I was reading the original discussion on dbzer0 and kept wondering what the removed by mod was under every comment agreeing with either partial ban or defed, so I looked at the modlog. It was literally the same pigshit picture posted over and over again, almost twenty times, by the same user, though fortunately I only had to see it once, by choice.

That’s a serious personal commitment to assholery right there, and this is apparently just one of the people coming over to do this on dbzer0 comms. To be honest I can’t claim to understand some of the political nuance that was coming up in the thread, but that one dude sure did make a strong argument for defed via the modlog, lol. If that’s an example of what dbzer0 has to put up with from multiple individual users of another instance, then considering defederation is absolutely a legitimate discussion to have.

This is the real goal, right here. To get individuals so bogged down by a controlled firehose of propaganda that we will all just keep working the daily grind for less and less because there’s nothing we can do about it . . .

Yeah, no. That’s total bullshit. We can each do something, and it only matters that we each start somewhere. A lot of little things add up, like you said. Don’t give into the helplessness: there is meaning and action beyond it.

And conversely, don’t give in to rage, because the opposite end of this elite stick is to delegitimize any growing movement by calling it the whining of the disgruntled and the vandalism of hooligans. There’s no faster way to get your movement off the front page, shut down, and ignored by the world than giving into violence when provoked. Note all the non-US comments even on Lemmy that are trying to provoke Americans into fighting in the streets: it’s not because they want us to win.

OP, you’re on the right track. You’re already seeing for yourself that it’s just not adding up anymore. But like Cabbage above me said, don’t stop there. Find whatever thing you can do to help, to be a part of change. It doesn’t have to be great or massive, but find your niche. Look into what’s going on already in your own community, and see what people who live near you are already doing. You’ll find your part to play, and you’ll be so glad you did.

If you’re not sure where to start and you’re in the US, look at what’s happening near you:

https://www.mobilize.us/indivisible/

I read the whole article. Yeah, of course it’s touchy-feely shit; it’s out of Psychology Today, lol. But it’s not just clickbait; they suggest assembling a “psychological go-bag” of coping mechanisms to help you when you get overwhelmed. While some of the examples given are probably not for everyone, they’re just that: examples.

Without quoting the entire article, here are the key points and the general list of self-help suggestions:

• Disasters and massive changes in civil society, combined with misinformation, damage resilience.
• Resilience targeting often comes via social media.
• A psychological go-bag is a collection of individual resilience skills.
• You can overcome hopelessness and cynicism to stay motivated by practicing these skills.

Find inspiration in a story of hope and motivation. Try a biography of a person you look up to. Keep such stories in mind as inspiration.

Take stock of your psychological strengths and vulnerabilities. Come up with an approach that accentuates your strengths and attends to your vulnerabilities.

Open up to the collective of care. Remember that you aren’t the only one who cares about what’s happening, that you need to connect with other folks and communities who care too, keep yourself from feeling lonely and isolated in the struggle.

Focus on next steps, don’t overwhelm yourself with everything at once. Unless you have a magic wand, you can’t fix everything at once, and worrying about everything at once is guaranteed to cause anxiety. Don’t forget to take it a step at a time.

Spirituality. Deepen your awareness and connection to spirituality however you find it.

Connect with community and joy. If you don’t have strong links with community, start to deepen them now.

Display photos of loved ones, ancestors, and inspiring figures in your home and workspace. You may want to put together a collection of photos of loved ones in a place you see every day. These are your reasons to keep going.

Take breaks from it all. It may feel like a guilty pleasure, but an important aspect of staying resilient is knowing when to tune out.

Nah, you’re good. I’m glad we still have people speaking up for what is actually right, and not just that which has become necessary because everything else built on fairness has collapsed. And you’re right, unfortunately: every rule broken now will probably be broken for all, and for the worst of reasons.

If these are your first comments then I look forward to more. You sure did get a warm welcome to Lemmy, lol.

I see your point and have been upvoting you because it is absolutely true that once a standard is disposed with in service of a just cause, it tends to be disposed with for pretty much any cause thereafter, no matter how unjust. It IS a loss when just practices and standards are overturned, especially when it’s because there’s nothing else left to do.

The problem is that we are in a state of extreme social and political dysfunction where normal routes of dealing with corruption and bad actors have themselves been hijacked. This, getting rid of a fair standard in order to accomplish a desired goal that should have gotten taken care of far earlier and by other fair rules – what you are protesting – is all that’s left.

As I said in another comment, in a functioning society we would not now be having this conversation. The usual practices would be taking care of most of this, with time and resources available to deal with outliers. But here we are. I appreciate your stand, I just wonder if there will be anything left to defend when the dust settles.

I don’t doubt you, but where are you getting that figure?

deleted by creator

I’d give to find an instance where votes are already public.

EDITED TO ADD: I mean, not hidden by the interface. I am already aware that federated votes are accessible via lemvotes.org.

Trust Lemmy to answer the question I very specifically did not ask and to provide an answer that is essentially a regurge of the OP, lol.

EDITED TO ADD: but I found the answer I was looking for anyway, so there is that.

Are there any instances where votes are public? In other words, where it shows on the post or comment who up/down voted? I know there are some, or were, but I don’t know the current status.

Really appreciate this, thank you for posting it.

