Recently over the past couple of months, I've seen political discussion on every single social media (yes, that includes Lemmy) become a bear fight full of propaganda. Twitter/X is becoming a racist hellhole with people hating Jews, Black people and Muslims for existing whilst Lemmy is quickly fostering extremism. There is no where on the Internet, except for small chat channels, that is normal. What do I mean by normal?
Every single place is an echo chamber. Those inside it will shout that the other place is one, but we all know it. Lies and propaganda are constantly being cycled on Lemmy and the other Fediverse, but nobody bats an eye because "we're better" and the other side is full of disgusting people. The same thing is happening in conservative spaces. I don't want to talk about "race wars" "black fatigue" or "Jew bioweapons" nor do I want to talk about mass murder of billionaires and complete social destruction. I just want all of you to be normal.
Tribalism has influenced all of these spaces. In the information age, we have become the dumbest and most extreme political speakers in history. We no longer value the truth of information, just the optics. We sour the airwaves with filth, bringing it into schools, universities and even political administrations. We have madmen destroying the biggest country on Earth whilst people here defend the indefensible.
There is no more love in politics. No more "agreeing to disagree", no more facts or intelligence. It's just pure, unfettered hate.
Lemmy's just the lesser of two evils. Whilst I post here a lot, let me be clear: this place is a shithole. Sure, you guys aren't as washed and feral as conservatives, but you guys are still washed and feral. You guys infect everything with misplaced social justice, constantly finding to ruin everything on the basis of your apparent prejudice. You can't wait to bring people down, and never the other way around.
There is no reason to talk about politics on the Internet anymore. Everyone is lying. Everyone has an agenda. Everyone is being a bad person.
I am so tired
EDIT: after being so long winded myself I did go read your whole post XP
I’m going to be real honest and say I didn’t read your whole post, but I get and agree with the sentiment. Only thing I’ll add is that, to a degree, the easy creation of those echo chambers is the point of the fediverse. The point of picking your instance is to find like minded users you align with. This actually, to me, makes it feel more “normal,” like you describe. Your standard text and discord group chats feel homey. To me the word I like is “local”. Which is also the term the fediverse uses for browsing your instance. Just by filtering by local I know I’m seeing content from people I would happily join a voice call with, or even meet in person.
Maybe just browse by local more? Maybe move to a niche instance? Host an instance for your geographic area. Or use mastodon and just follow hashtags. These tools are exactly the point of the fediverse, to give you fine control over your feed and make a social media platform designed to be put down. You’ll see the new posts from people and about things you’re interested in and then you’re done. If you want to go find the toxicity of course it’s there, but that is in fact optional!
What is the adage? “If you let a single nazis into your bar, it is already a nazi bar”? We actually can and should be intolerant of the intolerant, otherwise tolerance will be wiped out. If you aren’t having fun because of the people in your particular echo chamber, find a different one. Healthy echo chambers exist, and I generally refer to that as community. I often call my instance and the board I mod “the comm” when talking about them. I think this more local feeling helps people put their humanity back into social media and actually get to know each other. Anonymity really twists certain people, but to me federated social media helps remind me there’s a human just like me on the other end of the keyboard.