Yay, another week of higher than normal activity, until the fomo kicks back in and they leave yet again cause "everyone is on X/this is sooo complicated/I just wanna see the fallout/whatever excuse justifies their addiction"

As a queer person, extending the acronym past what is necessary feels like pandering in the best light, and purposely trying to bait ridicule in the worst. The whole point of LGBT was to include anyone on the spectrum that was gay or trans, and the Q was supposed to include anyone who considers themselves queer, even if they don't meed those parameters. I can understand wanting to include I because intersex people are often left out of the conversation, and I even understand A because there is a lot of debate even within the LGBTQ community itself as to whether asexuals are considered queer or not. But when you start incorporating numbers, symbols, or extending past 5 letters within the acronym, you are defeating the purpose of having an acronym, creating confusion, baiting ridicule, and even making people not explicitly represented in the acronym feel excluded.

And there is already a single, all encompassing, inclusive, one syllable word that describes the community and all who occupy it: "Queer." It's easier to say, remember, and hell, even type if you are typing LGBTQ past 5 letters. But because of it being appropriated and used as a slur, there are many even within the community who are even afraid to utter it, let alone identify with it. Which is a god damned shame there is nothing inherently wrong the word, cause even in its original meaning, it meant someone who was outside the norm or otherworldly, and in literature has been used to describe characters like Gandalf, and characters in Shakespeare.

It describes me without having to explain or justify how or why. It describes how I feel as a person, how others see me, how I interact and relate to others. Its an adjective that can be verbed and adverbed. It's sharp and provocative, yet also warm and natural, like a forest green. People who have adopted and embraced the word for themselves feel the love within the word, and can extend it to others. And even for those outside the community, those who are brave enough to use it when talking in our defense come off as more decisive and confrontational, than the person who thinks adding another letter or number to the acronym will make them seem more legitimate.

It's time we stop fearing our word. It's time we recognize the difference between queer as an insult, and queer as a description of who we are, and we need to extend that to people who are willing to talk about us and our struggles or come to our defense. The word is only as evil as we are willing to reject it, and I will be dead in the ground before I let our word be the domain of queerphobes and bigots.

edit: It's late and I'm going to bed. Apparently some people think I'm a self hating queer for thinking the acronym should be dropped for an all inclusive term, and so be it. It's late and I want to get some sleep. And a lot of the people making this argument I know haven't read past the first paragraph, much less to here. Anything clarification they could want can be found here and in my other posts here. Otherwise, if they are not going to put in the effort to read, I'm not going to put in the effort to respond.

edit 2: I wanted to make a separate inclusion because I have had a chance to sleep and cool off, and I wanted to address some of the more combative posts in my replies: I get it. We as a community suffer attacks constantly, even from within the community, so I understand why so many here are on guard and skeptical of my intentions. And I'll admit, my post probably could be better written. I'm not exactly the best at articulating my thoughts. But the point of my post is not to exclude anyone from the community, but rather embrace a word that includes everyone. I would like to hear counterpoints to my argument, because maybe what I need is a different perspective on the issue. I would love to hear from people who prefer the acronym, and why they feel it maybe more inclusive. I am a flawed human being with many faults. I grew up in a conservative background, and my life up to this point has been trying to unlearn a lot of that. But I did not write this with the intention of excluding or singling out anyone. Forgive me I have done so.

This has been a thing in Japan even before the population crisis. This has been a thing in other Asian countries besides Japan! What's next? "Japan's economy is so bad, they're using paper for their doors!" Japan's population and economic problems are apparent. Why does CNN feel it needs to mislead in order to punctuate it?

Dr. King was killed so people could put words in his mouth.

So basically they're not leaving, they are silencing their political coverage. They're not going anywhere, they're caving to pressure.

Waiting for lemmygrad to try to convince us how this is a good thing.

And this is the beauty of a decentralized fediverse. The downside to all of this though is this is probably going to some people pernamently leaving. This is like the 3rd time recently world and other major instances have gotten tackled by bad actors.

Thank you for an actual response and explanation. Anyone who has actually used google over the past few years should know "googling it" isn't always helpful anymore. Besides, maybe we actually want to be the place where people find answers.

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

If Kbin or Lemmy allows them to federate with us, I'm out of here.

Not gonna lie. Guys who put that much passion and attention to detail into their hobbies: That's hot yo.

It's been bizarre some of my interactions with group A and B. I've been active in leftist circles for most of my time on the internet. I definitely get and agree with a lot of the criticisms with the US, NATO, and the EU, but I don't get how so many people think the Russian or Chinese government are any more righteous, especially considering the human rights violations and encroachments on sovereignty we've seen from both countries. Not just in their past either, but within the last decade!

The situation kinda feels like how Japan justified its imperialism to the outside world during the Invasion of China, South Asia, and the Pacific. Their official stance was they were aiming to rid Asia of Western imperialism and replace it with a sphere of co-prosperity, Despite this message however, they were absolutely brutal to the lands they occupied. The murdered and raped indiscriminately, and those they kept alive they enslaved and worked to death in brutal conditions. No sane person today who knows the extent of their harm would ever defend them as a power, even if their supposed message was "anti-imperialism."

