I’ve been seeing a worrying number of these people on Lemmy lately, sharing enlightened takes including but not limited to “voting for Biden is tantamount to fascism” and “the concept of an assigned gender, or even an assigned name, at birth is transphobic” and none of them seem to be interested in reading more than the first sentence of any of my comments before writing a reply.

More often than not they reply with a concern I addressed in the comment they’re replying to, without any explanation of why my argument was invalid. Some of them cannot even state their own position, instead simply repeatedly calling mine oppressive in some way.

It occurred to me just now that these interactions reminded me of nothing so much as an evangelical Christian I got into an argument with on Matrix a while ago, in which I met him 95% of the way, conceded that God might well be real and that being trans was sinful and tried to convince him not to tell that to every trans person he passed, and failed. I am 100% convinced he was trolling – in retrospect I’m pretty sure I could’ve built a municipal transport system by letting people ride on top of his goalposts (that’s what I get for picking a fight with a Christian at 2AM) – and the only reason I’m not convinced these leftists on Lemmy are trolls is the sheer fucking number of them.

I made this post and what felt like half the responses fell into this category. Am I going insane?

  • TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Oh man… This is well stated and clear. But confusing because people from lemmy.ml are irrational and authoritarian. Not sure what to do? Should I confront that confusion? Nah. Fuck it downvote.

    Hmmm… This seems a little hypocritical. fair enough. Downvoting my comment as well.

    • Cowbee [he/him]
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      5 months ago

      I was kinda hoping instead of just downvotes someone would attempt to engage, and there could have been a productive discussion, but that’s excessively difficult on Lemmy.world. Unfortunate.

      • TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        For the most part, I like lemmy.world. Probably because I’m comparing it to Reddit.

        Unfortunately, most people want to have their half baked ideas based upon what they’ve been told or their limited, mostly online, experiences with certain people. These people are few, but loud. And unfortunately, many go through this phase in their learning journey where they know more than their liberal counterparts, but haven’t necessarily done the work to see its depths or had life experiences and real connections to temper the presentation.

        So as far as some most people are concerned, there are a “worrying number of leftists” who present a loud and inflexible view of Marxism.

        So there’s no ability for people to engage. It’s just non-sensical and you’ll be a quickly forgotten anomaly.

        • Cowbee [he/him]
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          5 months ago

          I hear you, but I have had reasonable conversations and encouraged liberals here on Lemmy.world to engage with Leftist theory. It’s rare, but it happens enough that I keep trying to push people to read Marx or Goldman or whoever it takes to deprogram the inner, liberal biases they have.

          It is rare, but it happens.

          • TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            That’s great! I’m heartened to hear that. I agree, it rare, but is definitely rewarding. I’m glad to hear you’re doing that!