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Lemmy fell off (lemmy.world)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/unpopularopinion@lemmy.world
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It used to be interesting before with engaging posts and looked like a burgeoning community. Now it's just stagnant, full of politics and tankieism has become more commonplace.

Idk though, maybe it's just me

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[–] 2 points 5 months ago (13 children)

I think the problem is that people get politics fatigue after a while on the Internet. Our brains weren't prepared to handle any and every political event all of the time. Even the experts whose job is to keep up with politics can't do it, so they focus on particular regions. And those who try to have an opinion on everything end up not having a well-formed opinion on anything.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (9 children)

    I think rich people brainwash us into thinking politics=controversy, and then inundate ourselves with controversy, as you say. But we spend the entire rest of our lives engaging in uncontroversial politics, and we love it. Human beings go insane and die if they aren't given enough politics.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (8 children)

    Good point. I guess the solution is to promote politics that isn't drama/controversy, then. Things most people can agree on, such as getting lobbying out of government and getting rid of mass surveillance and Silicon Valley tech monopolies.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (7 children)

    We can think even more pleasant. This conversation here is politics. Deciding what to have for dinner, that's a group decision, which makes it politics. Fandom discussions are politics. Agreeing that a cat gif is cute, that's politics. And it's nice and fun and sweet.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (6 children)

    That's a pretty broad definition of "politics", at least compared to the common one or the dictionary one - and its one that waters the term down to the point of uselessness.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    Wikipedia: Politics[a] is the activity of settling affairs in an organized society.

    Merriam-Webster: the art or science of government

    Collins: Politics are the actions or activities concerned with achieving and using power in a country or society

    We live in a society where power is concentrated in the hands of the few. In other words, an authoritarian society. This society wants us to believe that the power to govern society can only be wielded by an economic and/or social elite. If we're going to move on to a libertarian society, where everyone has the power to change their circumstances and help govern their community, then we need to accept that politics is something we do every day when we work together to make decisions.

    I believe that the unfairness of our society is maintained by a mind prison. This narrow definition of politics trains us to think of ourselves as powerless. That's one brick making up the walls of our mind prison. Let's smash it.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (4 children)

    Still, "agreeing that a cat gif is cute" is as far from politics as it gets.

    By all means, power to the people. But surely that doesn't mean EVERYTHING is politics?

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (3 children)

    We agreed to make a decision: to collectively call this kitty cute. In so doing, we reaffirmed our social values: The young are to be protected. Cats are to be kept as pets. We contributed towards the maintenance of certain conditions of our present society. If tomorrow everyone instead agreed that kittens are annoying pests, cat ownership would fall. People may perhaps devote themselves more strongly to solving the feral cat problems we have here in Australia. Instead of sterilising stray cats, programs would simply kill them. We would become a harder and less empathetic people. We would make different big decisions.

    Everything you do with others matters. No action is without consequence. You are powerful.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    That's an interesting and in-depth perspective.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Thank you! I got to it through evolutionary psychology. Because it seems like just about every culture thinks small fluffy animals are cute to some degree. Mainstream science tells us it's a side effect of needing to think babies are cute, and I buy that explanation. But what that means is, thinking small animals are cute is so imperative to the survival of the species, it got genetically hardcoded. Anything that ALL humans do seems to be in the genes, seems to bear some relationship to survival. And I know kittens aren't human babies and the reasons aren't the same, but the impact is still visible: our political instincts for young-preservation have a big impact on our world. Our genes gave us these politics because they're important.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (2 children)

    That's the thing. I don't mind politics on my feed. It's only when it's nothing but politics that I start blocking and adding new content filters. It's a forced binary choice. I'd consume a moderate amount of that kind of content if it was an option, but it's not. It's all of it or none of it.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (1 child)

    Maybe make a curated non-political feed, and access political communities on your own terms? At least that's what I kinda did on Bluesky (removed the "Discover" feed so I only look at the feeds I am already following)

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    I've been building such feed for over 2 years already. I have over 250 keyword based content filters and I don't follow any political communities and I've blocked most of the news communities too. It helps but the issue still remains quite bad.

    Also, blocking only removes content but doesn't replace it with better one - it just slows down the already slow feed even further.

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