This feels different though. I may be inadequate at explaining but I will try. Both of those involve a juxtaposition of things that are normal but are odd when conjoined: fucking + … sideways? Christ but… as peanut butter?

Calling out a proper name as in “JFC man!” is more like “oh no, somebody pulled a joey!” (or conversely, “watch out - she’s a Karen!”, MY CHILD vibes intensify…:-P). It specifically pulls up the name, in an intentionally derogatory manner. Thereby it is “cheap”, as it ties in to the aforementioned “othering” effect - which is POWERFUL in its allure and an ever-present bias making up human thought patterns, and therefore needs to be watched out for or it will suck us in.

Ironically I would be okay if this community added an exemption to its rules, like “no othering of a group - unless the group in question is Christianity, because fuck those people, amirite?!:-P” What I cannot stand though is when something like this “sneaks through”. Beehaw does a fantastic job at explaining who they are - with not only mere sidebar text but multiple pages of a help document detailing what the rules are, and how they will be enforced. Likewise, Blåhaj does a fantastic job of not only talking the talk but then walking out that walk, i.e. “please bear in mind that this is a server that is very protective of our minority members and bigotry of any variety will be squashed with great prejudice.” In contrast, this community says “generally “othering” of a group will result in removal/ban.” - except, again, unless the target in question is one of those that the people in power happen to disagree with, I guess?

This is not very Star Trek of us, imho. It does not matter if Christianity is deserving of respect or not - there are a lot of historical reasons pointing to… well… both sides yay and nay there - but what matters is how we treat people - ideally with a spirit of outright welcomingness to all, but failing that, at least with equity and fairness? (or at the very minimum, I would hope, transparency)

It certainly has done all that you said are more… religious fascists even killed Jesus himself, then others turned around to use him as a martyr for their own cause. Jesus the idea can be a bit like Santa Claus - it can mean whatever the fuck you want it to, especially if you can gain something (profits, power, gratification, etc.) as a result?

Regardless, I like how welcoming this community is. We can do yet still more though, to avoid “othering” half the people on planet earth? (Muslims also consider Jesus as one of the Holy Prophets, and similarly to Christianity makes up 1/4th-1/3rd of all people; Hindi is much more of a stretch but they too incorporate Jesus Christ into the pantheon of various “gods” and “avatars” and the like…; and too there are Mormons, who consider themselves Christians even while mainstream Christians do not in return, and on and on it goes - there really are a lot of people who at least claim to follow what Jesus says!)

Btw - you will enjoy this one, I think, even though it is not all that relevant to this discussion imho - that isn’t what taking the lord’s name in vain means. Mostly, as far as I’ve heard, that is “claiming his name” (calling yourself by a form of it?) yet denying all the great responsibility that comes with it. i.e., it is the very self-professed Christians who in the act of demeaning you (“treat others as you would wish to be treated in return”?), were the ones performing the very act of “taking HIS name”, but “in vain”. It’s just a fucking swear man, not a commandment-breaker, don’t sweat it:-).

That said, when I was growing up, the F-bomb (YOU KNOW WHICH ONE) was a generalized swear. It was also a short-form word for a cigarette? And on top of that, partially reclaimed by some within the target community, much as the N-word. Do you see how none of that matters? I had to expend SO MUCH effort to throw away my false religious roots (Will & Grace on TV helped so much with that:-P ngl I could not stand to watch it especially when 2 men kissed - I FORCED myself to watch, over and over again, to get past the idea that it was “not normal” or “unacceptable” or “morally wrong”). So please believe me when I say: that it made up a general swear for so long is nowhere near an excuse. Whatever THEY do is on them, while what WE do is on US. Yes, fuck religious Christo-fascists who instead of lifting a finger to help someone go extremely out of their way to heap heavy burdens upon other people (btw those are Jesus’ very own words - in Matthew 23:4)… but regardless of the past, who have we decided to be, here, in this place, at this time?

