I know the real answer is reddit but I really don’t want to go back now that I’ve already grown used to life without it. I was hoping for Lemmy to be a viable substitute but it isn’t. I can see how this place is wonderful for the certain type of person but that person is not me. My experience during the past 6+ months has been a net negative and I’m pretty much ready to move on. I just don’t know where else to go.
But why? What is being said is what matters, not whose saying it.
“Israel is killing innocent Palestinian civilians by the tens of thousands” is a factual statement and will get upvoted because it signals that I’m on the correct side of the issue.
“Hamas is indiscriminately targeting Israeli civilians while using their own population as human shields” is also an factual statement but will get you downvoted because it sounds like the kind of noises the “others” would make.
In most topics like this it’s less about wether what you’re saying is true or not but rather about who we think you are based on what you’re saying. Prefacing every message with “I’m really against what these people are doing and I think person X really is a huge asshole but…” is not something I’m interested in doing.
Then what in the hell do you want?
I thought you want diverse opinions and nuanced debate, but when you want to just engage in opposing comments and not prefacing statements with ‘I understand X, but wanna discuss Y here’, the result is just trolling, detrimental to your proposed goals.
I have yet to understand what exactly do you want, or what is missing here.
I think I see the problem. You left Reddit, but Reddit didn’t leave you.
What I mean by this is that you care more about the responses of internet strangers than you do having a genuine a discussion. As long as you’re being truthful, honest, and giving good faith arguments, then who cares if people downvote you or call you names. You’ve done your job. You’ve led that proverbial horse to water. You can’t make them drink. Let it go, and love on.
Of course we’re going to form an opinion of you based on what you say. It’s all we have. If you don’t like the opinion being formed, then give us more insight to who you genuinely are so we can change our minds. And before you say it doesn’t matter, it obviously does or you wouldn’t be here making the argument you’re making. Be honest with yourself.
No, it’s the exact opposite. I long for the week long debates I used to have with complete strangers about some insignificant philosophical theory somewhere deep inside a thread that’s gone inactive a long time ago and it’s just the two of us there.
About post scores I don’t care because I have them hidden anyway. I do admit though that it does get frustrating when I try to make sense of something but the damn horse just refuses to drink.
Regarding the prefacing; it probably won’t even work because people will read it as a “I’m not racist, but” kind of statement.
Regarding the problem you’re stating; I’ve quickly after joining installed a tampermonkey script which allows me to hover over the name of an instance, magazine or user and display a small context menu where I can block them. Blocking certain magazines made all the difference for me.
If you’re not offering enough of your own position in a post, then yes, those you’re posting to will make assumptions. To combat that, put your complete positions in your post and remove any doubt so people don’t have to assume. The reason both of your quoted statements would get strong responses in isolation is because posting only the one sentence in a post would suggest you don’t agree with the apposing statement that you also posted.
You will still get strong responses from smaller groups that believe one statement factual and not the other, but thats life. You’re not going to convince everyone all the time.
“sir this is a picture of a cat, why are you bringing the middle east into it”
That’s because people don’t say things just randomly, they usually have a point or a conclusion they are trying to get to. When someone sees something like that, they don’t downvote because it’s not factual, but because of the implied point.
Your implied point here is that both sides are equally at fault. You didn’t say that and I would bet you don’t think that, but that’s not how your comment reads.
It’s similar to the BLM and the all lives matter response. Yes that is factually correct, but saying it in this context and time implies less or no attention should be given to the topic at hand.