
Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):
- Should the focus be on individual actions or holding corporations accountable for their environmental impact?
- Should governments prioritize investment in renewable energy over fossil fuels, even if it means higher short-term costs?
- Is it more effective to implement strict climate change laws or to rely on voluntary measures and market-driven solutions?
- Should countries be obligated to accept climate refugees displaced by environmental changes?
- Is geoengineering a viable solution to combat climate change, or does it pose too many risks?
- Should climate change education be mandatory in schools worldwide?
I legitimately appreciate that.
As an aside, it's odd how much was purged from this thread. Not just deleted, but straight up purged so it doesn't show in the modlogs. I don't think I've seen that done on my instance outside of the illegal stuff. Is that normal here on .world?
You are most certainly purposefully misunderstanding things at this stage.
Yes, I wasn't arguing for (or against) veganism and never stated I was. I was arguing against reasons some may give and defending logical ones.
No, veganism isn't a moral stance. It CAN BE a personal moral stance as well as a dietary one, but morality is not required and may not factor into it. It may be for YOU, but perhaps a person's stomach just handles meat poorly in some fashion and therefore they choose not to partake. Don't claim that everyone in a group must also ascribe to your moral stance. They do not.
And no, punishing murder is not a moral stance, it's a self-preservationist stance. If you can go out and murder indiscriminately, then you yourself can be murdered just as easily.
I'm sorry you don't understand logic. Please don't attempt to explain to me one of my degrees when you clearly don't have even a loose grasp on the concept. Here's a free course you can take to better understand logic as opposed to a personal moral stance.
I also wasn't arguing against their dietary choices. I was showing that their arguments could be turned back on themselves because they were spurious at best.
Before I replied, the now-deleted user was stating that there was no reason to eat meat unless you're a psychopath and love murder and was threatening suicide, violence to others, and other such garbage throughout the thread, then followed it up with a stream of PMs to a bunch of users including myself with some... not great / illegal content (we'll say).
My response was purely a "let's look at your statements, but in good faith" exercise.
Put simply, they started attacking food choices first and I called them on it. I'm okay with what I said.
Fair warning: The account you're arguing with is a troll account who bad-faith argues with everyone, as evidenced by their post history - they often simply have their posts deleted by mods. It's best to block and move on.
As much as I hate echo chamber-ing, when it comes to trolls, it is occasionally required.
But I didn't go into a vegan space, nor did I mention logical fallacies.
The thread they brought up was from a memes Community. The person I was posting against at the time was PMing people and telling them to kill themselves.
or would you care to restate everything poorly and in bad faith once again
You weren't supposed to pick this option.
The post you're citing was not the 7 month old one I was referencing anywhere. Also, the one you cherry-picked was from a year ago and isn't anti-vegan either. It's anti-logically unsound argument (kind of like this one here). I can agree with a stance and disagree with the reason someone does something. I agree with multiple reasons to be vegan explicitly in the post you cite.
And escalating the issue is in concern about the hundreds of rampant bannings, not the veganism.
Also, if that was what you call a parody, you are pretty terrible at parody.
For full clarity of what occurred (and not that my diet is any of your concern, but since you brought it up):
- I am not vegan, but have been greatly reducing my meat intake and have been toying with going vegetarian.
- I was kicked from a vegan Community I have never posted in and was about to do for the first time to thank someone for something I found interesting.
- I do not know why I was kicked from a vegan Community. The reason was cited as a rule that I did not violate. I found hundreds of other bans while looking for why I was banned.
- I did not argue against veganism. 7 months ago, I did argue in favour of plants as plants are awesome. This should be irrelevant to what occurred with these bans.
- I did all discussion in a single thread specifically created to discuss veganism in a discussion Community on a completely different instance.
- The Strawman comment is you claiming I'm somehow screaming "1984" because of the ban. I am not.
- You are being needlessly combative and creating arguments based on assumption. That is the definition of a strawman.
- My original post here was made out of confusion, not malice.
Is that enough for you to parse what has occurred, or would you care to restate everything poorly and in bad faith once again?
The issue (they’re banning people left and right) Concerns (e.g. they might be gaming the system), This thread (to show that it isn’t just your personal pet peeve, plenty people are pissed.)
Done! I appreciate the pointers as I would have never known about this on my own.
The last time I spoke about veganism whatsoever was over 7 months ago.
Not to mention that it was specifically in a debate thread dedicated to discussing veganism, nor was I overly negative.