If it’s a direct quote from a movie… that actually might be a good counter-argument. Except wait a minute, if I used that argument in order to say the F-bomb word, or the N-word, would you (or the current mods I guess) allow me to get away with that then? Whether you/they did or did not, you should not, is what I am saying. Because it “others” people. See also my reply to the other comment below my prior reply.

I find it the height of irony how the class of people that Jesus hated most were hypocritics - calling them “den of vipers” and even more descriptive “like whitewashed tombs, looking good only on the outside but on the inside full of rot and decay”.

Jesus hung out with prostitutes and “tax collectors” - today that would be LGBTQIA+ and homeless or renters rather than landlords - and argued for women’s rights.

In America the people who showed up to overthrow the government on January 6th called themselves “patriots”, and similarly people say how they “follow the teachings of Christ”. But… how trustworthy are the people saying this?

Anyway, I’ve been a bit of everything in my life from Christian to Atheist and several forms of in-between, but regardless of my personal thoughts about the actual subject mainly what I was saying above was about the meta-subject of the wording causing “othering” and making people feel welcomed. Not people who “follow Christ” by like diddling kids (aka who do NOT do that, whatever they claim), and rather people who regardless of whether they do the former, find the latter repugnant, yet can come from a wide variety of backgrounds (including other varieties of non-mainstream Christianity such as Mormon, or Muslims also consider Jesus as one of the Holy Prophets).

I would not like to see people making fun of gay people. Or women (or men). So why is it okay to make fun of Christians? And not merely the hypocritical Christo-fascists, but all Christians (and again, also Mormons, Muslims, etc.)? Even the ones feeding & helping to house the homeless, or the ones who fought to end slavery in the UK? It’s easier to build a community by “othering” the outsiders, by making everything about “us versus them”. I’m watching the Republicans in the USA do that right this very weekend, ending much of the spending programs for things such as healthcare and science, and when asked they can’t even say why really, except that they need to “pwn the libs”.

Which makes me think that it’s not enough to be against something - we need to be for something. One thing this very community is for is inclusivity, creating a safe and not merely tolerant but outright welcoming space for people to come and chat. Unless, that is, you are part of that “other” group, over “there”.

That does not make me feel good. How does it make you feel?

Diagnosing an issue, on a matter that you feel passionate about, is a first step towards finding a solution for it. So now that you are walking partway down this pathway, I hope that you continue - donate or help directly if that sounds fun to you! :)

And welcome to the Fediverse:).

If you will allow me to respectfully disagree, the mere fact that you can make this post at all is evidence against what you are saying, no?

e.g. Reddit has “posts”, which may have links to “YouTube” or “Wikipedia”, or to “Tiktok” or “Instagram”, or “Facebook” or “LinkedIn”, etc. - each of those requires a different account (the former three at least allow anonymous viewing, the middle two make it extremely difficult but it can be done if someone has a link to a specific item of content, while iirc the latter two mandate having an account to view the content at all).

Within each component of the Fediverse, it seems connected to a very high degree? e.g. the one we are discussing this on here now is the Threadiverse, which can be read, interacted with (voted, saved, links sent to) and commented on by people with accounts on any instance running Lemmy, Mbin, or Piefed (among Threadiverse software platforms I have also heard of nodeBB and flarum but I do not know what the current status is of their ActivityPub protocol integration). This level of interactivity is high.

And beyond that, you can interact with it via Mastodon, Misskey, Friendica, etc. Granted, this level of interactivity is much lower… but at least it exists? So it is high compared to not being able to interact with it, if that makes sense? A better phrasing might be that something is better than nothing?

And with effort put in by people donating their time & energies & attention & skills, it will improve. e.g. I am writing this to you from PieFed where new features are added practically every week (in fact it is nowhere close to being uncommon to see changes every other day). So what you are asking - it is happening, right in front of our very eyes! It might just seem slow to someone more used to “capitalistic” rather than socialist endeavors because it is not backed by corporate money that would seek a return on their initial investment, e.g. by selling user data, and instead requires the donations (especially of effort and skill, but money works too!) of individual people.

