this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2023
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.
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Not really meaning for this to sound as arrogant as it's going to, but... Lemmy is almost entirely populated by nerds so far.
Nerds tend to be open to tech, maybe a little smarter overall. You know? You can tell by the grammar, the spelling. It's a different group here.
Reality is left leaning, and the stupider someone is, in general, the more likely they are to lean right politically. The rest of the right are the really rich, who tend to be up the psychological spectrum toward sociopathic, so of course they would have no time for caring for others' needs.
It really is. So much of conservatism involves pissing into the wind, and trying to argue against objective truth.
I know this was a joke Colbert made, but the truth is the reverse: the left is reality-leaning. It's truly terrifying to see how divorced from reality the right-wing is, and how gleefully they just keep storming in that direction.
To an extent. But whenever there is a political discussion on Hacker News, the lib right response is very, very loud, and I try to remind myself I appreciate Hacker News for its tech news.
I think the culture is just different. Lemmy was started and run by Tankies. Hacker News was started by Y Combinator, which incubates silicon valley startups. They're going to attract different audiences, or at least different groups of people who will put up with different politics. I can't claim to be particularly upset about the .ml domains being pulled and the center mass of Lemmy moving away from those instances.
What's a tankie? I keep seeing it.
I had to look it up too. Apparently it's an authoritarian leftist. Thinks state-socialism was a good thing. As while most leftists are more of the democratic, market, and anarchist varieties.
State socialism is a good thing, what tankies promote is something else, they're fascist that can't accept that fact because it would mean having something in common with the fascists in the USA, a country that they hate so much that they're ready to deny reality to have an anti USA opinion.
I'm confused, and you seem to be a lot more familiar with the term. I read the wiki link that explains tankies. I don't personally know any left leaning people who support Russia/Stalin/China regimes. Maybe because of my America-centric viewpoint and where things are today, but typically people who are economically left are also socially and politically left (equal opportunity is more important than individual freedoms), which is very anti-fascist. I've heard people say how great a true communism could be if it were possible, but no one's ever made it past a dictatorship to get there.
Are tankies people who are economically left but socially and politically right, and think someone has achieved a communist utopia without knowing anything about the corrupt oligarchies in Russia or CCP China?
The problem is not state socialism, it's the authoritarian side of it. Tankies promote authoritarian views similar to fascists but with a different economics view (not even that different some times), hence they prefer the dictatorships like USSR (in these days even Putin, which is idiotic), North Korea, China; over what they perceive as imperialist, the USA (I agree on calling it imperialistic and disliking it, but not on considering it worse than dictatorships).
I'm a communist which likes state socialism, but what is and was present in those dictatorship (ignoring the authoritarian side which I despise) is state capitalism.
Thank you for taking the time to explain! I appreciate you!
Thanks for explaining for me, that's exactly what I meant, I just didn't have the time to reply!
The confusion comes from so much mass media that equates socialism with communism. They're orthogonal concepts! Saying socialism is the same as communism is like saying beer-making is exactly the same as cheese-making. Anyone who understands what beer and cheese are would be like, "I'm sorry, what‽"
The best way to think of socialism is that's it's a governance strategy that can be used wherever you want. Want everyone to pay taxes in order to fund and deliver government-run firefighting services? That's socialism. Want to do the same with the military? Socialism. Whenever the government is delivering some good or service by way of taxpayer dollars that's socialism.
Capitalism and communism are economic systems. You can have socialist government constructs under either capitalism or communism. It's just that communism doesn't really have the flexibility to provide goods or services in any other way than via the government.
Then there's countries like China that claim to be communist (and the Right loves to call them that) but really, they're more capitalist than communist. What they do have that most communists and fascist governments have is authoritarianism.
That authoritarianism is what fascists and "tankies" have in common: Fascists support an authoritarian, pseudo-capitalist government while "tankies" support an authoritarian, pseudo-communist government.
Congratulations: That, and only that, is a tankie. It is a good practical defintion for the term.
As I see it, tankies are just the same as the Trumpers. You can't really say where they stand socially and politically, because they do not have a coherent opinion or ideology. Everyone who opposes their favorite regime is WRONG, and everything their favorite regime does is RIGHT. Bonus points for every action and opinion that hurts "woke lefties", because the favorite regimes of tankies are all inevitably incompatible with progressive ideas and ideologies.
Imagine the answer a Trumper would give when you ask them if they don't know about Trump's corruption and character. The tankies answer just the same in response to allegations in regard to corruption and character of their favorite regimes:
First of all, none of that is true, because the woke lefties, the media, and everyone are all corrupt, and lying. And what is true, is all a well played move of brilliant 5D chess which will save us all, because the supposed "corruption" is actually all part of a very smart and deliberate system of ploys and strategems which the woke lefties just don't understand.
Now, do the tankies and Trumpers truly believe that? Who knows. Doesn't really matter anyway. What is clear is that both of those "ideologies" are dumb idiots.
