I seriously cannot have any degree of nuanced conversation here.
Like I get it, we all know capitalism is bad, but it feels like every time I or anyone go towards discussing the steps that need to be taken to address current looming problems in the short term, someone has to jump in and shut it down with "capitalism bad >:[ " and tear down any idea presented because its not complete and total destruction of the current economic model.
The result just feels like an echo chamber where no actual solutions get presented other than someone posting whole ass dissertations on their 33-step (where 30/33 steps are about as vague as “we’ll just handle it”) plan to fully convert the world to an anarchist commune.
Edit: I still vastly prefer Lemmy and the fediverse and a whole, my complaint here is that many of you are TOO INTENSE. You blow up small scale discussion.
I discovered Lemmy and Hacker news at roughly the same time, and the difference in comment quality is striking. Obviously HN is a lot more mature platform, and more specialised, but still… People over there are lamenting the quality of their comments and saying they’re not what they used to be, but the majority are interesting and constructive
It’s cool if you like to circle jerk with libertarian tech bros I suppose.
omg lyk dis iz wat op is tlkin abt!!!,
It’s obvious these people don’t enjoy this place, yet instead of leaving to find somewhere else they do enjoy or putting in a modicum of effort snd starting a community to foster likeminded peoples, they’d rather moan to feel validated.
Or in other words, they want a right wing discussion board and are upset people would rather engage in other topics.
HN has its weird streaks. It’s a platform managed by a VC company so it’s full of startup people, and that skews perception a little bit.
There are also some very weird things HN seems to do that don’t have anything to do with tech. Any skepticism of yoga and meditation will get you downvoted to oblivion, for instance. Criticism of China is avoided, probably because it’s so easy to flag posts into disappearing.
The generally highly educated crowd also tends to believe they’re experts in whatever topic comes up. Covid had antivaxxers and horse dewormer defenders everywhere. People linked and discussed medical papers with no knowledge or experience in reading them, coming to absurd conclusions, only to get corrected by an expert hours later.
They’re also obsessed with anti aging drugs. I suppose I get it, a lot of startup people put their best years into a startup with the hopes to cash out and live the good life later, and the more you can stop aging, the less of a risky investment the burnout and working to exhaustion becomes, but they rarely seem to stop to think of the actual consequences of what they’re looking after.
Lemmy has its fair share of HN style commenters, but the people leaving Reddit over the API thing combined with the preexisting Fediverse crowd make for a weird mix.