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?

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
    72·
    7 months ago

    I believe that’s basically everyone’s position who isn’t multi-millionaire.

    Its a bit more layered than that.

    Also engaging with society is not the same thing as “turning the handle”.

    Never suggested it was. But the folks who take the most offense inevitable come back with the “My uncle’s a police officer and he’s not so bad, really” or “Yeah sure I work for Lockhead Martin but we actually help protect a lot of people!”

    The internet is rife with folks who simply refuse to see the forest for the trees and cannot imagine being on the receiving end of a system that radiates its worst aspects beyond the borders.

    The only people who think like that are absolutists and they are as unreasonable as the most ravid of Trump supporters

    You know, I’m old enough to remember the pandemic, when folks who were asked to wear masks and get vaccines would scream “Authoritarian!” and “Absolutist!” and “Religious Zealot!” at everyone from the head of the CDC on down to the guy delivering them french fries. I never got to hear it used against proponents of the Iraq War, back when “You’re either with us or you’re with the Terrorists!” though.

    The term has a peculiar usage, in my experience.