How many fascists have you killed? Genuine question. Cause if the answer is zero, you have stopped short of killing fascists. Saying you would is no different than the person who says they would care about politics but doesn’t.

I don’t mean that as an attack. I simply am pointing out that everyone draws the line differently. A Ted Kaczynski would say a person who really cares about these issues would already be sending mail bombs.

I disagree with that (as do you I imagine, as I don’t think you’ve started mail bombing people, as that would’ve been in the news), but he was just as sure of his line as you are. Why do you not go that far?

To be very clear. Don’t mail bomb people. Don’t take this as a challenge. I’m just genuinely curious how that falls against the line you are drawing.

Also, back to the original topic, you said earlier that you can’t go to events solo due to your social anxiety, which is understandably difficult, but could you not bring your partner along? Why can’t you have that security blanket as you go out to meet new people? Having a partner makes making new friends a thousand times easier!

I do think there’s an element of privilege here. Just because you have the luxury of time and space to be involved in politics and spend a lot of emotional energy in that area doesn’t mean that everyone else has that luxury. For the single mother of three, working two jobs to provide for her kids, she probably doesn’t have the bandwidth to be super “educated” politically.

But what would you have that PTA soccer mom do? The bar is always arbitrary. I could choose to set it higher or lower than you. Why is your spot for the bar what it is? I could claim anyone who isn’t vegan, or uses toilet paper, or doesn’t drive an EV, or isn’t growing their own food, or isn’t chaining themselves to government buildings in protest isn’t doing their part and is actively “contributing to the destruction of humanity.” You have defined your threshold of acceptable somewhere short of actively murdering fascists (I assume), so why is that? And what makes your choice of threshold the correct one?

I think we have a tendency to say, “what I’m doing is the correct standard,” in order to make us feel justified in our outlook and superior to the people around us. Is it that others are actually “contributing to the destruction of humanity” more than you, or is that something that you tell yourself to help maintain an emotional wall of protection?

And, literally all that aside, I think your assumption that there aren’t plenty of people around you who feel similarly to you is unfounded. You could make friends by getting involved in a political campaign. I did that a number of years ago, and met a lot of great people. Helped a lady get elected into the House of Representatives. Had a great time and met a lot of cool people along the way. And surely those people would meet your thresholds of “good enough,” no?

It does sound like you’ve let doom scrolling negatively impact your life.

I won’t argue things are bad, but the reality is that most people are generally decent.

Sure, there’s a lot of dicks out there, but they’re very much the minority. They are just overrepresented in the Lemmy echo chamber (and other online platforms too of course).

Obviously it’s hard to say if you’re being “too picky” as it were without knowing exactly what lines you’re drawing, but it sounds like you might be projecting your negative expectations onto people as opposed to people actually not living up to those expectations.

Fair enough on all counts.

I would point out that if everyone only made friends with people better than them, no one would have any friends. It’s important to pour into others as well as to get poured into. It’s how we make the world better. And just because someone is “worse” than you doesn’t mean they don’t have value. And it doesn’t mean there isn’t something you could gain from having them as a friend. I’ve had friends who are “better” than me and “worse” than me make positive change in my life.

And I know you say you’re not in a place to work on this, and I can respect that, but I would say that it’s never a bad time to continue leaning forward in a positive direction. And if this is something that’s negatively impacting your life, the sooner you work on it, the sooner you’ll be less impacted by it. No time like the present and all that.

I have friends with crippling social anxiety. It’s a lot of work, and they have their ups and downs for sure. But it’s something that they’re working on in therapy and making strides on. It is possible to improve and for things to get better.

I mean, it’s hard to say without knowing exactly what you’re talking about, but universally condemned likely seems strong. But regardless, you said that you don’t value the same people I do. Does that mean you can’t value someone with different beliefs than you?

You say that there aren’t any groups in your area that would interest you. What kind of group would interest you? What group, if you saw it was starting up in your area, would motivate you to go out and meet people?

I know mental health issues complicate things, but that’s something to work on, not an obstacle that can’t be surmounted. I have tons of friends with mental health struggles of all kinds.

But you say that you don’t value the same people I do, but what makes you think so?

As I say, I was at a local boardgame meetup this past weekend. Not exactly a “party” crowd. And to be clear, there’s local meetups for everything under the sun. What do you value in people that you don’t think you could find a social group for? What makes you think finding a group you would vibe with is particularly hard?

Fair. The OP you were responding to was about how people cope with loneliness IRL with pseudo-real online interactions, and you responded with how it’s difficult to find relationships in person.

