General Discussion Thread - Juche 112, Week 24
General Discussion Thread - Juche 112, Week 24
Welcome again to everybody! Make yourself at home. Enjoy the expertly designed Stalin flag thing. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is our weekly discussion thread!
We're also testing a weekly news thread specifically for discussing world news.
We have a Matrix homeserver at genzedong.xyz. See this thread for information about our Matrix space.
Short reading list for new MLs here. To find theory, try https://marxists.org, z-lib, libgen, or Sci-Hub (for scientific articles). If an article is unavailable, try the Wayback Machine.
Amazing as always comrade
LEOPARD TANKS ARE FUCKING SHIT LMAO AAHAHAHAHHAHAAAA
Silvio Berlusconi, dipshit conservative neolib is now, finally, dead, after 20 years of presidency that destroyed Italy (and unironically, lowered the iq, an interesting story) 🍾
Pls post your best crabs
🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀. I would love to hear how that -as you put it- dipshit conservative neolib lowered the average iq in Italy.
Last week eastern North America was plagued by smoke for multiple days thanks to forest fires in Canada. Anyone who thought the west would be free from the environmental crisis, so they could keep on polluting was wrong.
I'm an early zoomer (you know, genZ-edong) already living in adulthood. Not long ago I was thinking about that time of my teenage years in which I spent way too much time on the internet, during that era ranging from rage faces, nyan cat and the golden age of creepypastas until the peak in popularity of cringe culture youtube channels, all while browsing completely unsupervised. If you are any like me, you will be familiarised with the feeling that you would like to tell your past self to get off the computer, thinking that probably doing so would have saved you from many problems and made your future life somewhat easier.
It has been however only now as I have rejoined internet communities (yes, such as lemmygrad) that I have noticed that the later members of gen Z seem not only to be commiting the same mistakes I myself did, but more severely and with a much greater dependency on the internet than I ever had, neglecting to a worrying level the development of skills as basic as socialization and critical thinking. Is it just me who is becoming a grumpy old man yelling at clouds, or does anyone else share the same concerns?
As one such ‘later’ zoomer, that is very true. Most of us are very alienated. I know some people who spent over half of their day on their phone when they’re not in school. I personally have to force myself to actually read, and talk to people, but I’m making some progress. I’m somewhat lucky for my attention span’s sake that I was a Redditor (no longer) and not a Tiktoker, as that seems to drain brains faster.
Tik Tok's format is something that I find terrifying, and even more than the rest of internet social media is trying to follow it, such as with Youtube and its shorts. The fact that instant gratification is being promoted for profit so badly that we have now a flow of videos with Subway Surfers gameplays on the side not to lose watchers' attentions is simply sinister.
At least back then we fried our neurons watching things like these for three and a half minutes without blinking instead.
Definitely. I think not much is being emphasized in the role of the internet in affecting our own social development.
It is definitely not natural for a few clicks of a button to lead us to the most vile and disgusting views known to man being espoused.
Nor is it normal to see other terminally online people deride others for deviating from their specifically flavoured groupthink.
It isn’t healthy nor normal. The pseudo-anonymous nature of the internet can’t facilitate healthy emotional responses, especially when we disagree about things.
Over here, unlike the rhetoric found in the West where the youth are incredible “based” or “left-wing”, our recent elections involved the lowered voting age of 18 year olds.
And you know what happened? Most of the disenchanted Malay youth here voted for a borderline fascist, religious and reactionary Islamic Party.
They gained prominence through the supposedly “Chinese-controlled” TikTok.
This is also why I push back on “vulgar developmentalism”, and are much more critical in that regard to those that say any sort of capitalist development is good as it is supposedly “progressive”.
I admit that my own existence relies upon the fact that my country rapidly industrialized. But now the superstructure is actively inhibiting for further development of the productive forces, and a lot of the present contradictions I see now in this country can never be managed sufficiently under a bourgeois dictatorship.
I went on a bit of a tangent but my point is, the internet needs to be more heavily regulated, personally. China’s restricted “gaming hours” on weekdays for children I think is a good example that should be copied in other countries.
My brain is destroyed from the internet.
I hope you all have a great week :D
"you too"
-- V. I. Castro
I actually forgot that Shit Reactionary Says existed for the past few months. Actually made my experience here really pleasant.
I unblocked it recently to see what’s up but quickly blocked it again.
I don’t know how some of you all do it.
There is only so much AnonymousNazi has to say before it gets really boring and the same arguments get rehashed over and over.
Also I expected it to become more active since the recent surge in users but seems like it’s been steady.
recent surge in users
I think this is because NSFW posts are disabled by default (at least when registering using the web UI), so most new users don't know it exists
Ahh makes sense.
I was subscribed to it initially hoping to find funny content, the kind of commentary about communism that you see on the internet once in a while that is so bad that it turns around all the way into being good again, in a comedic way. Instead, it's just a compilation of all things reactionary ever said on the internet.
Also, of the 40 posts currently on the community's front page, 22 are all made by the same user, who I suppose just goes there to post every time they find content posted by a liberal/libertarian/fascist. It is frankly a bad community, and you did well by blocking it.
Yup. Although some posts and comments are decent. Just sad that a lot of it is low hanging fruit.
I was added to the lemmy maintainers private matrix chat. Shit is getting real.
Looks like we can add "blahaj zone" instance to the likes of sopuli and beehaw. As in "gits, who come here and comment with lib takes"
The admin of that instance has been friendly with lemmygrad users, but a lot of the new users on that instance are dronies.
Unequivocally racist too.