Was this intended to be a strawman of some kind?
Nope. I haven't spoken to or about vegans or veganism for months since my Community had a discussion thread many months ago on it.
But even then, I'm a lemmy.ca user. I just posted it here because it's their instance.
I'm kinda dumbfounded. I've only posted (or commented) once in the past nine days. The one that happened to be at a similar time was this comedy one on a completely different Community on a different instance for a goofy anime question. Did... did I really just get banned from talking to vegans for... not liking anime?
This might be peak stupid internet if so.
I tend to browse /All and by New on Lemmy. I went to respond on a thread on !vegan@lemmy.world to thank someone for a recipe that looked good, and found out I had been banned.
Odd, considering I hadn't posted to that sub at any point in the past. I checked the modlog to find that "Mod" had banned a bunch of people citing "Rule 5."
Their Rule 5 states: Bad-faith carnist rhetoric & anti-veganism are not allowed, as this is not a space to debate the merits of veganism. Anyone is welcome here, however, and so good-faith efforts to ask questions about veganism may be given their own weekly stickied post in the future (see current stickied discussion).
I (and hundreds of others) seemingly broke rule 5 of this community without ever posting there. What is going on?
And my apologies if this isn't the place for this, but I had no idea where else to post the question.
I generally don't talk about it, but because you asked, I have seen a lot of anime and hate most of it. I have seen Hellsing, Hellsing Ultimate, about 9/10 of the OG run of Fullmetal Alchemist, a lot of Ranma 1/2, Serial Experiments Lain, Akira, some Death Note, La Blue Girl, some tennis one I can't remember the name of, Castlevania, a few Studio Ghibli movies, Attack on Titan S1 & 2, random episodes of Samurai Pizza Cats, all of One Punch Man, Interspecies Reviewers, Slayers, some DiC Sailor Moon, some early Pokemon, and a few Dragonball, YuGiOh, Digimon, and Naruto episodes.
I don't count early GI Joe or Transformers even though they're technically anime, but I didn't like those either.
Of those, I liked Interspecies Reviewers, about 1.5 seasons of OPM, 1 season of Castlevania, and Hellsing Abridged (because it's fucking hilarious).
Here's a random top 10 of reasons:
- Anime has a horrible habit of having a great premise, a lot of repeated setup, and then zero payoff followed by a new season escalating with the same. In short, great at premise, poor at developing it into a story. And endings? They have no idea how to end a series except for fighting bigger bad guys...
- And that's IF they can even be arsed to finish a series. I'm aware of the timeframe dynamic between manga and anime. It fucked over Game of Thrones too. Maybe we just agree not to start a show before the source material is done?
- Much of the animation looks abysmal and the "serious" ones seem to have an awful habit of just... panning over a background or frozen characters in a scene for fucking ever to fill time. I made note of this during Serial Experiments Lain to my friend who was making me watch it and it basically ruined the show for him. It completely wrecked the pacing and was done CONSTANTLY. There were 45 second pans (which I would start audibly counting after 10 seconds) while the main character just monologued "I'm 12 and this is deep" bullshit that was nearly completely disconnected from the plot. There was no reason to do this. Even recent shows like Castlevania did this.
- Shit just happens that doesn't make any sense in context of the world they've set up. This is endemic from anime I've seen. Anime fans think that randomness is "creative" instead of just "throwing shit at a screen because the writer had a fever dream and it doesn't matter at all if it makes any fucking sense". Spirited Away is basically just this. No, randomness is not creativity, Katy the Penguin of Doom.
- They're just a different set of tropes than American cartoons, many of which I find to be nonsensical, twee, or cringe-inducing. Bloody nose when you get a boner trope, I'm looking at you.
- I fucking hate Japanese voice acting (and often for the most part the Americans who dub it, especially in kids shows). This started when Sailor Moon came over and I wanted to kill everyone in the immediate vicinity whenever most of the characters spoke. That shrill panic screaming that was in SM and Pokemon was awful.
- In the same vein, I also can't stand constant "reaction sounds". Someone saying something mildly surprising that you should have easily realized 10 episodes ago isn't an excuse to stare blankly and make an "AH", "OH", or "UH" noise (sometimes followed by a small choking sound) roughly four hundred times per episode. Humans don't do this.
- They make movies that just do random shit and don't have anything to do with the show (if not outright contradict the show). Dragonball is especially notorious for this.
- A really weird number of them throw in Nazis seemingly at random, appropriate time and setting be damned. Need a bad guy? Fucking Nazis!
