Tons of them. Just today I taught one person about bird biology in regards to feather replacement and another I am helping prepare their family farm to hopefully host a barn owl nest we desperately need in our state.
It is also due to the great conversations I had here with people everyday that encouraged me to get involved with wildlife rehabilitation 2 years ago and it’s been one of the greatest adventures in my life. Everyone has been so supportive and has helped me develop my knowledge by asking great questions and sharing their enthusiasm with me about so many beautiful animals.
I’ve also participated in some political threads when the events were local and I’d been able to add nuance to the conversation. The trick is to just read the room and see if the thread is already trending hostile and just learn who is here to be combative vs to have real discussions.
I also just try to not be a jerk myself. I said something yesterday that got a more outspoken communists a bit insulated and I explained what my point of the original comment was a bit better and they calmed down when they saw I wasn’t being insulting to their beliefs.
I just use the same guidelines for conversation I would in real life here, and almost all my interactions here are positive ones.
The womensstuff community has been quite a positive corner of the fediverse for me.
I’ve also had great chats about music, punk specifically, and food with other lemmings.
I see you in that community a lot. I can’t participate in it myself, but it is always interesting reading it and seeing perspectives so different from my own. I’m glad you find it enjoyable enough to contribute to the space and keep it alive.
The shitposting is 🧑🍳🤌💋
Lots of funny, good natured people just doing the meme thing.
Someone taught me private space and profile best practices in GrapheneOS today. Really useful information.
Saving that 😄
Yes ive had some good help from people regarding programming questions I had.
Regularly. Given your question, I imagine that hasn’t been your experience.
What sort of responses are you getting? Do those responses seem typical for the community? Or are they more negative than usual?
I’ve had many positive interactions with other users on Lemmy and piefed—across various communities.
I really appreciate the Fediverse, but unfortunately I’m also familiar with the phenomenon where people go along with the majority and downvote comments or posts just because the opinion expressed doesn’t match their own.
I think the developers of reddit clones like Lemmy should change the system so that downvotes are only available to users who have already contributed helpful posts or comments.
The requirements for this should be left to the community.
In my opinion, this would significantly reduce the burdensome negativity of apps of this kind, and the discussions would be better. This is all the more true in the Fediverse, since it is much easier here to create multiple accounts to influence the discourse.
It would likely also prevent the inevitable misunderstanding that downvotes on reddit clones like Lemmy are not intended to express disapproval, but rather to flag a post or comment that are unhelpful, nonsensical, offensive, deceptive, or malicious—in short, not conducive to the discussion.
There are instances that don’t allow downvotes at all.
In terms of politics, which is mostly what I discuss on here, I once read a Cowbee post that actually made something click for me that I hadn’t understood, basically, that a socialist system should seek to nationalize industries primarily once they’ve become sufficiently developed that incentives for growth are no longer necessary or useful. Previously, my framework had been more along the lines of state-run for necessitities and private for luxuries, without consideration of the level of development, but Cowbee’s explanation clicked for me and connected the concept of enshittification to the question which transformed the way I looked at things.
Um. Other than that, for all the discussions I’ve been in, not a lot else comes to mind. I find it really difficult to have high level discussions with people I don’t already broadly agree with, because people just aren’t interested. Whenever I attempt to pose a real question, or pick people’s brains in a meaningful way, it just gets ignored. People just really like screaming at each other over the same like three topics forever, everything gets reduced to team sports, and those categorized as being on the other team get completely dismissed. Like honestly, that weird cult of “Soulism” that we have on here is at least more thought provoking and mentally stimulating that the 10,000th shouting match of “tankie!” “lib!” “tankie!” “lib!” “Genocide denier!” “Genocide enabler!” blah blah blah, it all gets so boring.
Sometimes I really miss being in school and writing essays, where I could know that someone was going to read it, think about it, and provide feedback. Trying to talk about anything high-level on here is shouting into the void. But everywhere else I know of on the internet is even worse! The only spaces where people actually engage with the sort of questions I’m interested in are spaces where everyone broadly agrees with my perspective already, which also gets boring.
Sometimes, I just need something interesting and challenging to mull over while working an understimulating job, and it’s hard to find that.
, I once read a Cowbee post
Did you bookmark the link, by any chance?
I’m not sure which post @[email protected] is referring to, but in simple terms, markets are useful in that they stitch together and connect production. This is a progressive development on disparate, unconnected production, be it for necessities or for luxuries. However, once production is all stitched together, it’s easier to see the whole and plan it, by which point the progressive aspects of markets have outlived their usefulness.
What’s key, though, is control. Class struggle remains alive until it ends. In order to maintain socialist control, the large firms and key industries need to be dominated by a working class state. This way capitalists cannot leverage control over the means of production and turn it into political power, they are kept to secondary and highly competitive industries in a birdcage. They may fly as they see fit within those bounds, but the owner of the cage can shrink it as they see fit.
Capitalism’s historic role is in connecting humanity. In other words, in socializing production. The working class’s historic role is socializing distribution as well, moving from the chaos of markets to a scientific plan gradually after siezing political control.
Hope that helps!
Unfortunately not, this was a long time ago. But I’m sure if you ask them they’d be happy to explain.
The fact that it keeps me off Reddit is a huge plus.
Gotten anything positive out of interacting with other users?
You bet. All the time!
I feel belonging. In addition, whenever someone tells me they find what I say helpful, it feels great!
I think Lemmy also helps me calibrate my sensors that sense the world. I know what software’s doing well, what software’s not doing so well, and what software is complex.
I can’t think of an example but definitely yes in non-political tech discussions about subjects like 3d printing.
I had a great discussion on Mastodon about the logic of making bike helmets a legal requirement or not. I learned a lot and actually changed my mind on the subject…
So do you think they should be a legal requirement or not?
No. Obviously I think if you can wear them you should, but making them required reduces the willingness of people to cycle, so as a strategy for swapping from car to bike, it is less effective.
Interesting… So do you feel the same about motorcycle helmets?
No. But we’re not trying to encourage people to drive more motorcycles.
We want to reduce the barrier to someone using a pedal bike, and if they have to fart around trying to find a helmet or worry about getting a ticket, they’re more likely to just not bother and use a car instead.
Unheard of! You are the chosen one!
Yes, advice from Lemmy helped me sort out my HRT regimen, and it’s made a huge quality of life improvement for me :-)
Likewise, the community on blahaj has been so supportive and helpful as I’ve figured out my gender and started transitioning! It’s a great space
Oh that’s awesome - well done on starting your journey!
yes quite regularly. i wouldn’t be here otherwise… this place feels much less toxic than most other places online too.
though tbh it does feel like an echo chamber sometimes. i tend to agree with far too many things i read here compared to other places.
So far after about three years, it’s mixed for me. I had positive interactions on communities that I’m here for, like bike packing, bike touring, or one of the numerous fuck cars communities. The bird pictures community is nice.
But I’ve also been told I should commit suicide, or that my comments are not worth posting. So it’s mixed, and sometimes I refrain from posting comments on memes and or controversial stuff because I don’t want those replies. I’m typing this and I’m thinking about deleting it before posting.
More positive than negative overall, but lately I’ve been thinking about commenting less on Lemmy because of those few negative interactions.
I’ve learned a lot about history, Linux terminal commands, wildlife, and even got manga recommendations from discussions with folks here.
I do my best to avoid antagonistic conversation towards other users.
