It seems that the community once concentrated at LWMA is now fractured. Some are here, some stayed and I suspect that some will follow thetinmen in his boycott.
I am not much of an activist myself. Growing up, I was quite lonely and occassionally bullied for not fitting in with the main group, and so I have operated under the assumption that I don't want that to happen again. Thus, I have largely kept thoughts of advocating for mens rights or not being a feminist to myself.
So this community has been a breath of fresh air to me, seeing that I am not alone in my thoughts and seeing people argue for helping men without devolving into conservative talking points.
So how do we assure this community is not lost and broken?
Outreach and exposure are things I worry about a lot in terms of having this community on lemmy. Granted it doesn't have to deal with the whims of random admins doing god knows what to the policies, mod permissions and api prices but the one thing I'll give to reddit was the cross exposure across subreddits was unparalleled, it was a simple autocomplete /r/InsertSubredditNameHere and that ease of click through was a major factor in getting the word out to people who had similar outlooks to LWMA but may not have known to look for that kind of phrasing or name.
In my ideal future, I hope this community can one day become it's own instance with it's own funding (patreon maybe) so as to make a self autonomous space for us to discuss media, research, personal issues and where we can come together.
By keeping it going. It's very regrettable that it fractured, but I guess at this point it can't be helped. My mistake was misjudging the willingness of active participants to jump ship, tho I am happy to see some of you did make it over. I am here for you, as long as I perceive there is a need for this community. It did hurt to get misrepresented and blamed for things outside of my control by a former top contributor to the subreddit. His ego, his inflated sense of self-importance, and his blind anger only resulted in further fracturing of the community. It really took me by surprise, and caused me a lot of stress, which is why I have been quiet for the past week.
There is no chance in hell I am going back to Reddit, after the absolutely shameful way that company treated us. And I don't understand anyone (especially a left-wing activist) willing to tolerate that, or even more: volunteering to curate content for them, especially after the degradation in service which is affecting effective moderation (e.g. BotDefense).
And I don't understand anyone (especially a left-wing activist) willing to tolerate that,
Sadly because it's easier to spam "Fuck spez" and act like that's doing something rather than make an actual change in their life, like dropping reddit all together. It was one of the things I disliked most about the site.
volunteering to curate content for them, especially after the degradation in service which is affecting effective moderation
My best guess it shortsightedness mixed with power hunger. They probably only see that sweet mod position where you can delete any opinion you disagree with or any user deemed "problematic" without thinking about the work that would actually go into modding a botless subreddit. But that's just me pulling that out of my ass.
But enough about that, I am glad that in some way shape or form, this community is still going!