Meme criticising the US two-party system deleted from lemmy.world; now I'm not allowed to post political posts at all
I posted this meme to the Lemmy Shitpost community. I reckoned that it might generate a bit of debate, and would probably end up locked, but the entire post got deleted, and moreover, I'm now forbidden from sharing political posts to the community. Political posts are not against the rules of the community.
I have reason to believe that the post was deleted not because it was controversial, but because the moderator (Decoy321) disagreed with the political slant of the meme. The reason I find this suspicious is because other controversial posts, such as one about veganism remains up, and Decoy321 seemed to enjoy the fact it was controversial:
How dare you shitpost in the shitposting community. Your post is exactly the kind of thing I like to see there.
I agree, the mod probably didn't like the political message.
I'll be honest. Even as an anarcho-communist, I don't care for these kinds of political reductions.
However, given that it's a shitposting community, seems like lost-nuance is kind of part and parcel to the spirit of the community (which is why I don't go there). I'd call this PTB.
Watch this comrades!
🔗!
This meme below got removed a few days ago. I think if you post anything controversial that rustles enough jimmies to make people rage-cry report you, they just remove the post rather than deal with angry nerds.
Or they just really hate trains, the jerks!
Edit: Same mod
down with trains!
*This message was written by big unicycle
You are now a moderator of c/lemmyshitpost
Hear me out. A monorail made solely of unicycles strung together. Win-win!
I mean, that's why we are against train. With train tracks, we can have 2x density, with bidirectional traffic.
Unicycle or bust
🔗
I disagree with your meme, especially during primary season, but I still upvoted because I think everyone should be able to post their "controversial" memes.
Great meme, PTB.
PTB, as they say. If you scratch a liberal, a fascist bleeds.
Flyingsquid has been inactive for a year now
I had a quick look through and pretty much every moderator on that community has almost no activity recently, I wonder if they're using their accounts for moderator action only, and participating on another account.
You can search by mod action on the modlog page, flying squid hasn't been doing anything since he left, as a user or a mod. I don't know about the others.
Something something it’s more dignified to be killed by blue, just don’t post in .world, help grow other servers
Someone has to get dirty rolling around in the trenches with the hogs, gotta burst their bubble occasionally. But yep, you're right.
It was Decoy321. Says so right in your modlog.
I don't see it, what am I missing? Can you share a screenshot and I'll add it to the post?
Using the summit app.
They might be using an app. Some of them show a more detailed modlog.
That helped, thank you! I looked at the API request directly in raw JSON, and I can confirm it was indeed Decoy321.
No problem.
lowkey ur first mistake was participating in a shitpost community lmao
edit: ptb obviously
PTB
That was a great post!
Angering the moderators who support murder is valid, PTB.
FWIW, I sprayed some holy water their way. It was great following your rhythm that day.
Welcome to Reddit, but mostly bots.
No shit show in the community with "shit" in the name!!1!
no shit.
But that's kinda the thing with discussing politics online... Usually ends with some flame war.
The thing is, it wasn't even that bad. People were disagreeing, but for the most part, it wasn't too bad from what I saw. Only one comment was deleted for incivility prior to the entire thread getting nuked.
I 100% agree with the mod comment. Seems to me this has to be considered top tier shit as well.
I think the meme you posted and the beliefs it indicates are intensely stupid. However, I disagree with its removal and the heavy handedness of the threat of a ban here.
The differences between the democratic party and the republican party are primarily aesthetic and procedural - being more concerned about whether the rules were followed than about whether innocent people are dying.
The democrats go to war, but they have better excuses for liberals to justify the imperialism to themselves. The biggest difference between Trump and Harris is that Trump is too stupid to do what Bush did, and Kamala isn't.
There are a couple of more progressive candidates here and there, but even the most progressive democrat politician is usually still way more moderate than the median democratic voter.
The meme I posted was indeed a shitpost, but it was intended to act as a springboard to discuss these real issues, not as a defeatist perspective, but to focus on what we should do to solve it. Sticking our heads in the sand and pretending like the ruling class haven't totally fucking us all over and covering up child abuse everywhere isn't sufficient. The Democrats are up to their eyes in lobbyist money and corruption.
Protest and elect. Emphasis on protest.
