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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • This was deeply hurtful to me and my mental health. My underlying motivation was trying to create a solution to my feelings of inadequate engagement with interesting complexity and depth on Lemmy in general. That has been an ongoing problem for me that feels long term untenable.

    I’m stuck on an instance that shows all of the trolling negativity, and I seem to be misunderstood a lot here. I don’t know what else to say really. Hopefully saying makes me feel a little better. Maybe it is just the time of year. It will be 11 years on 2/26/14. I don’t even know why this interaction mattered to me so much, but it did somehow in the context of a lack of engagement and other negativity here and elsewhere in my life


  • The method of indication depends on who you are targeting specifically. If you are looking for higher intelligence individuals, you’re likely to be more effective with indirect subtlety. Think like the blue check mark with twitter.

    I could explain a ton about this based on my experiences in running a chain of bike shops. I’ve actively tested the behaviors of customers in social media, going as far as giving away a $1k product on Facebook to prove that no one cares about overt advertising anywhere on social media. It took 3 weeks and over a dozen posts to get someone to show up and ask for the product. There was no ambiguity about the posts or any catches described or implied. I’m not claiming to be an expert here, just qualifying what I know.

    The total ad/recruitment options that I am aware of are:

    1. selling people through their stories
    2. selling a loss leader of overwhelming benefit
    3. selling subtle tribalism
    4. slinging spam
    • stories will buy you empaths
    • loss leaders will buy you misers
    • subtle tribalism will buy you early adopters
    • overt spam will buy you low intelligence







  • I come from the background of bigotry. I was one of these people. I have changed and am still, and hopefully always a work in progress.

    I am trying to tell you that the experience of debating like I described was the primary catalyst that converted my dogma by questioning my assumptions. The moment that changed my mindset the most was realizing that a ban on abortion is a death sentence for some and that outcome is no better because it is anything but pro life. I realized in that moment that such arbitrary assumptions are stereotypes and all stereotypes have outliers that are harmed. I realized that I want to harm the fewest number of people possible as my internal form of ethics. I believe in the Hippocratic aphorism of “first, do no harm.” So my primary value is to live and let live.

    If I had not had that opportunity to debate controversial topics, I would still likely be a dogmatic fool. It was hard for some students in the class when racism was a subject, but the teachers tread the subject with strong moderation. I learned a lot of the nuances about what black families were going through and how things were a lot harder for many of them. It made me feel much closer to them as friends and willing to stand up for them when I may not have otherwise. I saw how most students had a similar experience and it put a spotlight on the few students that lacked empathy in ways that ostracized them.

    All I have said is from this perspective of wanting to help fight dogma effectively. I’m well aware that dogma cannot be argued directly. It can be manipulated easily from within by someone that is an accepted member of the tribal group. Such a person can refocus attention elsewhere and poke holes in the logic that supports some branch of reasoning. It is challenging to do without getting labeled a heretic, but it is not too difficult. Trump banged a porn star he said reminded him of his daughter, and Musk is a polygamist yet they are of divine origin. I can play this way. My entire life has been lived in this balance of understanding dogmatism.

    Again, I’m not going to create the community. When I post about my explorations of AI that are outside of the norm people show they are not very open minded or curious here. I think this kind of community and post would make me even more deeply depressed based on the demographics response to any topics. I think these types of debates require a filtered room of the best and brightest. That is unfortunate, as I believe this is the only way to convert dogma into questioning and curiosity as it was for me. It didn’t work for my sister though. She is a high Machiavellian as well, but she is emotionally intuitive and manipulative of people whereas I am more manipulative of abstract ideas while empathetic of people. I genuinely care. I will never intentionally hurt you or anyone else and will work to repair anything if it is brought to my attention. My only goal is to make anyone’s life a little better, not worse, before my life avalanches into oblivion soon. I am sorry that I have upset you in that effort, and failure.







  • Super cool to watch these. I’m around 100 miles from Vandenberg (California west coast launch facility), and I have roof access where I live. The second stage separation happens almost directly over my head and I have a great view of the Falcon 9 boosters doing their boost back burn.


  • Post screenshots of content on Lemmy to other places in general if you use them. This is the real reason why people post stuff from other sites. Probably around a third to half of posts shared like this are guerilla marketing. It is an advertisement of platform relevance. If you can screenshot stuff here that gains traction on other websites you maximize exposure and make Lemmy de facto relevant as a leading platform worth exploring. It takes time, persistence, and numbers for a person to break out the logic and realize that they should try out that thing they keep seeing. With enough persistence posting screenshots is what drives the big movement. Greentext is a 4chan ad. Xitter ads are everywhere in memes. TikTok ads are in shorts reposted everywhere. Lemmy needs the same to really gain major traction. The Lemmy part is largely irrelevant to the need for original meme quality posts.


  • Upon a troll taking power as a mod of a popular community, the fediverse won’t be affected, because you can just make a NEW community, and everyone will go there!

    I find that stupidity infuriating. It postulates that communities are owned by moderators and not the community and users. That is authoritarian narcissistic garbage. No one looks at or cares who the moderators are when they post anything anywhere, EVER! NEVER EVER EVER!!!

    That is how these places fail to grow most people encountering this stupidity just leave. Mods serve communities just like admin. The altruism of hosting is not some neo feudal ownership of users. I’m grateful for the time and efforts spent and willing to contribute myself in the ways I can to that democracy, but anyone that acts like that means they own me can shove a whole data center and the parking lot up their root directory. Communities have momentum and belong to the users only. ANY mods that do not put users first should be purged immediately. Mods are disposable. As a mod, I am disposable. I do not matter. I am the janitor. Any mod that can not say this should be purged immediately. Anyone with any hint of narcissism is toxic to the community in every instance. Every mod and admin action is harmful and should only ever be applied to those that are causing greater harm like bigots. There should be extreme prejudice by admin at mods that are active and taking actions that were not flagged by members of the broader community. I’ll volunteer as a mod of any of the larger communities if that is what is needed. I trust users to make flags and there are very few actual actions needed here in any community.