Unpopular Opinion
Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!
How voting works:
Vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
Guidelines:
Tag your post, if possible (not required)
- If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
- If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].
Rules:
1. NO POLITICS
Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.
2. Be civil.
Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...
Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.
5. No trolling.
This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.
6. Defend your opinion
This is a bit of a mix of rules 4 and 5 to help foster higher quality posts. You are expected to defend your unpopular opinion in the post body. We don't expect a whole manifesto (please, no manifestos), but you should at least provide some details as to why you hold the position you do.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
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I think there's a difference between good-faith ignorant-ass posts and bad-faith ignorant-ass posts. I've said my share of ignorant-ass things on the internet, and some of those were how I learned things, including what it actually means to be trans. I try to pay that forward by spending some of my time answering what I believe to be good-faith ignorant-ass questions. I know what it's like to have zero openly queer (let alone trans) people in your IRL life, and I know the kinds of irrational, offensive, and deeply hurtful ideas that can live unchallenged in the mind in that kind of environment. I try to give grace to those people when I have grace to spare.
However.
I know there are people who are invested in not allowing those conversations to happen, and if you just want to shut down conversations, an easy tactic is to flood the zone with bullshit, intentionally clouding any signal with malicious noise. This is an inherently asymmetric relationship, since posting bullshit is intrinsically easier than responding with thoughtful, meaningful conversation. Nonsense is simply easier to create than sense. For these types of bad-faith ignorant-ass comments, I think the best strategy is to ban them when they crop up. It's not a perfect solution and I do think some good-faith ignorant-ass people get caught up in the bullshit filter, and that sucks. But I think it's the best way to allow some helpful discussion to happen without getting drowned out that we've come up with so far.