It really feels like Lemmy is alive because of you.
When I first checked out Lemmy, I wasn’t expecting there to be so much content, so much discussion, and so much community. But I’ve spent the better part of two days glued to my screen, browsing content all day. I’ve seen so many posts, so many interesting discussions about the fediverse, and of course, plenty of memes. It really feels like the start of something incredible.
I’ve gotta get back to work soon, but wow. I think this whole fediverse thing really is the next step for social media. If I find some extra time, I’ll definitely consider contributing to Lemmy’s source code to help this project and the FOSS ecosystem grow.
Except the fascists. Fuck the fascists, they can go back to the holes they crawled out of.
Fuck the fascists? For sure. I fucking hate all those motherfuckers.
Except that, just about the worst thing of all about fascism is the way that it goes out of its way to dehumanize other people, just so as to make it easier to hate them.
So how about, “Fuck fascism” then? I could get behind that. But maybe still try to save some small modicum of love, as well, for all the poor souls who’ve been weak or gullible enough to have fallen for it?
Maybe give them one more chance to come out of their holes, if they’re brave enough? When I can, I always try give them one more chance to do that. In any small way whatsoever.
I don’t mean to purposefully give them “one more chance” to troll, or spew their rhetoric, or stoke hate – even though we all know that’s what they’ll do again, 99 times out of 100.
I don’t mean supporting some reddit echo chamber I am ideologically opposed to just to feed my own ego and provide them all fodder for more echo-chamber bullying and false validation. I mean using a forum for good-faith communication among honest strangers. The way forums have always been intended to be used (but never always have) since the beginning of the internet 30 years ago.
I just mean that, when thinking of another person instead of another person’s ideology, I always want to give them just one more chance to listen to me, and one more chance to talk to me, as a fellow person
One more chance to hear another point of view, one more chance to come to understand and communicate and cooperate from a place of their own standing, as opposed to just snapping back defensively from the place that their fascism has conditioned them to react from.
One more one-in-a-hundred chance that my purposeful efforts to humanize my adversary may somehow lead him to humanize me as well.
Fuck fascism, for sure. But I try not to hate a person for their good intentions. It’s said the road to hell is paved with them, but they’re still usually a whole lot more respectable than bad intentions.
Inspire radical empathy