You can oppose western imperialism, US hegemony, and capitalism without siding with other imperialists, fascists, and psuedo-communists. The actions of a country should speak for them, not the messages their propaganda tries to make you believe. Considering what I know from Russia's Soviet legacy with Eastern Europe, the actions they took against Chechnya and Georgia, their local treatment of dissidents, the brutal persecution of queer people that makes Florida look tame, the war crimes and human rights violations committed in Syria and Africa by Wagner, and the bombing, killing, raping, and kidnapping of civilians in Ukraine. I don't see how anyone could defend them or their actions. I know the US is guilty most of it through out its history too, but you shouldn't oppose a monster by supporting another monster.

A useless ad delivery machine in the year 2023

AD4K is walking home from work, and then realizing you rode your bike there this morning and have to go back and get it.

About a decade ago, me and my family were part of the very movement that changed the Republican party into the beast it is today. We made it very clear to party members that moderates would not be tolerated. We demonized the RINOs as much as we demonized the Democrats, the Liberals and the Obamas. By primary season of 2016, the last influences of the old Republican party were stamped out. Trump was the achievement of the Tea Party, and how it flipped the neo liberal conservative party into a fascist one.

Blame the Democrats all you want for being milquetoast, weak, or ineffective in the face of the Republican party. As someone who has played for both teams, I have never seen the same fire from Democratic voters to change their party as I have from the Republicans. There is no party wide effort to weed out Democrats who work in the interests of companies only, or are essentially Republicans with the Democrat label. There has been no unified direction for the future Democrats want to see for the US other than the current status quo.

What we did in the Tea Party, is we got involved at every stage of government. We found out who our state and federal legislators were, and if they did not stand with our views, we primaried them out. We took trips to Washington as a church, or as a young Republican's association, and we rallied in front of every monument that they would allow us in front of. In our eyes, our goal was righteous, and we were in a battle for the soul of the country.

I abhor everything I was back then, and feel guilty for the present we have created today. But if there is one take away from my time in the Tea Party that I think could apply to Democrats is you don't have to settle for less. By all means vote for Biden again, but you should make it clear to every Democrat defending their seat next year that you won't be settling for spineless enablers. Now's the time to start campaigning progressive candidates to run against them. Any progressive you get elected should be seen as a victory, and every neo liberal who loses should take it as a message that they are no longer electable. You should practice that democracy as much as you can while you still have it.

What we don't realize is the guy in the center drank a lot of Powerade, and is relieving himself in the lemonade pool.

Same with Kbin. I would honestly go back to reddit sooner than I would accept being smooshed together with Meta.

I don't. Most of the people on Mastodon seem pretty cool, and honestly I would rather not see half the people I see on twitter.

Damn cisgenders, cissing around this damn thread. One tried to cis me out of my gender.

I sincerely wish people would use the block feature, rather than keep making threads complaining about content/communities they don't like to see.

As someone who is still on reddit and other mainstream sites as well as fediverse, here are my impressions.

There is definitely a frustration around the enshitefication of most of the major platforms, which is causing users to seek out alternatives to these sites. A lot of this has translated into increased traffic and membership on fediverse sites like Lemmy and Mastodon, but the reality is the situation still hasn't gotten bad enough for most general users to abandon the platforms entirely, or they stick around because despite everything, they are still the platforms with the most reach, and are still easy to use for most users.

Mastodon seems to have waves of activity based on the latest major fuckup by Elon Musk, but because of the learning curb and the differences in how Mastodon works, combined with the lack of user activity compared to twitter, most users don't stick around. Meanwhile, Bluesky is advertising itself as twitter pre enshitefication, and Threads is promising a userbase comparable to twitter without it being ran by Musk, which to a more casual person may seems more appealing. Fediverse is more appealing to people like you and me because we're nerds. Like we are interested in the technology, and want to dive into it to create the web experience we want. That's not going to appeal to the average user though.

There are weeks where I spend most of my time online on kbin and mastodon, and if I go by word and news posted, it would seem like reddit and twitter are on their final ropes, everyone is rushing to the fediverse, and we are about to enter another wild west period of the internet. But then I go back to reddit, and most of the communities I was apart of still seem as active as they have ever been. Most people I followed on twitter still post regularly with similar amounts of likes, retweets and comments, and most content creators will still point people towards these platforms for further engagement.

One space I have seen a major shift in is the LGBTQ community. There is definitely a diminishing of activity on major platforms mostly because the recent enshitefications have made these platforms more hostile places. Fediverse is a popular alternative for these communities, which is probably why you see a large amount of queer users within the fediverse. A lot of tech communities have also flocked to the fediverse and other communities because these spaces attract a lot of tech savy nerds, and are a great place to find fellow techies who know what you're talking about.

Overall, There is definitely a shift in how people use the internet and how they interact in Social media. The echochambers within the fediverse though would make it seem like it is bigger than it actually is. I would say we are seeing the dawn of the expansion of the internet, where instead of everything being centralized on 4 or 5 major sites, there will be a number of smaller sites that host their own communities. It probably won't be anywhere near as decentralized as the pre youtube and facebook era of the internet, but you'll at least have other places to go to when you get sick of a site, but still want to find like minded people to discuss your interests with.