I will mention in advance, I am completely dissolutioned 🇺🇲civs will do squat. They’ve proven it to me by not storming a deathcamp and demolishing it, and more recently, letting an antiwar vet get his arm broken, instead of chanting with him. Exactly like sheep too stunned to act, just watching an old man get amputated, and letting the Senator continue on.
This is simply an oversimplification to the degree of being simply not true. Are there democrats who are "pro-death but within the rules"? Absolutely. Are they the entire party? No. Some democratic politicians aren't really "pro" anything, they just go with the flow and some are authentically progressive and against endlessly bombing the middle east. Right now we're at a tipping point where there are enough progressives to spook the inauthentic "middle" democrat who doesn't care either way, they just want to get re-elected. All it took was sacrificing a bunch of people domestically (and abroad actually, starving Africans... and probably extra Palestinians) to the blood smeared altar of fascism by letting Trump win again. Congrats to the "anti-genocide" side I guess.
This is conjecture and fundamentally not knowable. Even progressives will control their language to avoid the full ire of the DNC leadership. Just like there are republicans who are legitimately just Nazi's, christian death cultists, or pro-rape or whatever but pretend to be "good ol boys" (though barely bother to do that now) there are progressives who probably secretly want socialism.
I've met plenty of people who describe themselves as "Dem Voters" and people who don't vote at all. To describe the average or median of them as "more progressive" than the most progressive democrat legitimately is an insane thing to believe. Do you live in an urban center in a major blue city or something? (If so I'm jealous) Because that is light years from what I see.
I appreciate that you still have hope and are trying. I mean, I'm still going to do the bare minimum and vote (including primaries) but my days of activism, donating, and volunteering are fucking over now. I'm way too bitter and cynical.
I used to do that. I live in a red state and dude the average person here in is a dire state ideologically. Its like trying to help people who if they knew what I am and what I actually believed would consider me a pariah and probably find me to be a disgusting nihilistic anti-theist communist sexual degenerate.
And they'd be right on at least two counts.
I don't know that I believe that the concept of "left" is coherent anymore. Is punching a progressive liberal OK since they're technically to my right? Doing so seems counter intuitive to electoral victory at all. Tankies are frequently described as to my "left" but tbh I think this makes no sense given who they tend to side with and I'd much rather punch them...
As for punching down, you'll have to pry the r-slur from my cold dead hands. I'm not even sorry because I'm not talking about people with special needs when I use the word. I'm talking about MAGA's, libertarian's, religious people, and ruroids when I use that word.
Scratch a liberal, and a fascist bleeds
Comrade, never entertain fascists.
My cue was “degenerate”
I was describing what other's would describe me as.
In reality, no one should entertain people who value virtue over consequence. You would let the world burn as long as you can describe yourself as ethically pure.
more professional philosophers identify as deontologists than any other ethical system
Being a professional deontological philosopher doesn't actually make an argument for deontology. Or that there more of those than others. That just means a lot of smart people are wrong.
You are exhausting and ML's seemingly favorite phrase to describe anarchists, an unserious person.
Your faction's way of thinking is a major reason I resent existence. You are letting the actual fascists win and there is nothing I could say to change your mind. You might as well have been a MAGA pre-2024. Worthless, stupid, petulantly virtue ethicist.
You have nothing to counter intellectually and its evident. Why should I even try with people like you when this is your vapid fucking response? Waste of time, repeating stupid pointless memes.
Its so depressing. And it just confirms I'm making the right choice to separate myself from this stuff and I don't want to be right, I want to be wrong. I want there to be something here and no one is capable of offering it.
You're very clearly arguing to have your existing beliefs confirmed. If you want to be wrong, ask questions instead of declaring your own positions about things. I'd gladly educate you on why your ideology is wrong and why your beliefs lead to fascism, but it's obvious to me you aren't here to learn
My existing beliefs render me miserable and alienated.
In actuality, I do want someone to demonstrate to me in a way that convinces me. But I'll concede and I'm very good at being convincing in my own defenses of my beliefs to myself.
I have to be ruthless in that way though. If I don't push back as hard as possible, I also wont be convinced that I'm wrong then either.
In a sense, me declaring things is mostly in hopes for a refutation from you with solid reasoning or evidence (though evidence is hard to conjure for ideological arguments). If I ask you what you believe, you will just give me some 101 or something, which wont convince me of anything.
Also to be clear I was using a bit hyperbole with the r-slur statement. Honestly though I have a pretty internally consistent set of reasoning to justify my usage of it.
