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I kinda made this post out of spite for the fact the most previous post in this community, whose title I quoted/copied, was getting so many downvotes... At the time I posted this, the previous post had about a 30% downvote rate, and it really, really made me mad.
I am relieved tho to see people in the comments here who have real, actual empathy for their fellow humans. Thank you for contributing here.
It blows my mind how normalized it is to hate on those who are struggling. Especially in 20fucking23 when so many of us now are on the verge of it ourselves. Let's be better, everyone - to everyone. I beg you.
For a "Solar punk" instance, this community seems to have very little of the "punk" aspect, and in these comments it sounds more like a "Solar rich liberal" place.
The amount of slander towards homeless people, the propagating of stereotypes, and the removal of personhood in these comments really blows my mind. There are even people defending that homeless people should be sent to prison and have their life managed for them; others claim how it's their own fault they are homeless; some cry about "private property".
And of course a bunch of people claiming this isn't a final/permanent solution, and so it shouldn't be done... as if to say, until we come up with better solutions, these people should just go without shelter. What is really a priority to them, is not having to look at homeless people.
In a nutshell: "It's their own fault! They're probably all heroin addicts anyway. Someone else should come up with and implement better solutions, but in the meantime I don't want to have to see and walk by people who don't have a home!". A Solar ~~Punk~~ Neolib community.
When a post gets enough points, it does the Lemmy equivalent of "hitting the front page" and comment character becomes indistinguishable from a brigade. Most of the people commenting on this post aren't from the Slrpnk.net instance. Check out the locals who are though -- excellent people every one -- @stabby_cicada@slrpnk.net, @poVoq@slrpnk.net, @punkisundead@slrpnk.net, @j_roby@slrpnk.net. These people are making this instance great.
Also, a shout out to the the nice people from other instances - I see you, and you are awesome: @Timecircleline@sh.itjust.works, @ondoyant@beehaw.org, @257m@lemmy.ml, @TheFriar@lemm.ee, @Maeve@kbin.social, @rockSlayer@lemmy.world, @Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone - thanks for contributing.
Thank you for taking the time to make some personal acknowledgements, especially for those who are visiting from other instances.
You deserve one yourself too. Your contributions here help make this place great as well.
One good thing about Lemmy still being a relatively small community (at least compared to major social media platforms) is you can actually recognise people and get to know each other. Sort of like old-school forums
I feel that, and I'm trying to be better about that here than I was on reddit. But...reddit had me used to not caring about usernames at all and it's a hard habit to break.
There's definitely a number of people here on Lemmy tho that I get excited about when I see them post or comment. And I'm trying to be better about recognizing the rest of the wonderful folks here too.
Yeah same for me I wouldn't really look at usernames much on reddit because I wouldn't recognise them unless they were "famous" accounts like the poem guy or whatever. Here I definitely do see the same names pop up often which is nice. It's something I missed a lot when going from late 00s/ early 10s forums to reddit.
Of course, you're probably right. It just really irked to look through these comments, and I had to get that out.
There are indeed some comments here that had my cursor hover over the moderation button, but since this was posted on the /c/memes community that has by its nature a more diverse set of subscribers and is meant to reach people that are not already "coverts" anyway, I refrained from doing so mostly. And of course @Five@slrpnk.net is totally correct that this post was "front-paged" which usually doesn't help with the discussion quality.
In the end, I think this thread had some worthwhile discussions, and maybe made a few people reconsider their hateful stance on homeless people.
It was absolutely heartbreaking to wake up and see a deluge of comments like what you described above... But please don't throw blame on our instance for that. The vast majority of the comments are from outside this instance.
And I'll accept responsibility too for having posted something "controversial" in a c/ that's lacking active moderation.
^(empathy^ ^shouldn't^ ^be^ ^so^ ^fucking^ ^controversial)^
Yes, it's gross. And it's always something like, "oh I think everyone should have a home, but..."