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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If you want advice: Maybe unsubscribe from like the political memes communities and specifically join replacements which are better aligned to what you need. Some people are trying to make an effort.
If you want validation... I see shitty things here as well.
Thanks for the thoughts. I'm well aware that there are a lot of good people making a genuine effort to build something and genuine props to them for that; really. I just feel like things have slowed down a lot since when i first joined, and I've grown tired of the "sameness".
Any ideas on what to do? I mean you've been here for a long time. I've also been here for quite a while. I've also made disgruntled posts about the general atmosphere, waited for things (and people) to change. Or a different kind of people join and bring some breeze of fresh air. Some of that is happening, yet on a small scale and usually in niche corners of this place. But I think overall we're looking at something like stagnation. We have all this potential in the Fediverse... I see sparks here and there, but they never really ignite anything. So overall we more or less stay where we are (or who we are). So, what do we do? Because I think the usual ideas on how to change the atmosphere ain't working, or we'd see some progress.
I think the biggest problem the fediverse has is a lack of diversity. This is the same problem platforms like Bluesky have. It's chock full of Americans, so most of the content leans American. I'm not American and don't really have too much of a problem with American content (it's entertaining), so while I've gotten slightly used to Americentrism on the internet, at least on Reddit there were niches and local communities i could use to detox when it got too much. This is lacking here.
I'm not really sure what the solution is. Back when i first joined, the niche communities were burgeoning and quite active. Now it seems like they've mostly stagnated.
Hmmh. Thanks for your perspective.
By the way, the Germans kinda established their own niche with (I think) with a noticeably different atmosphere and behaviour towards each other. Not necessarily better, we're also doing mostly politics and the meme/shitlords are very active... But yeah, maybe we need some niches which aren't just because of some language barrier. And like more than Linux content. We also have that. But I see how that's not everyone's leisure activity. 😅
Oh nice i see. Maybe i have to start learning German just to see whether what's going on on your side is more to my flavour😅
I've been working to change the atmosphere on the Fediverse and get weirder with all of this reality stuff.
So. Any prospect of the future? How do you feel with what you're trying? I mean you launched an entire instance a while back... Do you have insight on what works and which strategies don't work? And how willing or receptive are the people you talk to?
Not gonna lie, a bit disheartened since dbzer0 defederated us. They didn't want the atmosphere to change. But I still believe in the Fediverse and in Piefed. I've met some pretty cool people in the Piefed space, like Rimu, and I believe in that guy. He's got the vision, the skill, and the dedication to build some great communities. I want to support him by being part of the Piefed community. And anecdotally, I see a lot more kind and accepting piefed.social users than on most Lemmy instances.
I hadn't noticed this until I was reflecting just now, but I banned a lot of people on remote instances for using slurs when MULTIVERSE was new, and lately, I haven't seen many slurs. I think it done worked, I made a safer space for the people who use this instance. I was chatting with Rayne Blight yesterday, doing an interview about antirealist history, and they put an idea in My head I want to pursue: a soulist breadtube channel. So I've been speaking with an amateur film producer I know about doing some collaboration. And maybe Piefed needs some youtube ambassadors too. But I know if this youtube thing gets going, we're gonna point people to MULTIVERSE, and there's going to be an influx of weirdos posting into Lemmy's communities from over here.
But yeah, it's a lot easier persuading people of antirealism face to face than on a social media like Piefed or Lemmy. People come to quicker snap judgements on here, so you need to react faster by giving up quickly on people you can't reach. And you need to be patient and just keep putting stuff out there, because people are gonna come to appreciate it slowly with exposure. So it's speed and patience. Some strong neutral jing stuff, which I kinda suck at and have been practicing.
But in terms of the whole of the fediverse, it's bad apples. And you know what they say, a bad apple can turn a whole barrel rotten. So our leaders, and I guess that includes Me now, or admins, need to be willing to say no to these bad apples like Hexbear, .ml, lemmygrad. And I dunno, maybe dbzer0, maybe not. Can't say I'm proud of them for the recent pro-death-penalty drama. But that ship has sailed, I didn't need to make that choice in the end.
And one thing everyone can do, is just post more fun stuff. Just post more about video games and cool sticks and the stuff that makes you smile. Anyone can make this big community a little bit better by doing that.
Will do. Got a bunch of stuff I think is cool that I can post.
By the way, do you have any advice for someone interested in starting their own instance?
Sure do.
Thanks!
I'm also considering offering a premium contributor tier to reward people who help keep the lights on and Hetzner bills paid, with extra features like scheduled posts (does PieFed have that?)
PieFed has scheduled posts. And some other perks.
Huh. TIL. I guess I should look into this. Thanks for the info!
I don't think Piefed has premium tiers, but dbzer0 and anarchist.nexus do. People who pay money get the right to vote in instance decisions. It's kinda like early America.
Thanks for sharing your perspective and writing all of this down.
To be honest, don't worry too much about the dbzer0 users. They've defederated from you, I've defederated from them. There's all this other thing going on with them. I share your perspective, I also get to read less slurs and toxicity since I started pulling some ripcords... I don't like it either. But maybe that's how it is.
Best of luck anyway. I think the YouTube thing is a good idea. I mean you can probably make quite some impact, considering the current scale you're operating at. But I also think the entire Threadiverse isn't huge compared to YouTube people. Larger "influencers" sometimes fill Dicord communities larger than all of us combined. And smaller "influencers" sometimes have a very loyal and committed fanbase/community. All of that is useful and/or positive traits. I see how the hard part is finding someone with overlap and who wants to cooperate. And you're going to have to welcome them and provide them with whatever their wants and need are... All of this is quite some effort. But certainly worth it in my eyes.