I agree it’s not necessarily related, but I the guy above was wildly afeild taking your statement as an excuse for why finding relational fulfillment online is an acceptable cope. It was kind of the topic at hand.

But, aside from that, I think making new connections is really just about going out there and doing it. I’m 33 and constantly meet new people, so it’s definitely achievable in your 30’s. Just go to things. Open up Eventbrite or whatever and find something going on that looks like fun, and then just go. There’s a whole world of opportunities out there to meet new people.

He’s just saying that using Lemmy as a cope for not having IRL friends is healthy.

But, to your point, making friends is easier than you think. Join groups. They’re everywhere. I literally went to a “boardgame play testing” event today and met a lot of cool people.

Things like that are everywhere. You just got a look for them.

I do think the situation is more complicated than Lemmy would have you believe.

Both Iran and Hamas have been geopolitical issues for a long time. And it’s worth remembering that all of this was kicked off by a large scale terrorist attack perpetrated by Hamas.

It’s also worth noting that Iran is a Russian puppet, and Europe obviously has some “neighbor problems” with Russia at the moment, so there’s a sort of baked in desire to oppose their vassal states.

And, while I think everyone would agree that the loss of civilian life is terrible, there is a huge amount of misinformation that makes it hard to be sure what’s going on. Hamas does have a long history of screwing over the civilian Palestinian population to further it’s political goals, and so people are willing to give Israel a little more credence than they deserve when they claim things like “Hamas was hiding in that hospital” or “we’re blocking aid because Hamas is hoarding it all to drive up tensions” or “it was Hamas who shot those civilians,” because it actually wouldn’t be the first time any of that had credibly happened. Something of a boy-cried-wolf scenario.

Add into that genuine desire to combat real anti-Semitism that’s been a fallout of this whole situation (a problem that hits pretty close to home in Europe due to events of the past century), and you can see why some people might be a bit over-eager to support Israel in this conflict.

It’s worth noting there are no good guys here. Israel is obviously in the wrong, and are committing horrible atrocities. I think that much is plain on its face. But Hamas and Iran have both had “the destruction of the state of Israel” as stated policy goals for the past 80 years. The reason Israel has the Iron Dome is because they’ve been getting missiles lobbed at them non-stop for decades.

And when there are no good guys, people tend to just align themselves with who they like more, or who they owe more to.

It really really isn’t.

One county in a deep red part of New York had 0 votes for Kamala. That same county had 0 votes for Biden last election. In a state that Kamala won.

This has very, “how come there were 30 points swings in the polls in under an hour” energy that MAGA had when mail-in ballots got processed in Pennsylvania and Arizona in 2020.

But this doesn’t even pass the smell test. Even if it was fraud, why? They just decided to do it in a suspicious way in a state they were never gonna win in the first place? What’s the end game? Why make it zero votes at all? Why do it in New York?

As an example, the lawsuit alleged that Faust and other white, male farmers are charged a $100 “administration fee” to participate in one program that exempts women and minority farmers from paying the same fee. In another example, Faust “participates in a USDA program that guarantees 90% of the value of loans to white farmers, but 95% to women and racial minorities,” according to the report.

While I’m not exactly sympathetic to the “plight of the white man,” it is a little weird (if true) that the USDA can have a “white men only fee” for some programs.

My understanding was that most DEI initiatives were built around breaking up old-boys-clubs by requiring preference for minority businesses when all other factors are considered equal. The above doesn’t really feel like that.

Woah, that’s nuts. I feel like most missiles don’t reach target in Israel. Maybe that’s cause most are aimed at Jerusalem and the Iron Dome though?

I mean, “matter”? I guess it doesn’t.

But you were saying things would have been different if they hadn’t all voted for Trump. I was just pointing out that they probably didn’t for the most part.

What percentage of these people do you think voted for Trump in the first place?

This kinda reads like a Q post.

All posted by the same guy, to be fair.

Other countries don’t enshrine freedom of speech the way the US does. In many countries certain types of political speech are outlawed.

I mean, it’s kinda true.

Some places do tip sharing, but not most (though most have some sort of tipping out to the back of house staff,) and obviously you pay taxes on tips.

But I think the sentiment was that it’s not lining the pockets of the business owner, which is true.

That’s fair. I think my issue was over the word “meal,” though a quick Google shows you’re right

Maybe this is regional or something, but that really feels like 2 syllables to me. I pronounce it “mee-uhl,” not “miel.”

But that could just be accent or whatever.

I feel like this is intended to be a haiku, but that middle line is 8 syllables, and that makes me sad. :(