Hitchhiking. Total strangers are willing to let yoi into their car and then really interesting conversations Start with people i would never have talked to otherwise because oft different Jobs, Ideologie, class etc. Its always good because the ones that give you a ride are the nice people.
Tom Scott started posting again.
He’s showcasing some incredible people and the things they do.
Finally figuring out that the feeling I’ve had all my life that something just wasn’t right was me not being honest with myself about who I was (gender and sexuality wise), despite being a lifelong cheerleader for everything counter culture, has done wonders for my empathy and given me a needed boost.
I don’t know if this restores all of my faith in humanity but I was getting gas recently and this older country guy basically your typical republican voter starts complaining about the price of gas and I sorta thought he was going to blame the democrats or something but he starts going off on how much he hates 47 and how rich people need to “get what’s comin to em”.
Another leopard victim.
I think we are becoming more and more aware of the exploits of the rich.
I think so, turning people against the rich is the first step
We call this move “bankrupting the casino”
Winner winner, chicken dinner
Well it helps that the gangsters in the whitehouse aren’t trying to hide it anymore. It’s one thing to say you could shoot someone on 5th avenue and nobody would care and expect your followers to believe it. It’s another problem when you start to believe it yourself.
Good. Gooooood.
Ive actually found turning them against the rich is the easiest thing to start with.
Nothing. I really need help, and I’m met with silence.
Can any of us Internet strangers do anything to help?
Yes! I need a job. A full-time job. It doesn’t need to pay great, but I need benefits to save for retirement. The only thing I’m not willing to do is sales. I’m a former front-end web & app developer/designer. I have project management (including PMP) and AWS certifications. I’m willing to relocate. I’m in good physical health and a US citizen.
I just need a source of income that will cover my bills! I’m hungry a lot.
Hold on, let me reach into my bag of jobs… ah yes, here you are.
Janitor at your local Elementary.
Good luck!
I’m already a part-time worker at a grocery store. The janitor jobs are not garunteed full time.
Talking to people around the world and people being kind, even after they find out im originally from the US.
despite the terrible things the internet and the news tells us to fear from people, most people in real life are compassionate, understanding, empathetic and like to laugh.
I go on threads sometimes here that seem really cool and thoughtful replies, that’s what keeps me coming back. It’s like 1-2 times a day at most, sure, but usually encouraging. I have been reading books and it’s nice to be reminded there are still thoughtful and interesting folks out there doing good work, even if so many others are trying to derail the very possibility of it.
My workplace is also great, people just do their jobs well and make little fuss and I love that and I wish I could have more of that type of experience… everywhere in my life. It is really rewarding to just work with people and do stuff without petty interpersonal drama making it miserable.
I also still volunteer and those are mostly good experiences of people just doing shit together and being nice to each other. Sadly that occasionally gets ruined by some folks who want to stink it up that it doesn’t 'do ‘enough’ but it’s relatively rare. I used to do it more and run my own volunteer org, but I gave up because too many preachy political people joined and derailed it and I miss that a lot. I like helping people and making things better, but it’s hard to find people who think that’s even possible these days, because they think you have to help the ‘right’ people only, and by that they mean ‘help people like me exclusively’.
I joined a subscription-based social media platform recently that’s focused on intellectually honest and good faith discussion about pretty much anything. I never thought a bunch of strangers could act that civilly toward each other online. The contrast to other platforms like Lemmy cannot be overstated. No outrage, no grandstanding, no smug and dismissive responses, and no insults whatsoever. There’s plenty of disagreement there, but it’s all handled the way you’d expect adults to behave.
Don’t know whether it’ll stay that way, but I’ll enjoy it while it lasts.
Ikr. Lemmy and piefed are gifts to humanity.
makes sense. they are financially invested so they don’t want to shit where they eat, so to speak, also probably a lot of similarities as you are all willing to pay for this service.
they also probably don’t feel they ‘own’ the space. this is what i notice a lot with lemmy at least seems to be the undercurrent, tons of folks here want this to be a space exclusively for themselves, and they go around with the ‘get off my lawn’ attitude. but the problem is lemmy is like doing that in times square, and it is not your lawn.
I’m tempted to conclude that actually paying for the service is the key factor here, but I’m not sure. It’s a highly self-selected userbase after all - people who joined the platform specifically to have these kinds of tough conversations.
Perhaps it could work on a free platform as well. I guess the major difference is that getting banned comes with a real monetary cost and you can’t just create a new account in two minutes and go back to being obnoxious.
It also incentivizes the admin team to keep the place in a state where people are willing to keep paying. In this case it’s the userbase they need to please - not the advertisers.
being very topic specific generally works out better for most online spaces. it’s just easier all around.
it’s the more generalist stuff that is impossible. i used to do well on reddit int he 2010s because i was a part of small communities that were very specific… and anytime anything got front-paged it went to shit for DAYS as we got influxed by outsiders who had no experience or interest, but just wanted to tell people off, or think the community itself was horrible for existing. the community got used in a few academic research papers and painted as entirely negative, based on like a handful of bad posts by bad actors too… gotta love that. that 'outsider looking in and judging everyone based on ‘most controversial’ posts… type of thing.
Yeah, this platform is a based on a subreddit as well. Not a place anyone stumbles upon by accident.