Right - definitely a problematic solution, needing to balance both the needs of the new users as well as the community overall. Perhaps a first-time poster could have a pop-up displayed with a message such as “You don’t intend to ask a question, take up people’s time to answer it, and then delete it once you’ve met your selfish need… do you?” :-P

Perhaps another factor is how considerate people would not dream of doing so in the first place. But we are separating here the value of the user vs. the discussion that would subsequently be taking place. Admiral Patrick’s idea distinguishes between different classes of users: those most likely to contribute substantively to the Threadiverse, vs. those who are far less likely to. But it isn’t the user per se that is the issue, and rather only that particular category of action (deletion after having their singular question answered, probably by a lurker or even non-Threadizen that came here specifically for purposes of getting their needs met, then they bounce) that is the problem. However, Lemmy is extremely limited in its ability or even willingness to provide a solution for the latter (the action being the problem), hence his need to do such “out of the box” thinking and approach the problem from the perspective of the former (distinguishing those users being most likely to cause the problem). PieFed seems to offer a platform to deliver a real solution to the actual problem itself… like my aforementioned idea of a pop-up box displayed to first-time posters, although hopefully much better ideas can be thought up than that. :-D

Going off on a tangent here, I dislike it when people use that phrase “Jesus Christ!” like that. I get that religion has caused much of the evil in this world… (arguably less so than capitalism but… whatever!:-P), though that doesn’t (shouldn’t) matter. It demeans us to sink to that level, whatever our own personal thoughts are on the matter, and regardless of the particular target. / end of my Ted Talk here

And like, isn’t that the meaning of Rule 1, where generally “othering” a group is a strong no-no (the chief one in fact, hence it appearing first)? Granted that religion is a choice unlike e.g. race or sexual preference, but even so? Jesus himself was an extremely chill dude - “Love Thy Neighbor” and all of that - so it’s not his fault that after his death people later abuse his name to gain personal power, using it to do things like diddle children, which is vehemently NOT what “love thy neighbor” meant there!?!?!?!

Star Trek shows us a world where we can rise above all that:-). A famous person semi-recently said: “when they go low, we go high”.

iirc, deleted comments remain in the profile of the user that wrote them. So a lot of the value lies not in “having those answers”, but in placing those answers side-by-side along with the question. Which allows things like someone having the same question searching for it by keyword, and then finding the answers that they seek underneath that heading. For such to work then, we would need the actual text (& title) of the question.

But then that wraps back around to who owns the question… and shouldn’t the owner be allowed to delete it, or edit it however they wish? Which makes me think: there is no system that will work in the face of malicious or at least inattentive bad actors. Perhaps social media is just a bad place to have such a question-and-answer forum, in favor of things such as wikipedia or more specialized forums (StackOverflow comes to mind).

I liked Admiral Patrick’s take on it: ultimately we cannot control others, only ourselves, so he prevents brand-new accounts from being able to make posts in those communities in the first place, knowing that there is such a high likelihood that they are an attention vampire that will leave hurt feelings of frustration (and sometimes even betrayal) in the wake of their passing. But he only controls one instance, so at best it is only a test of what might work at a larger scale.

I do note that afaik PieFed’s moderation abilities could automate that though (at least it should be able to? admittedly I have not tested this first-hand, only read about it long ago): e.g. it could prevent anyone with an account less than a certain age from making posts, as he does. It is one solution at least, hopefully we can dream up others as well! :-)

Excellent! It is always nice to see people asking questions - the journey towards the answer should prove most enlightening! :-D

The questions belong to the users, there is no contention about that.

However the answers belong to those who offered them, making the entire conversation belong to the community as a whole.