- I am constantly inundated with friends that like anime telling me that I should watch whatever their new anime obsession is despite it conforming to 3/4 of bad things on this list because obviously I just haven't watched the right anime.
- As someone who runs an IT firm, I'm in agreement that all of those country-based firewall policies are bad EXCEPT in the case of actual defence of the internet (things like DDOS attacks, active hack attempts, etc.). Some of the businesses we manage have users that travel abroad, so I feel China is raised more as a concern because it's the most... overreaching in what they block and is in the top 3 for executing the most cyberattacks worldwide (along with Russia and, since the war, Ukraine). In the case of the Chinese great firewall, not only is the content blocked, but it's one of the the only places where you can also be flagged as a user for trying to access some pretty common data which has some ramifications I really don't care for. It's similar to rules in place for North Korea, but they have more talented SysAdmins and better equipment in China by a long shot, so getting around things is harder.
- I'd agree that SOME of the people are responsible for their elected officials in democracies - namely the ones who voted for that leader. I'd also agree that people are responsible for not having better options by allowing two-party systems to continue (though I'm not sure how to get rid of those parties at this stage). In that same vein, I'd also hold the people responsible in dictatorships as they haven't overthrown the government that claims to speak for them. In some cases, leaders can not roll back policy implementation from a past leader due to the way the political system functions or due to treaties as I said. In the US, they kinda ARE Israel's bitch because Israel is theirs. It's the only safe US foothold in the area and keeps Iran in check and allows for a base of operations. An overwhelming majority of the weapons being shipped to Israel aren't even in use against Palestine; they had all they needed to do the horrible shit they're doing at the outset. The weapons are being used for other purposes, be those future conflicts, or to have a cache of weapons should the US need them for future issues. Is it a bad look? Sure. Is the US still going to try to exert control? Also sure. That's how geopolitics works at present. We don't have to like it, but everyone does it to some extent. It's not good, but again, I don't know how to remove it, and there are certainly worse systems.
- I totally agree that it may be heavy-handed. It also only applies to US government-funded agencies. At present, these new samples seem to be a carrot to help relax the restrictions, and it may work as researchers are quite unhappy with Wolf since the US isn't funding missions like they once did. Who knows if they'll relax restrictions, but ODS data shared with other countries is freely accessible to China through those other countries, so it hasn't been much of an issue beyond the initial grandstanding. For example, if the US shares ODS data with Canada, and Canada gives data to China, the data shared is the same. China simply can't make requests for non-shared data (again, like ballistic schematics) or be a full partner in US projects without FBI approval. How much does that matter? I legitimately don't know. Samples have never been affected by Wolf, however, and have been shared freely upon request to my knowledge.
Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!
This weekly thread will focus on the sometimes painful art of being wrong.
I don't mean not having an opinion and then forming one, I mean having an opinion, and then having that opinion changed with new or more accurate information.
Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):
- When was the last time you were wrong? What about something somewhat major?
- What was it regarding?
- How did it make you feel?
- What do you feel is the best way to correct someone with an ingrained opinion?
- Is it easier online or in person?
- When do you give up on talking to someone?
- Would you be open to a new thread type here where we create a Steelman post as a group? (eg. We start from questions and end up at THE post / article for finding information on a touchy subject)
Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!
This weekly thread will focus on debate, discussion, and the lack thereof on social media (including Lemmy).
My apologies for "leading" a bit more than I try to normally in these weekly threads, however this is a topic that pisses me off in particular. Not only as a mod of a discussion-based community, but as someone who loves it when someone challenges me and proves me wrong / disproves my logic so I'd very much like to hear outside opinions on the topic. I can't even partially understand how people don't want to have a more cohesive / logically sound opinion.
Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):
- Do you feel that discussion is worse now? If so, what caused it? If not, where may others get this feeling from?
- Is it potentially a platform issue, or does it happen everywhere?
- Does discussion even matter any longer? Why or why not?
- Do you feel that more could be done to encourage discussion with outside views or are we better off just "bubble"-ing ourselves and blocking everyone we disagree with?
Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!
This weekly thread will focus on the word "Woke" and its meaning, use, and misuse.
Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):
- What does the word mean to you?
- Is it applied correctly or incorrectly?
- Is it even applicable any longer?
- Do you feel that Conservative media misapplies it, and is "everything I don't like is woke" an appropriate sentiment or simply uncharitable?
Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!
This weekly thread will focus on words, their import, and their use / misuse.