But whatever, I'm pretty burnt out on my search at this point. My previous post had me increasingly wondering if I just need to get off Lemmy/piefed/whatever. Every time I get into an argument on here it doesn't serve any purpose but to put me in a bad mood for the rest of the day anyway. Just arguing with people not interested in challenging ideas or any ideological dissection. Its always an attack on personal virtue and that's intellectually worthless.
If you're genuinely interested in having a discussion and not a pointless argument, I'd be happy to discuss. Like I said, IMO, it's better to ask questions than just yelling what you already believe at people and talking to them like they're inferior or not as smart as you or something, you'll never get a good response if you approach political discussions like that. Just be curious, if you disagree, instead of saying "NO U R WRONG AND SHIT" you can just say "can you explain a bit more what you mean? in my experience xyz" and you'll get better results in my experience
Anyways my DMs are open, probably better to chat directly rather than using replies if you want.
Nah I reported your post too. Stop spamming US internal political shit in the shitpost community. Keep that to a US politics community
Thanks for sharing and being honest and I totally get it, but don't you think that should be a rule that's fairly and equally enforced, not just applied to posts that the mods personally disagree with?
Yeah fair point, it definitely should be applied equally and its not right if its only subject to mods' opinions. I really wish the community would ban political posts entirelyi need some reprieve from the doom
The problem with banning politics is determining what's considered political. Not long ago divorce, adoption, abortion, nazis, and women wearing pants were hot topics. Now it's immigration, abortion and nazis again, and queer folks wearing skirts.
I'd rather endure some of that doom and gloom through a shipost than the rapid onslaught of panic-inducing headlines.
Old-school internet forums usually did that. Not sure about all the nuance and specifics to meme groups... Just saying it's not a generally impossible thing, or a new idea.
Not saying it hasn't been done, I'm saying it's hard to do well. I've seen "women's issues" and "pronouns" included under "politics," in old-school and new forums, which is why I'm hesitant to agree with no-politics rules.
Sure. I'd consider them politics as well. Those are all topics with a very high chance someone comes along with some (weird) opinion and makes the discussion derail. And then everyone stops discussing the scifi computer game or Linux, and homes in on the controversial topic with a lot of feelings involved.
I think the big cultural achievement is: Forum members have all agreed to live a certain culture. They do it together and there's some group cohesion and a pre-made agreement to all pull in the same direction. So what I've seen a lot of work isn't done by the mods, but people all identify with the rules and the next random person will step in and state "it's getting political again", and then everybody else is cautious not to add to the drama.
I think we lost that with social media. And there's also less group cohesion here. So we end up handling it out of band, mods have to delete posts. Plus we regularly have to peck out the rules again and again... I mean it's not as bad as my words make it out to be. And this isn't entirely down to design and hierarchy. But also group dynamics changed, there's more regular people online than some 15 years ago instead of nerds amongst themselves. And I think politics became way more polarized.
Ultimately, it's all part of our lives. There's obviously demand to discuss politics, pronouns, the crazy setup US Americans call a political system... And I think they're all valid topics. We just have to figure out a way to make it work. Which isn't easy. But I think the Fediverse is up to something. Our basic idea allows us to customize the experience, steer clear of some things or dive down... I think we just have to strike some balance and put in some more work because politics is such an all-consuming topic. And we're a bit of a diverse crowd here. Which is a good thing. But also makes certain things more difficult.
The person who comes along with their disruptive opinions should be moderated, not people who simply exist. Being a woman or having chosen pronouns isn't dramatic.
If someone is uncomfortable with a topic they can simply disengage and start their own thread on their chosen subject.
It's either accept that no one agrees on what's considered political, or have firm rules about subjects that can and can't be discussed.
Lemmy world is fucking weird. They spam the word "zionist" too much.
Honestly it feels like Zionist and tankie are the new "Nazi" name calling (like calling a random commenter a Nazi, on the old internet before actual Nazis like Elon Musk came out of the white supremacy closet).
Kinda wish we had a filter or word block because it's exhausting watching the name calling just flinging around
It is, isn't it? They throw it around if anyone dares to question their position. It is weird to have this odd Rift in the world, and even in US politics, with people like Schumer basically swearing allegiance to another nation when most people dont really know or care about what is happening.
You should stick to Lemmy Shitpost.
Be One Of Us!