Unpopular Opinion
Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!
How voting works:
Vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
Guidelines:
Tag your post, if possible (not required)
- If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
- If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].
Rules:
1. NO POLITICS
Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.
2. Be civil.
Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...
Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.
5. No trolling.
This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
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I think something one might learn over time from different sites styled like reddit and lemmy is that they are not monoliths,
There is a comment above that says the same thing, but in practice, think about it like, any give post attracts both people that agree, and disagree with it, generally strongly. The vast majority don't engage with it.
Because of this the opinions seem both stronger, and more common. But realize that any given comment thread is a microscopic percent of even the highly active users, and always a biased sample.
With regards to echo chambers, this is why I personally oppose blocklists or how on reddit you can make something 'private'. Pretending something that is problematic doesn't exist does nothing to deal with the problem. I see this as fundamentally how r/TheDonald came to be, and reedit was fundamental in building the modern white nationalist movement. Through blocking and going private, r/TheDonald shielded itself from outside criticism, so that users didn't see alternative view points, and specifically, were protected from open mockery. Originally the sub started as a troll/ joke but quickly became the defacto headquarters of the largest funnel for white nationalism the internet has ever seen. It might seem a bit over the top, but I argue that Trumps 2016 success would not have happened with out specifically r/TheDonald. Its why all of the 'truth social' and extended media took on a reddit style interactivity. It was the birthplace of the MAGA movement online. They morphed it into a self referential echo chamber, and used purity testing to filter out potential critics. Eventually it was banned entirely, but not until long after the damage was done.
So I don't agree that ideas should be shielded from criticism. The problem with that is without criticisms, they can take hold, and grow legs of their own. But at the same time, you shouldn't make too much of things when you see a strong binary online, because almost any internet discussion will be inherently polar (because only those who agree disagree with a principal or idea will be drawn to discuss it; 95% of everyone else just doesnt care).
This isthe take I agree with. I actually wish I could find more right leaning instances/communities on Lemmy - not because I agree with them or want to argue online, I just want to keep an eye on their discourse.