Perpetuating the totally not chauvinist sentiment of hurr durr china steals my intellectual property and doesn’t innovate and gets like 20+ upvotes.
To be expected considering just how bad r/196 was getting. I think despite being what seemed 50% trans (part of the reason I as a transperson was on there) the community flocked to constantly defend vaush to the point I started realizing the community was universally starting to either have r/vaush overlap or r/tankjerk overlap very commonly.
After all the "kick tankies out of r/196" did come up months back on r/196. The rapidly growing amount of Vaushites(muh anarcho-natoism) and fascists blatantly joining without protest started positioning the well so bad I started avoiding it. They're going down the slippery sloop so fast I expect them to defederate by July, shame as it could of brought back what r/196 used to be before the brainrot.
Pro-tip: Never look at an old man browsing history, youtube feed, etc....
Having worked at a bank, the amount of porn and OnlyFans they buy is astronomically insane.
I visited an uncle that day and the dude was literally watching bikini tryouts on youtube while i was there and dude did it so much that he didn't realize it was weird. And his feed was ALL half naked ladies.
I really liked the Reddit protest the last few days. Only a few of my niche subs were still active and I liked the content I saw. It was so peaceful and quiet. Sadly a lot of the other subs came back on (peak Reddit 'activism', btw) so I left the app again.
I wonder if its possible to see some sort of visualization of the data for active users over the course of the month, just to get an idea of how much the userbase has grown.
Oh man I am not liking this Reddit exodus
Lemmygrad is down every 7 minutes it seems
Yes and for some reason posts I made from 9 months ago are now getting weird hostile comments as well. Usually in standard Reddit 'tankie authoritarian bad' fashion as well. I don't mind new users but the moment this place turns into another Reddit I'll probably be out of here. I could've just stayed at Reddit itself for that.
Hearing libertarian leftists mention the Spanish Civil War and explain it as "the Soviets betraying anarchists" to justify their beliefs, as someone who actually had it in his school curriculum, is a level of pain that I wish to no one. No mention of their war industry mismanagement, no mention of their botched justice system, no mention of their military ineptitude at the Aragon front and most importantly, no mention of the actions of nonchalant sabotage against the broader Republican front (the real force against fascism) that led to the May Days of 1937.
Fantasizing about a romantisized picture of brave anarchist freedom fighters being stabbed with a dagger in the back by the devilish tankies dressing in cloaks is and will always be more adequate than picking up a book and actually learning about their movement's past, be it with Catalonia, with Makhno's Ukraine or absolutely anywhere else.
The fun part of it is that, because of it, you always have the chance of catching anarchists by surprise by showing them their own history and seeing them not knowing what to do. Next time you find one searching for trouble, ask them about Makhno's history with Mennonites.
The lack of organization and internal division, killed the chances of the republicans to win the war, it is easier to blame only the USSR.
My special interest at the moment is a very specific subject in my area of work, and it bothers me about it
Kulaks deserved worse
Xi turns 70 today 🍾
Best wishes for him
I leave for 3 days and I see that we've exploded in new, liberal users.
Luckily they're almost all on other instances (because of the vetting), and many of those instances have Lemmygrad blacklisted. This may also be an opportunity to radicalize some people who comment here in good faith
My favorite
plugging the weekly news thread again for those who (understandably) skipped the thread text 👀
Who could possibly skip the thread text
This reddit exidus is starting to get a little old. I do not think I have seen this many liberals in the grad for quite some time
@ComradePupIvy @GrainEater looking at the bright side, some comrades also discovered it
Very fair, I am always happy to see new comrades.
A while ago I posted how a Belgian province declared the strike ban issued by Delhaize Supermarkets illegal, and how the employees who had been striking for weeks were in the right. Today, a second province joined this decision to declare the ban illegal as well. It seems that this is going to happen in every province and that Delhaize is taking a massive L.
This is a huge win for the working class, and strikes will probably continue soon.
downvoted for speaking truth lmao. the orange site
Went to a music festival this weekend and woke up sick as a dog this morning. I’m getting too old for that stuff, lol.
How’s everyone’s week going so far? Hopefully better than mine 😃
Been plagued with allergies all last week and this week too, so I wouldn't say it has been much better than yours.
Any good books on the white terror period?
You mean post reconstruction?
My landlord just increased rent smh 😤 so we'll bounce to a cheaper place. It's not that we can't afford it anymore but the place has some issues, and his new monthly rent feels like an insult.
I couldn't reply to message in a community outside of Lemmy/lemmygradand was so confused... Till I found our you can check modlogs and WOW there are a lot of people in that modlog blanketly banning "tankies". I'm actually upset I got banned for being a "borderline" tankie. Dang it I wanted the full tankie ban what is this shit.
Also keep in mind many instances defederated us.
With the mass of redditors leaving Reddit it's no surprise that the federation map has so much red around us. I only hope lemmy.world keeps us federated because they feel very much like the link between worlds for me. The users are a mixed bag and full of "RED FASH" libs, but having a community that is large and can decide for themselves by visiting and observing us/our users is much better than this de-fed stuff. Much more in the spirit of FOSS and etc also.
I've archived an issue of На Стройке from 1949, hope you'll enjoy it
After like 37 days of drought some drops of rain managed to fall today. Eat that, climate woke terrorists!!
Comrades, can you recommend me a decent RSS reader that is available on Android and Desktop (preferably Windows)?
My news sources are a hodgepodge of different social media sites atm which is impossible to maintain, to have an overview and actually know what I've read when. All the ads, the algorithms and the constant stream of irrelevant internet-drama spamming my feeds aren't helping either.
My family loves to spread neoliberalism and fascism, even if it negatively affects them.