I think blanket downvoting happens regularly in political communities and discussions, and a lot of time you can see it without even looking up any votes: if every single comment in a six-comment thread has two downvotes and three upvotes, it’s pretty clear. I looked those political ones up a few times but don’t even bother anymore. Everywhere else, by which I mean non-political and/or non-controversial topics, it genuinely seems to be just a core handful of users.

And no, you’re not an outlier, just a decent person. I like to think most of us vote for actual cause, and that it’s only a handful who don’t. But at some point I do think the admins are going to have to deal with it, because downvoting just to downvote IS toxic and does tend to have a stifling effect on the discussion and community as a whole.

Yeah, you’re definitely getting a better experience in Ireland with both Amazon and Temu/AliExpress, so I don’t blame you. Kinda have to cross your fingers and hope for the best, or have it shipped with all the added shipping costs: no truly good options. But people who don’t do a lot of art will never understand why you have to have so many different supplies, or why one paint is not the same as another, or why paper isn’t just paper, and “But you already have fifteen blues!” Yeah, and now I’m about to have sixteen, lol. Just the way it is.

These single downvotes were never followed up by further commentary, and at least one of them looks like a voting-only account with zero posts, so the more I looked the more they just seemed like fuck you votes.

I really don’t think there’s any link to content at all because I did this across multiple communities (whatever I don’t have actively blocked that crosses my feed) and it was largely the same handful of downvoters throughout, but with outliers here and there. I wasn’t taking notes, but when I started to see the same names over and over in wildly disparate communities it seemed less and less likely it had anything to do with content.

Because the fediverse is still fairly small, downvotes stick out a lot more. A number of them I think, “How could anybody downvote that?” and just wonder because often they seem to be “I had a shitty day and I particularly don’t like YOU” downvotes.

I often sort a thread by Top, and even the highest voted posts are often +(big number) -1. Because I personally do not downvote without cause, I assume they are sincere, but then it becomes a question of why, and I could never figure it out. Okay, whatever, no biggie.

But recently I had some time on my hands and I am aware of lemvotes.org, so one day I saw this again and decided to just informally start looking up these weird ass loner downvotes. Nothing sustained, just whenever one stuck out to me as being why??? I’d go and look it up. I’ve been doing this for roughly 2-3 months now, no schedule or commitment other than whenever I felt like it, across the board, no attention paid to community or post content (other than anything political pretty much not being worth the trouble, lol).

What I expected was a variety of usernames attached to these single downvotes.

But what I saw was a core handful of users across the board, with the occasional outlier.

Kinda pathetic, honestly.

Try https://noai.duckduckgo.com/ – it really cuts down on the slop, even for images.

I don’t know where you are located so this may not apply to you, but in the US for branded art supplies I always go with DickBlick or Jerry’s Artorama, because in addition to the usual “stick it in a bubble bag and see how damaged we can make it before it arrives” Amazon shipping policy, branded art supplies are now being counterfeited on Amazon, like so many other things.

I already could not safely buy liquids (Gamsol, OMS, etc) or soft supplies (paper or canvas pads, single watercolors) because of careless shipping, but now I won’t even try because of counterfeits. If you want the branded version of something that already has budget knockoffs, say an item like Holbein or Caran d’Ache colored pencils where the real thing is vastly more expensive than others in its category, you’re taking your chances on Amazon. Amazon has been selling counterfeit fountain pens for years, even low end pens like Lamy Safaris which always blew my mind, but now it’s a lot of things in the art supply world.

So now I only get cheap knockoffs there, anything under $50. Anything over that, or anything liquid or bendable/breakable, I go with a real art supply store. It’s absolutely worth it, they pack it all very carefully, excellent return service when I’ve needed it, and I can still pick up deals better than Amazon without ever having to worry about the possibility it’s a counterfeit and I just wasted hundreds on a scam.

If you’re not in the US you may be having a markedly better experience, so disregard. But in the US, Amazon for branded art supplies is a big NO for me.

Well said.

Truth. Especially if someone suffers from anxiety: quitting social media will help immediately. They may jones for it for a few days, but the world is full of other things to do, and they’ll be so glad they did. Even if someone is forced to use it for work or business, the personal use of social media can be limited to exactly that.

Also, and it must be said, it’s much harder to become propagandized when you’re not allowing yourself to be exposed to a constant feed of it daily. When you find yourself emoting over something you’ve read, that’s usually a clue to step away. The world is full of horrible, saddening things, but we now have a bunch of oligarch techbros who want to use that to steer us via our own emotions, and that’s what social media excels at. If you’re feeling angry, if you’re feeling fearful, if you’re feeling hopeless about the world at large, social media is a very expensive short-term remedy. Get offline and occupy your body as well as your mind: you’ll be grateful you stopped it when you did.

I don’t use an YouTube account and haven’t used for years for privacy reasons.

Same here. Trick is to not use the YT search function. My strategy changes depending on specifically what I’m looking for, but in general for anything factual I start with a no-AI text search on DDG and then go to YT once I know what I want to see, or just use DDG to trawl through the videos. It’s not perfect but it cuts out a LOT of the slop.

For entertainment, if my current list of “known good” seems exhausted, I keep my subscriptions in FreeTube and go with the recommendations there where I can hide channels more effectively, but that’s pretty rare because I collect what look like promising channels as I go along in regular browsing, like Lemmy or news articles, and not from any algorithm.