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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 24th, 2023

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  • The impression I get is that Beehaw is trying to seclude itself not to be an echo chamber, but because an admin saw CP get posted and is traumatized by that, and it’s really highlighting the lack of mod tools. They want to moderate the space to ensure it’s nice (and it’s frankly needed. I made a Beehaw account at one point in time. I reported quite a few not-bigoted-but-still-nasty posts) and right now being federated with everyone makes it way too hard because even if 1% of posts are anywhere from “not nice” to “you literally posted child porn,” 1% of 100 is easy but 1% of 100,000 could be a lot of work.


  • I do the exact same as you, with the exception of a few topic-specific instances, where the local communities are only about that topic. There I will actually use Local as default.

    At least on my Kbin instance, going in All and Local opens me up to doom-and-gloom “big corporation and alt-right bad news” and outrage bait.

    I agree wholeheartedly with “big corporation and alt-right bad” and that they’re the cause of too many of the world’s big serious problems. I’d also rather spend my time on Kbin enjoying what I see instead of getting mad. I can already find out what horrible thing a corporation or alt-right politician has done from the regular news, without the understandable but exhausting comment chain of outrage.

    Even without an algorithm shoving it down your throat, outrage bait will rise to popular status on its own. Unfortunately, getting mad at and feeling superior to the idiotsincars, choosingbeggars, etc. is kind of crack to our brains. I’m no exception, which is why I have to only look at /sub. I have to keep it out of sight, because if it’s in my feed, I’ll click on it and get mad too.

    So how do I find new stuff? There’s a lot of communities out there whose purpose is to advertise other communities. I subscribe to those.



  • Waiting for the next episode on some stupid show could be the one thing motivating a person to keep living till tomorrow instead of killing themselves today. Just being able to promise yourself that you’ll stay alive till tomorrow (and repeating that promise daily) is important for suicidal people. If some dumb show on a dumb streaming service is the thing that motivates them enough, then so be it.

    Also, small joys like entertainment help take peoples’ minds off their problems, both “real problems” and “first world problems.” It might not be nearly as helpful as a cash injection or whatever would directly solve their problem, but it can serve as a temporary comfort. If your problem is something you’ve already done your best to solve, or that you can’t solve (maybe you have a painful terminal disease, no family who cares to visit, the hospital won’t allow euthanasia, and you’re too physically weak at that point to do anything to commit suicide), then all you can do at that point is do something to take your mind off your suffering.

    Streaming isn’t quite essential, no, but I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s a completely useless luxury. It’s something people with serious problems might lament the loss of easy access to!

    I’d also like to think that making the lives of people who don’t have serious problems a little bit worse is still an issue. People are allowed to be mad about their day-to-day problems that aren’t nearly as serious as slavery or genocide. Yes, thinking that your stubbed toe or annoying commute or raised prices on streaming services is more important than slavery or genocide is a problem. But I don’t see how anyone in this article or in this discussion is trying to assert that their problems are more important or should gain attention at the expense of attention to the more important problems. And people will naturally focus on the problems that impact them, even if they’re small.




  • I found it really hard to believe people would care that much about karma to the point that I never really believed most accusations of “karmawhore.” Because who would care that much? You just don’t like this kind of content that got popular. I totally believed a few individuals would optimize their posts and comments for the most upvotes, but not nearly enough to justify how often I heard that accusation flung around. Sure, it feels nice to see that other people like your comment. And it’s nice to have the voting system so incorrect information, spam, and trolls get downvoted and thus hidden; while theoretically the helpful and insightful comments rise to the top (and at least in the subs I used, this is how it also worked in practice, although judging by all the complaining about Reddit I see here it wasn’t true for a lot of other peoples’s subs). And of course you will want to get your karma past the common thresholds for not getting your post removed for being a new, low-karma account. But otherwise, what does it really matter?



  • I’m constantly seeing posts about how much nicer kbin is, but I’ve also seen a “KYS” comment and personal insults towards people. I also recognize it’s possible that there are fewer nasty comments, that the ones I see are just outliers but I’m more likely to notice them here instead of just downvoting and forgetting because the posts about how nice kbin is are making the counterexamples stand out that much more.