They're authoritarian. Not fascist. There is a difference. Even if both groups are more dedicated to authoritarianism than anything else. I would not be caught dead voluntarily anywhere with a fascist. While I disagree heavily with ML communist I might associate with them a little bit. But just never give them power.
Thanks for not leaving out the anarchists
I don't think you understand how small of a global majority white European men are.
Thinks Stalin was cool and Lenin was correct to break the short lived democracy of the USSR. The rest is details.
Basically authoritarian leftists that are caricaturized as worshipping the Soviet Union
Thanks! I thought it was Lemmy specific slang.
Nah it's been going on for probably more than a decade
The Experience
I gotcha
People who cheer when others point out flaws in USA but start screaming when flaws in Russia or China are pointed out.
The super rich are usually highly educated but they live in such a homogenous bubble that they’re opinions on the majority of society should be entirely discounted. They usually have a total lack of empathy for people and vote for politicians with the same attitude. I have met some super rich people who try very hard to go against the grain and not fall into that mindset, but something about the need for protecting your money and lifestyle usually promotes an untrustworthy and skeptical view of everyone in their lives including their own family.
It's not the tech nerds funding the right wing; it's the venture capitalists
Those are CEOs.
There's a huge contingent of socialist/leftist techies. How do you think the open source movement happened? The most popular operating system for both servers and smartphones is given away to the world by a .org
I'm not saying there are no right-wing tech nerds, I'm saying that your argument that tech nerds are right wing is overly reductive.
You concede my point about FOSS but then try to muddy the waters from there by citing "their platforms started getting cracked down on and [their having] adopted cryptocurrency" to try to make your prior pidgeon-holing still work. Mind citing me a source for either of those claims? Neither of those seem to me to be issues plaguing the wider FOSS community, and as a participant I'm interested to hear about this news I've apparently missed.
Silicon Valley is not representative of tech nerds in general. It is, like Hollywood, a small area filled with desperate people trying to turn their talents into fame and fortune. Insinuating that tech nerds in general have the same culture as Silicon Valley is like insinuating that actors in general dress, act, and think like Hollywood actors do. It's ridiculous on its face.
All this to say it really sounds like you've built up a stereotype based on what you read in the news rather than by engaging with the actual community in question.
That used to be different, too
Ablism, real nice.
I am really not liking what you are throwing down and I am not seeing evidence of your multiple assertions. I am fairly leftwing, been an engineer for 15 years, I don't enjoy dealing with companies that are run by rightwingers but I am not going to do a purity test.
Stop with the discrimination against the high functioning autistic at least. I am sorry your glowing rectangle provider who let you unlock it but that is hardly our fault.
I wouldn't call them nerds because they're venture capitalists not nerds. Nerds implies some sort of technological or engineering skill or ability. Steve Jobs would qualify; not these two.
....I am not funding the right wing. I am building a better world one line of code and one circuit at a time.
Get off the wrong internet spaces and you'll start meeting the right kinds of nerds.
Perfectly summed up.
Your username/instance combo is amazing. 10/10
That instance is epic lol .uk
lol, thanks
The political vibe on Lemmy isn't really a new thing. Reddit had it 15 years ago. Good forums and IRC channels had it before that. It's been part of the "golden age" of every online social medium
Eventually, teenage edgelords find start taking up too much space. Shortly after that, the far-right turn up to prey on them.
The people who made the platform good in the first place leave and the cycle begins anew.
“tens”
“You can tell by the grammar, the spelling”
Do you realise how dehumanising and ignorant you're being? You're just using stereotypes of your specific country to generalise everyone you disagree with.
Underestimating your "rivals" never goes well, as reality is often more complex than "we empathetic genuises they dumb psychos"
If anyone is basing their morals specifically just to go against their "rivals", I would seriously question that person's ethics, empathy, and reasoning skills. I'm absolutely serious about that. I would not trust that person in real life.
I would also have little sympathy for anyone who makes their own life worse just to get one in on their "rivals". You should always think how a new law might expand in 5-10 years, and not just focus on the current emotions.
If someone who you considered to be a truly terrible person got into power next, would you feel comfortable with those groundwork protections being seen as changeable? Would you be ok with that terrible person having that level of say over your life, knowing that they would get away with it?
If you hypothetically start messing with things like your country's ground-level human rights, it's likely to only be a matter of time until everyone is effected by it in unpleasant ways. Everyone thinks these changes will magically stop before it hits them, but I would strongly recommend for these people to brush up on history again. How has that gone in the past?
Politics shouldn't be some lame "gotcha" game because politics effect the real lives of many people. If anyone wants to do "gotcha" games, there are many places for those that won't possibly end with someone dead. That "someone" may be a stranger today, but it could be your child, spouse, or best friend next time.
Just cause I’m a nerd dusnt mean I can spell correctly