as a rule, if you feel the need to assume what someone else is saying? don’t!

Me: "I like pancakes"

Lemmy: "Only a shitlib western imperialist would think that. Read more Lenin."

And yet, you assumed an image on catbox would work on my device. Interesting.

-"Russia should not invade a sovereign country, murder its citizens and deport their children."

-"Umm, actually, the US were doing crimes in Syria and you should not support them."

A large portion of the world is experiencing political polarization. I see the same things happening on Lemmy happen on other social media websites.

The “if you don’t agree with me you must have the exact opposite opinion” approach to debate seems to be more a problem of the participants than the platform.

I like that the name of the platform has been written over.

"This is only happening locally here at <place in the internet> and not at <every other place in the internet>". And that's happening for every place in the internet.

Marvellous

On Lemmy it's more like:

"I don't like pancakes."

"Oh, so I suppose that waffles are perfect huh??"

Bravery is leaving both the ifunny and imgflip watermarks.

In my experience, this happens way less on Lemmy than on Reddit before the IPO.

TBF, I understand this annoying kind of 'reading into it'. at the same time, if someone starts dropping dogwhistles or starts dancing around something in a convo, i am definitely gonna read into that shit.

This is anywhere on the internet.

What…. This is on par with any kind of internet discourse. It’s pretty much why I hardly ever post prior to Lemmy. It doesn’t matter how well articulated the post, SOMEONE will find the need to correct or clarify unnecessarily.

Why do you think you're better than us?

I like to insult and block these people. My fear of course, with Lemmy being so small, is I will block everyone. Then again, that's still better than dealing with illiterate, contrarian assholes

One time I said AI porn was unethical (because it is) and people here thought I was calling for a ban on all porn. At no point did I say that porn was unethical as a rule, and if I did believe that I wouldn't have mentioned AI at all.

I'm convinced that most people don't read anything before sharing their opinion. An opinion with zero relevance or weight is absolutely useless.

You hate Lemmy????!

Prior to the US election, there were many people that did this exact thing- only it was “oh yeah? Well… you support genocide!”

They’re rarely here anymore. Which is what was predicted that typically warranted their response to begin with.

Yep that's one of my pet peeves about the Internet. People love to try to put words in your mouth. It gets a bit tiring having to tell every one of those jabronis that I never said any of those words, and they should re-read what I did actually write instead.

I see more Motte-and-bailey fallacy.

I see less "I like pancakes" and more "I think pancakes are superior to waffles" from the first commenter.

Then the second commenter responds, "So you hate waffles?"

Then the first commenter retreats to "No, I just like pancakes. Why are you assuming what I'm saying? Don't you understand I'm being nuanced?"

Also, nuance is one of the more recent words to have a new usage like literally, which can now mean figuratively. When people say their argument is nuanced they mean it is good or correct. It reminds me of the use objective to describe a person to pretend they don't have biases to incorrectly validate their arguments.

So you're saying Twitter is better?

/jk

Sure, it happens here, but I feel the toxicity on Lemmy is far less then on Reddit or other platforms, and with toxicity I mean including people assuming you're saying something else because they are triggered somehow. But it's very hard not to stumble upon people like that. Trolls rule the universe, they are everywhere.

That’s French toast erasure.

I just ignore and block if it continues. I got no time for people who are responding to the voices in their head instead of what I'm actually writing.

how dare you say we piss on the poor

Bruh, it's so real. I made a comment that whenever I get messed up food at a restaurant, id rather just ask for a refund than ask for a replacement. Obviously there's a lot of nuance in this comment, but I had people taking all kinds of meanings from it. One guy told me I was a complete asshole and some other stuff, just because I'd rather have a refund at the McDonald's instead of asking the overworked, underpaid employees to remake my order as I sat in the drive-through, and so I wouldn't have to pull over and wait even longer.

People just want to be pissed off and angry.

Tell me you're not married without saying you're not married

On the other hand, a failure to make assumptions about what someone is saying leads to people being able either to willfully misrepresent their positions ("Oh, I don't hate waffles, I just bring up how the world would be better without waffles in every conversation, no matter how tangential!") or unintentionally fail to see the necessary implications of their statements ("I'm not saying waffles are better, I'm just saying pancakes are worse!")

All language has some ambiguity, which necessitates assumption in communication.

Me when I talk to my wife...

Equally common, unfortunately, is people who don't state their point, they just lay out the pieces and expect you to put it together, but then if you say something bad about it suddenly that's "not what I said". Schrodinger's point.

I've developed a response to comments that do this saying-it-but-not-saying-it thing, and while I try to judge sincerity, there are false positives. An okay approach I've found is just to ask people to clarify: if they say something reasonable they're genuine, and if they dodge the question they're a troll or someone who doesn't want to admit they believe something bad.

While I don't want to deny that people try to put words into others mouths, I think context is still important. It is possible and even quite typical to send messages beyond the meaning of the actual words used in a statement and simply playing dumb when someone calls you out for doing that is also not a great look.

Think of going to a waffles-convention and just walking around claiming that you, in fact, like pancakes. Of course people are going to assume you're a troll.

It's important to think of different perspectives and at least consider if something you meant in a very innocent way might still not sit right with someone else. Certainly not easy to do, mistakes will always happen, but honestly trying makes a huge difference imo.

I think it can be important to see the intent behind words and ask for clarifications. Oftentimes people are not direct about their opinions.

So you admit that you're checking me out? And you wanna mate?

I like cameras to capture picture

laughs in tumblr

I like pancakes.