Unfortunately I seriously doubt that Lemmy will ever change its behavior in this regard. Keeping a post up after deletion smacks too much of Reddit behavior, and Lemmy defines itself in Reddit’s shadow. :-(

Fortunately PieFed has no such limitation, so asking for a feature to help deal with this issue seems to have a very good chance of working on it. :-)

While she herself wants to be R2, please teach me your wise ways oh master droid!?

But more seriously, she’s passionate. Luke too. She’s also knowledgeable. Him not so much 🤪. A bit naive though, thinking that one can resolve their differences with the Emperor diplomatically.

In the books she went on to become the Chancellor of the New Republic in her own right, after Mon Mothma, neglecting her Jedi heritage for the most part, while he went on to unleash terror upon the galaxy by halfheartedly training people with stubborn wills to learn how to use their own force powers, sometimes for evil. I gather they both regretted their respective paths and I have no idea what I’m supposed to learn from all that - maybe in George Lucas’ philosophy, everything is ultimately futile, in the end, even choices with galaxy-altering consequences, still all ultimately reflects merely the Yin and the Yang of existence, and a hero who lives long enough ultimately becomes a villain (in the eyes of their children at the very least, who don’t understand those choices:-P)? Anyway they seemed to have fun chasing their passions:-).

Luke and Leia, in the OG series, are the only ones who actually seem to give a damn.

I do appreciate a good Kylo Ren meme tho…

Enshittification often serves as a driver towards that behavior. However, while this platform has attempted to leave the former behind, it is not always so simple to actually accomplish that lofty goal. i.e. even if the ultimate disease is now cured, the symptoms themselves still persist, feeding forward by influencing others to continue with those old, bad habits.

Okay, created!

Yeah as Blaze said, multiple conversations spaced apart. The first one I mentioned it, the second they told me they didn’t like it, either the second or perhaps now a third they actively chide me for having mentioned it.

I did not realize that a Google search pulls up lemmy.ml. Fwiw, DuckDuckGo pulls up lemmy.world instead, as its top hit. Lemmy.world at the time had 80% of all Threadiverse users on it, but Lemmy.ml has legacy, and Google’s search algorithm prioritized it over lemmy.world or some other webpage, like an explanatory one.

I also did not realize that, when you click the link to go there, lemmy.ml shows only Local rather than Global results by default, to someone without an account on it.

Combined together, a non-technical normal person is going to Google “Lemmy”, and to the extent they don’t find the actor, will see images that mostly portray how people who own stock or even simply store money in a bank account should literally, not figuratively but literally, be killed / beheaded (/ guillotined / Luigi’d, however you want to say it). Usually within the first 2-5 pages of posts too, and especially anytime that there is any election going on in a Western nation, the bOtH sIdEs SaMe campaigns are out in full force. Lemmy is pretty extreme - you can block it all, but when you simply Google Lemmy and see lemmy.ml’s Local rather than Global content, the bOtH sIdEs SaMe content is extremely prevalent.

e.g. this one that just prior to the USA elections, subtly hints that Kamala Harris might not be the best choice to vote for:

Edit: regardless of whether the evidence fully supports their 2nd-hand assertion or not, my own statement is that 100% of the people that I have tried to introduce Lemmy to irl have actively chided me for its “extreme leftist” content. Of course, Reddit is somewhat leftist itself, so I feel that it is not quite a fair comparison, but it is something to be aware of. The definition of a “Nazi bar” is that regardless of whether we ourselves are Nazis, we allow such here and that makes people uncomfortable - although in our case not totalitarian right-wing fascists but totalitarian left-wing fascists instead (who claim to be socialist, seemingly without knowing what that word means). I probably should use less inflammatory language here, but my point is that “Lemmy” makes people uncomfortable. And rightly so, as the very name itself has a history.

Damnit, I had just succeeded in forgetting it too!!! 😜

That’s not all that she is known for…

Especially