With respect to the late, great George Carlin.
Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):
- How do you feel about political (or forced) movement of language? For example, pro-life and pro-choice being two sides of the same issue because nobody wants to identify as "anti-"anything.
- What are some words that are nebulous, but everyone "knows" the meaning of?
- Are there any manipulated words that annoy you?
- Do you find any common patterns with how words are used by various groups?
Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!
This weekly thread will focus on getting other people to watch movies we love, but others may not have seen or even know about.
In order to make a recommendation or two, simply let others know an appropriate amount about a movie and why they should give it a chance.
If you want to deeply discuss one, please remember to use Spoiler tags where applicable!
Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):
- Great bad movies
- Hilarious garbage for a big group movie night
- Best genre movies
- Underrated films
Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!
This weekly thread will focus on the phrase "The Cruelty Is The Point", which may take some explanation.
Frequently on Lemmy (and elsewhere), I see the phrase in comment threads. In my experience, it has been referencing any policy that is contrary to a Liberal or Leftist belief that the thread discusses. I have found the phrase when discussing trans issues, housing, taxes, healthcare, abortion, and many more.
This does not mean it doesn't exist elsewhere, it is simply where I see it since I spend much of my social media time on Lemmy. If your experience differs, please let us know!
Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):
- Do you believe this? If so, why?
- Is it true / false in some or all scenarios?
- Is it with certain groups or regarding certain things?
- Do you feel that speech like this is conducive to fixing societal issues?
- Is what is considered "kind" always the best course of action?
Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!
This weekly thread will focus on Protests, both effective and ineffective.
Over the past 15 years, we've seen more protesting since the 1960's in North America. Some feel they are needed, and some feel they are wasteful and silly.
Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):
- Have you ever taken part? What was it and why?
- What protests have you felt have been effective or ineffective?
- If you feel they are not effective in general, what would you rather people do?
- Have you ever had your opinion swayed by any form of protest? Please note that this could be either to the side of the protesters or away from their cause.
- How would you try to ensure a successful protest?
- Do you feel that violent protest is mostly uncalled for? If not, how do you know when you need to escalate things?
- Just for fun, what is the absolute worst protest you've ever heard of?
Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!
This weekly thread will focus on work and work culture.
This has been a back-burnered issue since COVID came and upended many workplace traditions worldwide, but I'd really like to hear about what you all think about it!
Some Starters (and don't feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don't care to):
- What is the ideal work / life balance? Right now, the worldwide average is 5 days per week, 8-5 PM. Is this too much / too little / just right?
- With productivity skyrocketing and wages falling, what would you like to see to fix things?
- Would you accept less money and shorter hours?
- What would you feel minimum wage should do to adjust?
- Do you feel that the current resurgence of Unions is positive or negative?
Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!
No, it's not a joke. I'm frustrated and I'm probably not choosing my words carefully.
This community has had steadily falling engagement - our last 3 weekly threads have had a grand total of 1 (excellent and well-articulated) response, and the number of topics not generated by myself (or the other mod) since the inception of the community has also been 1.
Very few people want to actually talk. From what I've seen, the masses want the same things that they wanted on Reddit:
- Memes
- Articles they don't read (but will bitch about endlessly) that reinforce their opinion
- Angry responses to someone (who may be trolling) that reinforce the current politics of the reader (that they couldn't have given a fuck about a few years ago until it became heavily politicized)
- Shitty easy jokes
- Personal politics circlejerking
I hate that I can see a hundredth point-free meme post and view 200 replies on it. I hate that it's just the same talking points being strawmanned over and over again in every thread. I hate that any point outside common groupthink is downvoted to oblivion and buried instead of discussed.
The reason I'd like to back away from Lemmy seems to be the same reason I started this community: we need more people who can articulate points, and less downvoting, but it doesn't seem to be getting better.
Maybe one day, but today is not that day. Lemmy needs to mature in more ways than one.
Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!
This weekly thread will focus on current political divisiveness occurring nearly worldwide. I'd post links, but I feel that everyone knows what I'm speaking about.
This issue has been especially prevalent in American politics as of late, but it is felt nearly everywhere.
Some Starters:
- What do you feel has caused it? Add proofs if possible.
- Once caused, what has added to it and why?
- What can be done to ameliorate the issue, if anything? On a personal scale or a national one.
- Can it be remedied or is civil war the only option?
Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!
This week’s Weekly discussion thread we will focus on Activism, both positive and negative.
