Bye
You crazies won and proved me wrong. The fediverse isn't worth saving after all.
Over the course of the last several days, I have received a constant stream of harassing messages, death threats, and threats of doxxing over DM, Matrix, Github, and Codeberg. All of it instigated and eggged on by another instance's top admin. This is unacceptable for all of the reasons in the world, and while I won't give you the personal satisfaction of having won, you've definitely proven me wrong about the fediverse being something that even can be saved from itself.
Even people around here I'd interacted with positively for years and had grown to respect because they seemed level headed and above the immature and sociopathic bullshit that dominates this platform showed their true selves. That completely shattered any and all illusions I had that this place has a hidden core of users that I should try to make more visible amongst all the rage, rage baiting, propaganda, harassment, rumor mongering, trolls, conspiracies, purity testing, and violent rhetoric.
Like many of the rational people before me who called this place home, I'm done with this place.
I tried to carve out a space where those people and other rougher edges were not drowning out niche communities and hobbies and where people who choose to use the platform to harass others were also out of sight, out of mind. Apparently only three people who aren't me actually want a place that's not just a circle-jerk of rage and hate. Thus sayeth the mob.
Then you have entire instances whose admins call for the death of others, harass other users, and lead harassment, brigading, and DARVO campaigns against those who dare call out their bullshit or decide to disassociate themselves and their work from them.
Lemmy.World was so close to doing the right thing after instance-that-will-not-be named's admins were calling for the death of LW's admins while spreading rumours and labeling others in such a way that painted them as targets for murder. All of that, mind you, with absoultey no evidence other than specuation and their own cooked-up conspiracies about modlog actions or taking and twisting things wildly out of context to fit their made-up narratives so they had someone to say they 'caught' and should be killed.
.world was on the precipice of doing the right thing and disaccociating themselves from that psychotic shit show, but silently dropped the issue and carried on as usual after wringing their hands for maybe two weeks.
"We have to worry about the optics or the politics of it." they probably said.
Bullshit.
I'm one person and have held my fucking ground, mostly with dignity and grace, in the heat of my own shitstorm of trying to disaccociate from the extremist elements of the fediverse. If I can stand up for what's right and deal with the blowback, so can you.
Fuck lemmy world's admin team for condoning that behavior and letting the human skidmark db0 DARVO his way out of the situation while brigading with his army of malcontents whom he wields like a cult leader. He knows exactly what he is doing, and you all continue to allow him to get away with it.
Nah, fuck this whole place. I've let too many things fall by the wayside IRL because of dealing with all this fediverse bullshit and trying to give it the slightest bit of polish both visually and atmospherically. Mythbusters may have proven that you can, in fact, polish a turd, but at the end of the day, it's still a shiny ball of shit.
For the few people left who didn't turn out to be psychotic, I'll think of you from time to time when recalling something you've posted or commented that genuinely made me laugh, made me think, or otherwise put a smile on my face or in my heart.
Everyone else, though, enjoy your toxic, xenophobic, knee-jerk-to-violence, purity-testing, and harassing-anyone-who-doesn't-fall-in-line cess pit. One day you, too, will do or say something that doesn't toe the line and you'll be right where I am.
P.S. Rimu, you owe me a beer. No one is talking about the Piefed vote quotas anymore, so you're welcome.
EDIT: forgot to add:
EDIT2:
Removed the link to the original message because the douche included a Javascript on the page to DDOS Dbzero0
Which countries aren't 'liberal' or some degree of brutal authoritarian dictatorship?
By "liberalism is not the default mode of existence," I meant to reject liberalism's tendency to label its constructions as "natural", "inevitable", or "universal". E.g., private property is not natural (even territorial animals cannot establish property lines like we do), not inevitable, and not universal (because it is a specifically Western liberal concept). Capitalism is not natural (c.f. Kropotkin's Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution), inevitable, or universal (e.g. various hunter-gatherer societies).
I am absolutely not denying liberalism's ubiquity in modern times. Quite the opposite: liberalism is ubiquitous in Western society and societies that interface with Westerners, hence why I am so eager to combat it!
You're using the word "liberalism" a lot, can you define it in one short sentence for me?
Liberalism is the justifying ideology of liberal democracy. Liberalism nominally stands for freedom, individual liberty, and equality, but actually perpetuates white supremacy, capitalism, colonialism, and the State.
So you're going to help us strive for a true democracy, with actual freedom, individual liberty, and equality, right?
Practically, yes. That's why I'm not a liberal. Liberals are lying to you.
Also, direct democracy is not necessarily the most egalitarian way to make decisions within a collective. Also, more often than not, coming to a binding decision democratically is not as useful as either coming to a voluntary consensus, or going your own way. I.e., democrats, liberals, and socialists (including some anarchists) overemphasize the particular form of direct democracy, as opposed to one of various possible horizontal decision making processes, or whether we really need to agree to a decision.
Obviously direct democracy is better than liberal democracy, all day, not even close. But I'm trying to make a subtle point that we need to de-emphasize democracy of any kind as a dogma, and emphasize non-domination and horizontalness. I.e., I agree with democracy advocates about the participatory, liberatory aims of direct democracy, but I do not necessarily agree that direct democracy is literally always the optimal way to implement that participatory, liberatory vision that I hope we all share.
This is why I like sortition as an everyday working mechanism for voluntary associations, with direct democracy as a backup for when the randomly picked people screw up.
You might as well ask which societies aren't some variety of feudalism before liberalism was invented. It's not an eternal unbreakable system.
They said "in the west". I want to know which non-Western countries exactly they're referring to.
Because it sounds to me like they're just on China/Russia propaganda-brain.
Nah you won't see me glazing Russia, China, or any other state. I'm literally an anarcho-communist. But Russia and China are absolutely not liberal democracies.
So then why do you use Russian and Chinese propaganda phrases like "in the west"?
So because Chinese and Russian propagandists have ever used the words "in the West", I'm never allowed to use them? I'm not allowed to use a concept because they used a concept? Nah, that's silly.
Why do you use English when Russian and Chinese propaganda also use English?
Sounds like you're just on western liberal propaganda brain
No, I'm not. I'm your worst nightmare - an independent thinker.
Cringe
Cope harder, tankie.
Average self proclaimed "free thinker"
At least I actually try to make the world for the working class a better place, instead of dream about a China that doesn't actually exist on the internet.
Yeah? How? Can we help?
Sure you do.
The socialist ones
Such as?
Vietnam, Cuba, China
Can you explain to me how a country with stock markets, banks, and billionaires qualifies as "socialist"?
Because none of those things are incompatible with socialism.
So then countries like Canada, Ireland, Finland, Denmark, surely they're even more socialist by your standards of the people owning the means of production?
No
Can you elaborate on how you think the working class people in countries like China, Vietnam, or Cuba own more of the production than in western European countries?
It's imperfect in both, but it's actually pretty straightforward that the first three have more of the means of production owned by the state. So they are more socialist, even if they aren't syndicalist, or another flavour of anarchist communism.
I praise socialism even when it's just government ownership, because it is more accountable to the people than if it was in private hands.
You are right to criticise both systems for not being more communist than they are, but don't be blind to actual socialism when it exists just because it's flawed.
They aren't criticising both systems, they're arguing for liberalism.
Not necessarily. Haven't seen them say that. They're attacking state communism, sure, but that's not necessarily a defence of liberalism.
Maybe you should read the whole comment chain before replying then.