Sorry, my examples maybe didn’t make clear what my issue with the post is. The fact that public support for Israel in Western Europe is at the lowest point ever recorded, is not really a “YSK”, it’s not a piece of advice or tip that I can use in my daily life. It’s good information, but it belongs under News, or Politics. It’s not, as the sidebar says “things that can make your life easier”, unless you went to argue that it psychologically makes my life easier, in which case then I can fit just about anything into this community, in which case why do I even have the community? If everything belongs in the community, then the community may as well not exist.

Just think of how much better and more honest this post would have been if it had been made in a news community with a title that was just the title of the article and then a link to the article. But by being posted here in this manner, it comes across as engagement bait - and yes, the title is definitely contributing to that. Is it really news to anyone that people don’t like genocidal murderous bastards? Is that really something “I should know”?

Technically anything that’s news could also be posted here, if we take the definition of the community at its most literal level. But if that’s the case, why should we have a separate news community and a ysk community? Clearly, there should be some sort of distinction between things that belong in ysk versus in the various news communities.

But in all practicality, every Lemmy user already knows about Israeli genocidal behavior in Gaza. If every community just becomes format-differentiated reposts of the same stuff, all of Lemmy becomes one big content-blob.

Even if I totally agree that, for example, Elon Musk is obnoxious, and I want to hear some news that he got punched in the face - I don’t want to open Lemmy and see:

You should know Elon Musk got punched in the face

Mildly interesting: Elon Musk got punched in the face

Mildly infuriating: Whoever punched Elon Musk in the face didn’t punch him hard enough

Map porn: Countries where Elon Musk has been punched in the face

Gaming: Would you play a Punch Elon Musk In The Face Simulator?

Am I the asshole: for thinking Elon Musk deserved to be punched in the face?

Programmer Humor: if(isElonMusk){punchedInFace = True;}

Privacy: If it’s illegal to punch Elon in the face why is it legal to punch my privacy in the face with tracking?

LinuxMemes: sudo punch Elon Musk in face

Uplifting news: Elon Musk punched in face

Depressing news: Elon Musk not punched twice in face

Television: Just watched this character get punched in the face. Remind you of anyone?

Classic Rock: “Facepunch” - 1982

Piracy: Links to movies where billionaires get punched in the face?

I love this comment so much. One of the biggest things that destroyed the quality of Reddit, although this is almost never talked about, was the trend of shoehorning the same topic into every subreddit, no matter how niche. Then to make matters worse, people will insist on leaving the post in an unsuitable community just because they like the sentiment of the post. But over time this means that the purpose of communities completely breaks down, and the whole site just becomes “different formats for us all to express the same take on the same current event”. Absolutely insidious. Entire purpose of communities is so that people can customize their experience and see different types of content depending on what they’re interested in. Forcing the same topic into every community not only makes the service insufferable, but it also means there’s no point to joining small communities or contributing to them. You devolve to everyone just looking at the top most popular stuff, because all they would see anywhere else is just cutesy forced variants on that same thing anyways. Do not force topics into every community.

Again: Do not force topics into every community.

Yeah, that was a critical quote. Undeniably he is saying that black people should be sterilized.

Yeah this isn’t newsworthy because she’s rich, tbh there’s probably richer immigrant students at Harvard we don’t know about. But diplomatically this is a pretty big deal. This lady is gonna grow up to wield substantial political influence in her country, and she likely won’t have warm feelings towards America as a result of this.

So then can anything that produces dopamine be addictive? Can I get addicted to hugging my girlfriend, or addicted to reading books, or jogging? Or is there some threshold? Does the intensity per time matter, or just the intensity, or just the time? What about the frequency of exposure? Does any amount of dopamine release make me slightly more addicted to whatever it is, or is there some threshold that needs to be exceeded? Do dopamine-based addictions produce physical withdrawal symptoms, always, never, sometimes? Depending on what? And are physical withdrawal symptoms necessary to constitute addiction or are there different tiers of addiction?

You see what I’m getting at. There’s sooo many questions that need to be answered before just saying “this produces lots of dopamine therefore it’s addictive and bad and should be limited”. While I appreciate and empathize with your sentiment about people cherry-picking the studies they like (sounding like an LLM here lol), it’s not as if science doesn’t know how to deal with that problem, and it certainly isn’t a reason to stop caring about or citing studies at all, or say “well you’ve got your studies and I’ve got mine”. Just because both sides have studies that give evidence in their favor doesn’t mean both sides are equally valid or that it’s impossible to reach an informed conclusion one way or the other.

My next biggest question (and what I’m trying to drive at with the semi-rhetorical slew of questions I opened with) would be what makes something an addiction or not? Am I addicted to staying alive, because I’ll do anything to stay alive as long as possible? That seems silly to call an addiction, since it doesn’t do any harm. And how do we delineate between, say, someone who is addicted to playing with Rubik’s Cubes vs. someone who just really likes Rubik’s Cubes and has poor self-control? Or what about someone with some other mental quirk, like someone who plays with Rubik’s Cubes a lot due to OCD, or maybe an autistic person who plays a lot with Rubik’s Cubes out of a special interest? Does the existence of such people mean that “Rubik’s Cube Addiction” is a real concern that can happen to anyone who plays with Rubik’s Cubes too much? Or perhaps Rubik’s cubes are not addictive at all, and it is separate traits driving people to engage with them in a way that appears addictive to others.

I know I’ve written a long post and asked lots of questions. It’s not my intention to “gish gallop” you, just to convey my variety of questions. The Rubik’s example is the one thing I’m most curious to hear your thoughts on. (There I go sounding like an LLM again)

If every person who disagrees with you counts as further evidence that you’re right, then you’re thinking in an unfalsifiable manner, which is the basis for many a flawed conclusion. It doesn’t necessarily make you wrong, but you should really make sure to find justifications for your beliefs that are based on falsifiable reasoning instead. That’s the best way to know if what you’re believing is right or wrong, because you can try to falsify your beliefs in the way that you know them to be falsifiable, and if they still couldn’t be falsified, then you can say “Well, I tried to disprove this, and it still passed that test!”

So, let me ask you this, what would, hypothetically, suffice to prove or at least suggest evidence that porn addiction does not exist? If your answer is “nothing”, then you’re in unfalsifiable territory.

Oh, yeah, I know. My issue is more about the word being reused so much. Whenever I see a word take off memetically like that I feel like it’s usually accompanied by a lack of deep thought. Almost like a thought-terminating cliche.

Yeeees although I feel like I’m walking into a trap rn

I’m more sick of hearing “slop slop slop slop slop” than I am of hearing about AI at this point. People sling slop around like it’s some sort of brave, heroic, destructive insult, leaving AI users in tears and shambles in its wake. Ironic considering a complaint against AI is that it regurgitates the same characteristic bit of content over and over again mindlessly. But even ChatGPT would have the writing skill to cycle in some other adjectives, my goodness.

Yup that seems to make the most sense to me. Guess we’ll just have to check in on that account in awhile. No news articles on it yet.

Yeah basically my exact thoughts. Glad I’m not alone in that interpretation!

Very interesting. I don’t use Bluesky and I’m trying to verify the accuracy of this information. Does anyone else find her account strange? 8 hours ago she posts this terrifying message. And…3 hours ago she posts a totally chill introduction? Isn’t that backwards? And she seems to have an awful lot of followers for just these two posts. The name seems legit from a quick search, tied to a lawyer indeed. But I’m kind of surprised people aren’t more freaked out in the replies - isn’t this the first known instance of a citizen being targeted for deportation? But it’s mostly jokes from responders. And her post chronology is confusing to me still. Maybe someone can help clarify/verify.