Here is the definition we will be using, so please make sure your argument matches.
Some starters:
- What would you classify as effective forms of activism?
- What are ineffective forms of activism?
- How does a group know when their mission is achieved? What if the mission is ambiguous or changes over time?
- Do you feel they stop too early or too late?
Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!
This week’s Weekly discussion thread will be trying something new. We'll be focusing on the age old question "If you could change one thing positively in the world what would you change?"
Difficulty Level: (Pick your difficulty, let us know what you picked, and stick to it)
- Go wild.
- You can't harm others.
- The change has to be somewhat realistic or believable.
- If I could convince 1,000,000 people right now, it would work.
- If I could convince 100,000 people right now, it would work.
- Souls Mode: If I could just get motivated, I could do this myself.
(Also, let me know if these "fun" weeks are welcome here, or just stupid)
Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!
This week’s Weekly discussion thread will be focused on Linux. I know that Lemmy is VERY biased towards Linux and FOSS, but I'm curious what non-technical people feel about it and what your thoughts are.
Some starters:
- Have you used Linux? If so, what was your experience like?
- Would you run it as your primary system? Why or why not?
- What would it take to get you to do so?
- Do you feel it's a solid option?
- Are there any changes that you'd think would benefit consumers and aid with adoption?
Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!
This week’s Weekly discussion thread will be focused on Capitalism / Economic Systems. Here is the definition we will be using so everyone can use the same terminology. If your argument does not use that definition, we ask that you reframe so that it does so that everyone can work within the same framework.
Here are some questions that should help kickstart things:
- Is capitalism effective? Is it good, or as evil as some Lemmy instances will have you believe?
- Are there better alternatives, and why are they better?
- How could we realistically move toward those alternatives?
- Is there anything you do not understand or would like to discuss about Capitalism / Economic Systems?
Changes to the drow and orcs, and more diverse hiring
Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion). You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!
I dislike this article. It's a little old now, but there are several things blisteringly wrong with this idea at its heart.
Purely for example, if you read a book on dragonflies and take offence because you see racial similarities between whatever race a person is and dragonflies, that's an issue with you, not the source. You are relying on your opinion on what the source says. Since opinion varies per person, you should not dictate policy based on opinion. It's an insurmountable hill to cater to whatever opinions are since opinion will always change - it's an unsound basis for any form of logic.
Let's do a thought experiment:
If a trailer-dwelling white person in the USA reads about the Vistani, and takes offence because they also live in a trailer, sees that as a negative, and assumes the Vistani are a potshot at him, is he right to be offended and call for a ban?
If a nimble Canadian POC (which is also a terrible term as it literally applies to everyone on the planet) reads about Elves and assumes they're talking about him because he also happens to know how to use a bow and is skinny with a lithe frame, is he correct in calling for a ban? What if he sees being nimble as a negative for some reason (because positive / negative characteristics are opinions and what people see as negative is not objective)? What if he sees it as being racist by saying the source is calling ALL Elves nimble and therefore good at sports? "But they stereotypically have a different skin colour!" I hear you saying. So do Orcs. That argument applies here and if you can't square that circle, then the logic falls apart utterly.
Personal identification with aspects of characters in a source material are not cause for alteration. You are an individual; you are not a group. Grouping people into camps based on visible traits or histories is a disgusting habit.
Treat people as individuals and racism dies. Treat people as groups and call out the differences constantly and you'll have people fencing themselves in while calling themselves inclusive.
Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion). You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!
This week's Weekly discussion thread will be focused on Gender. Here is the definition we will be using so everyone can use the same terminology.
Here are some questions that should help kickstart things:
-
Why do you feel it started entering public consciousness in regards to humans about 15 years ago?
-
Was it needed?
-
Did it do what it was intended to do?
-
Are things better or worse now in that specific area?
-
Is there anything you do not understand or would like to discuss about the idea of gender?
First and foremost, let me say that I appreciate you actually engaging in a real discussion on Lemmy!
WHY?
This Community was made in response to the rest of Lemmy and the way many otherwise interesting discussion threads fall apart into downvoting, groupthink, and burying of posts composed by people asking for clarification or looking to understand the reasoning behind things.
We don’t like people making baseless accusations; we defend people on all sides when people are wrong about their opposition. We don't appreciate it when people think they know what others think and project incorrect (and often evil) bullshit on each other. We dislike people being wilfully wrong because their group fetishizes a certain angle of the truth instead of the boring reality of the situation.
