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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 24th, 2023

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  • I do the exact same as you, with the exception of a few topic-specific instances, where the local communities are only about that topic. There I will actually use Local as default.

    At least on my Kbin instance, going in All and Local opens me up to doom-and-gloom “big corporation and alt-right bad” news and outrage bait.

    I agree wholeheartedly with “big corporation and alt-right bad” and that they’re the cause of too many of the world’s big serious problems. I’d also rather spend my time on Kbin enjoying what I see instead of getting mad. I can already find out what horrible thing a corporation or alt-right politician has done from the regular news, without the understandable but exhausting comment chain of outrage.

    Even without an algorithm shoving it down your throat, outrage bait will rise to popular status on its own. Unfortunately, getting mad at and feeling superior to the idiotsincars, choosingbeggars, etc. is kind of crack to our brains. I’m no exception, which is why I have to only look at /sub. I have to keep it out of sight, because if it’s in my feed, I’ll click on it and get mad too.

    So how do I find new stuff? There’s a lot of communities out there whose purpose is to advertise other communities. I subscribe to those.



  • Not conservative.

    I’ve gotten very very used to being asked for titles on forms and the like. I’ve gotten used to respecting other peoples’ pronouns.

    I have not gotten used to being asked for my own, and I don’t like it.

    I understand that you can look just like me while having a gender identity that does not match my own—some men like to present in a feminine manner sometimes while still being men, and some people are non-binary, third gender, agender, etc. but might still dress in a very feminine way for whatever reason. To cover all your bases, ask pronouns, because guessing “she/her” at a feminine presentation in a body with a feminine shape won’t always be right. If you want to maximize your chances of being correct, you need to ask.

    But whenever I’m asked, I also wonder if I’ve presented in a way that signals anything other than “woman” (which frequently but does not always line up with feminine presentations from feminine bodies). Did I just totally fail at presenting the way I want to and if forced to assume you’d guess I’m third gender, or are you being inclusive and considering that people who present like me aren’t always women? It’s the privileged, cis-woman version of “did you have to ask because I failed hard at passing, or did I pass and you just ask everyone this because not everyone conforms to the gender binary?” I’m really used to my gender being assumed and assumed correctly, and am not comfortable with people being unsure or even assuming wrong. I’m basically getting a microdose of what many non-cis, non-binary, and/or nongenderconforming people have to deal with, and I don’t like it.

    I also understand it is probably for the benefit of most people (I’m aware of some non-cis people also disliking people asking pronouns, with reasons being along the lines of “please assume, I’m a binary trans person and asking makes me worry I don’t pass” or “I’m in the closet right now and asking my pronouns makes me choose between outing myself and misgendering myself” and it’s worth finding some solution for this) for asking to be normalized, so I let my personal discomfort and dislike go. After I ask if they asked pronouns because they honestly thought it’s super likely I don’t use she/her in which case oh god what do I change so I can make the assumption be that I use she/her, or if it’s just them trying to be inclusive and cover all bases which is good and respectable.


  • I’ve never liked that at all.

    I’m not exactly rich, but compared to some starving people in third-world countries yes I am.

    I hate to think that because I have it worlds better than them by an accident of birth, I must be stupid and deserve every bad thing that happened to me. After all, I’m just an overprivileged first-worlder, therefore I purposely tried to step on everyone to get my way. Because you suffered in ways that I never have, I must suffer like that and you get to laugh at the “rich person” flailing and generally being miserable. I wasn’t born into poverty, therefore if I experience misfortune I clearly deserve it somehow. If I happen to catch cancer, well, everyone dies someday, should have gotten used to the concept of unexpectedly dying by disease like us real folk, cry harder you privileged bitch, nobody cares and nobody should. That’s just what you get for being out of touch with how real people live. Should have been prepared for that.

    This is why I stick to /sub. To avoid this kind of post. And I somehow find these posts anyway (didn’t even seek out stuff outside of /sub, not sure how I landed here, going to find out how it happened so it won’t happen again) and get angry.

    Lovely outrage bait. Never change, internet.


  • Waiting for the next episode on some stupid show could be the one thing motivating a person to keep living till tomorrow instead of killing themselves today. Just being able to promise yourself that you’ll stay alive till tomorrow (and repeating that promise daily) is important for suicidal people. If some dumb show on a dumb streaming service is the thing that motivates them enough, then so be it.

    Also, small joys like entertainment help take peoples’ minds off their problems, both “real problems” and “first world problems.” It might not be nearly as helpful as a cash injection or whatever would directly solve their problem, but it can serve as a temporary comfort. If your problem is something you’ve already done your best to solve, or that you can’t solve (maybe you have a painful terminal disease, no family who cares to visit, the hospital won’t allow euthanasia, and you’re too physically weak at that point to do anything to commit suicide), then all you can do at that point is do something to take your mind off your suffering.

    Streaming isn’t quite essential, no, but I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s a completely useless luxury. It’s something people with serious problems might lament the loss of easy access to!

    I’d also like to think that making the lives of people who don’t have serious problems a little bit worse is still an issue. People are allowed to be mad about their day-to-day problems that aren’t nearly as serious as slavery or genocide. Yes, thinking that your stubbed toe or annoying commute or raised prices on streaming services is more important than slavery or genocide is a problem. But I don’t see how anyone in this article or in this discussion is trying to assert that their problems are more important or should gain attention at the expense of attention to the more important problems. And people will naturally focus on the problems that impact them, even if they’re small.







  • This is exactly what I do! Unfortunately, when I first log into Lemmy or Kbin, despite me having my settings set to show me only subscribed stuff by default, it totally ignores that setting (and what communities I’ve blocked) and just shows me the equivalent of /all on kbin or on that Lemmy server. You can get back to only seeing subscribed things by refreshing, but at that point the damage has been done, the NSFW has already popped up on your screen and you have to refresh to take it away. Seems just in the realm of “annoying” except for the fact that some people also have their defaults set to subscribed in an effort to avoid ragebait or triggering content.

    There’s a codeberg issue for this on kbin already, so just have to wait for it to be addressed. Not sure if Lemmy has an equivalent issue on their GitHub (or whatever they use) yet.

    I do not have the same problem as OP. Probably because when I made my accounts, if there was an option to disable NSFW (or not enable NSFW) I made sure to have NSFW disabled/not enabled.





  • what makes Mastodon style federation even better than that is that you can move your account from one server to another in a way you really can’t for email.

    Not sure how that works. With emails, if I move from email123@aol.com to email123@protonmail.com I lose my old emails and people trying to contact me there, but I can just start over. If I remember peoples’ emails I can also tell them I moved to protonmail and to talk to me there. With federation, if I move servers I lose my comment, post, and upvoted history; people messaging me; and my subscribed communities; but I can just start over. If I remember people’s usernames and subscribed communities I can tell the people I moved and to talk to me there, and re-subscribe on the new account. Unlike with email I can still see my old account’s comments and posts, but otherwise I’m not sure how moving accounts in the Fediverse is different from changing emails.