My mental health was actually beginning to improve in 2018 and 19, with the pandemic decimating any progress I had made up to that point.

I mean, Putin killing Prigozhom basically signaled none of them are safe. At this point if you are going to die falling out of the sky or die raiding Moscow, the latter might have a higher chance of survival.

It reflects a lack of remorse, which depending on how the evidence stacks up, could come back to bite them too.

They look happy because they are sure they did nothing wrong, or that even if they did do something highly treasonous, they are not the least bit sorry for it.

I think the we should use fediverse with the expectations we had using the internet of old: Don't post anything you want to keep secret, and anything you put online is potentially permanent.

I was always a little skeevy towards Facebook and other major social media sites when everyone was encouraged to use real names, post personal details, and share real photos of themselves and friends. Hell I still don't get how people here share everything from faces to nudes and not expect their privacy to be compromised.

The X is for Xtreme

I always got the impression it was more geared towards pushing brands and celebrities in front of you rather than being an engaging social media platform.

If he actually spoke in nothing but skate puns, he'd still be the coolest person on Earth.

For advocating for an all inclusive term rather than an acronym that can be chopped to exclude people?

Yeah fuck me I guess.

The question is do we actually want everyone from twitter to be here?

They probably should have, but I'm glad they didn't.

ew fox

"How dare you not fall for misinformation!"

I just won't be apart of any instance that chooses to be federated with Meta. There are many people like me, and I hope kbin and most lemmy instance owners are aware of this.

My theory is even right wingers hate right wing cesspools. Like there is no shortage of far right communities on the internet, but even if you were to be a right leaning person who has no problem with "a little free speech", you are going to be a "cucked liberal" to someone else. Maybe you are a fiscally conservative hypercapitalist but have no problem with the existence of gay and trans people. Maybe your a terf but still care a lot about abortion rights and access to healthcare. Maybe your extremely religious, but believe it is your duty to help the poor and provide charity for those in need. You are going to clash with someone in the same space as you, and there are going to be fewer protections from harassment and less places where you can feel safe in speaking than if you were on a more mainstream space with actual moderation. In the end the platform is going to be hospitable to only the most extreme of conservatives, and its going to become an echochamber of the same opinions, and the same hate and anger.

Second, most of these accounts and groups have the goal of recruitment in mind. You're not going to recruit many people in the far right echochamber because your basically preaching to the choir, so instead you go to the platformers where all the "normies" are at. There you can spread prop, pick easy fights and make your side look strong, and convince ordinary people that what you believe isn't all "that bad", or that it's the liberals/trans people/feminists/jews who are the disgusting or unhinged ones.

It would all be up to how the Executive and Legislative branches react to the court's actions. The House is Republican controlled and will likely side with the Supreme Court, thus rendering Congress from acting. Meanwhile, Biden isn't even willing to change the courts, let alone challenge their legitimacy. He will likely go with whatever the Supreme Court decides in order to appear like he's being impartial or bipartisan, when the reality is he will always be accused of sabotaging the Republicans by the Republicans.

That would only leave the people to react to the Supreme Court's decision, which if its anything like Dobbs or any other protest over the last 20 years, The Supreme Court has nothing to worry about.

I just take comfort in the fact that my art will never be good enough for a generative Ai to steal.

I can say from my experience most women I know are gamers. I'd say the biggest difference is they tend to play more single player experiences. My older sister has always been a big jRPG nerd, and my younger sis was always into Bethesda games, especially Fallout. Meanwhile a lot of my friends are into life sim games like Stardew Valley, the Sims, and Animal Crossing, and we tend to play the latest big nintendo game together.

I am probably the only person in my group of friends that does anything remotely multiplayer, unless it's local or coop.

Maybe we need to own the Q so hard that Qanons will be afraid to identify with it.

It is the right and the duty of every citizen to act without violence to stop the destruction of freedom, equality, and the rule of law.

It is the right and the duty of every citizen to act by any means necessary.

I am getting really tired of this milquetoast, noncommittal, theatrical as fuck approach to activism, especially when you trying to defend your country against a literal violent dictatorship from seizing power in your country. Do you think they will be swayed by your strong words, emotional appeals, and the sympathetic screams of those watching the bloodshed? No of course not! These are the same motherfuckers who bomb, rape, and murder mothers and children in an open air prison routinely, and feel no remorse or guilt. This is who you are up against, and until now, you were more or less comfortable with them around as long as they gave you the illusion of freedom.

Now even that is being ripped away from you, and you think your fates will be any different if you throw a punch or voluntarily get your head smashed? They want your full obedience, and they will make examples of you regardless of whether you turn the other cheek or take an actual stand. If you want even a inkling of success in throwing off the people who threaten what's left of your democracy, you better be prepared to throw hands, cause they'll have no hesitation in doing the same to you.

Turns out, the brands and the ads weren't the reason people were sticking to Twitter.