It is important to maintain solid reasoning and conclusions, not just one or the other.
Ideas and discussion are important. We don’t feel we can get out of the current slump we’re in with political discourse unless we are able to clearly articulate ourselves and discuss the world we're all living in.
DO:
- Be civil. This does not mean you shouldn’t challenge people, just don’t be a dick about it. Disagreeing with reasons is fine, mocking or insulting someone is not.
- Upvote interesting points and things that are well-articulated, even if you may not agree.
- Upvote when you see others correct themselves or change their mind.
- Be prepared to back up any claims you make with an unbiased source that you've actually read.
- Be willing to be wrong. Admit when you are incorrect or spoke poorly. If you are the OP of a thread, feel free to edit the main post, and add an edit to the end to show your opinion has changed.
- Be a “Devil’s Advocate” if there's no opposition and you can see some arguments for the other side you'd like to see addressed. You do not have to believe either side of an issue in order to generate solid points on a view.
- Discuss hot-button issues.
- Use bracket tags in the title to show the kind of post you're making (see below), and try to use the disclaimer if it's your style to help those coming in from outside the Community who may not understand it.
- Add humour, and be creative! Dry writing isn’t super fun to read or discuss.
- Post any rule, formatting, or changes here that you would like to see.
DO NOT:
- Call people names or label people. We fight ideas, not people here.
- Ask for sources, and then not respond to the person providing them. This means you're not here to better yourself or the discussion, and it's rude to waste someone's time by challenging them and then just walking away.
- Mindlessly downvote people you disagree with. We only downvote people that do not add to the discussion.
- Be a bot, spam, or engage in self-promotion unless explicitly allowed by the mods.
- Duplicate posts from within the last month unless new non-trivial information is surfaced on the topic.
- Strawman.
- Expect that personal experience or your personal morals are a substitute for proof.
- Exaggerate. Not everything is a genocide, and not everyone slightly to the right of you is a Nazi.
- Copy an entire article in your post body. It’s just messy. Link to it and maybe summarize if needed.
SUBMISSION RULES:
All main posts should append a bracket tag to the front to describe the topic type:
- (WEEKLY) Will be reserved for Mods as it will be used for the pinned featured weekly topic thread.
- (CMV) Change My View can read like a rant or some scattered thoughts on a topic that the creator is looking to challenge themselves on. You must start with some initial reasons along with some thoughts on how those reasons led you to feel the way you do. If you can articulate things that would or wouldn't change your mind, please add those as well. If your mind is changed, we ask that you place a link to the post that did so at the end of the main post as an edit.
- (OPEN-ENDED) for a general prompt to show that you're looking to see what people think. A good place to seek answers to questions that you haven't thought of yet.
- (ARTICLE) for a link to an article to be discussed. Please link the main source, not a news link already talking about the source and give a few initial thoughts.
- (STEELMAN) is discussion on hard mode and is the opposite of a strawman argument. This is someone making as close to an iron-clad argument as they can for a side or an opinion and challenging you to poke holes in it where you can. These should come with sources already.
- (OTHER) is, for now, what we call everything else. I think we covered most of it above, but just in case, there's OTHER.
We would encourage you to also have our Disclaimer bolded at the front to help show how we're different to those coming in from browsing New or All posts which should hopefully help curtailing the drive-by downvoting that was so common in our early days:
Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!
And finally, none of these are so set in stone that we can't change them. If you want to see adjustments or changes, let us know here or in Private Message!
So now that we've been around for a week or so and have tried to populate things with some controversial topics, how would you like to see this Community grow and change?
Should I add post guidelines? Maybe adjust the pinned thead?
Should I change the rules at all?
Our disclaimer is currently:
Remember: Up / Downvoting in this community is not an agree / disagree button. We upvote good or constructive conversation and downvote off-topic posts or badly-voiced opinions. If you disagree, you respond like a human in good faith and prove out your position.
Should the disclaimer be changed? It's primarily for people wandering in from viewing All threads (instead of just their subscribed ones), or for people on phones who never read the sidebar. It is there to show, in point form, how we operate to people who don't come to us purposefully.
Are there any topic you'd really like to see covered?
Are there any other Communities we should do a link swap with that have a similar ethos with?
Are there types of threads you want to see less or more of? More descriptors?
I'm open to any and all good ideas!
Ace T'Ken @lemmy.ca I advocate for logical and consistent viewpoints on controversial topics. If you're looking at my profile, I've probably made you mad by doing so.