Nice to see someone say this out loud. At the end of the day no platform is immune to hive mind thinking or ignorance, but hopefully there are solutions for open platforms to enrich people's lives some.

The most accurate response I can think of is many people on Lemmy want to be technically right (and I am no exception to this myself). You can see this in our many debates if the Democrats are a hindrance or the "best of the temporary solutions we have" in our debates in the best way to eventually form a working government.

The post in question (man vs bear) summarizes how much fear men have caused women throughout history in meme hyperbole fashion. Most people would "just get the point" that the meme is actually making. Women have suffered a lot from men. However, some of these Lemmy users correctly point out that its predatory behavior that should be called out; not "man vs woman". After all, anyone regardless of age, religion, sexual orientation, gender, etc. can be a predator. The meme is correct but those who oppose the meme are "technically correct" as well.

I literally have no clue what man vs bear is and honestly sounds like it should stay that way1

Nobody needs my comment but here it goes. I don't take it personally, it has nothing to do with me. I don't have any issue with people's answers. I know that many people have PTSD and bad experiences and they'd prefer to avoid weird situations like this.

But privately there's a part of me that likes to solve problems and consider everything for myself. I think the question is set up to imply danger by comparing a wild bear to a strange man. If the scenario were different I would expect different results: You are hiking in the desert and you become lost and you have no water. After several days you see a man who offers you water and directions. Do you choose to turn away and continue into the desert or do you accept the man's offer to help provide water and directions to safety?

I have had traumatic experiences with people and one day I realized that I was negatively effected by them and I chose to start practicing Jiu-Jitsu where you need to be in close contact with people as you struggle to gain advantage and win points. I no longer feel the same fear and apprehension about being close to people like I did before.

If people feel a certain way I just wish them healing.

The same is true of all social media platforms. There are always bad actors and jerkasses that have been banned everywhere else. Eventually, the admins of said social media platform must crackdown and ban those people. Eventually, that will happen to the Fediverse.

Everyone has a vested interest in 50% of the population feeling good about the other half. And certainly we should all feel safer about being with fellow humans than with a bear. The fact that some of us don't feel that way means we should try to make them feel safer.

Thanks for the post. Does anyone have advice on how to become a moderator?

This is essentially the problem with forums that grow faster than mods can keep up. Everything is fine until something like this comes along. When the brigades come out, trying to maintain order and read every comment for content becomes impossible. Unfortunately all we can do is hold each other accountable. Those that can take the abuse stand their ground for others that can't. And when the dust settles, hopefully someone will have learned something. Even if that something is just reinforcing their choice. It's all part of maturing, both for the site and for the people. Just don't let it get you down. This site is not representative of the general population. Neither is Reddit. There are more people in this world that empathize with you than there are on this site.

This is really the terminal issue with Reddit alternatives. They are just Reddit minus the most recent controversy as of foundation. Reddit is overall just a popular content aggregation website with poorly design discussion features.

Upvotes and down votes, while intended to help users weed out bad arguments and spam, only achive in promoting sophistry and tribalism. What ends up getting upvoted is what "wins" the argument, while good arguments that come from unpopular viewpoints get downvoted.

And with that comes all the toxic elements from old Reddit ruat we all hope just won't be a part of our replacements. Reddit's format works at a smaller scale, where users are typically more enthusiastic and therefor better informed, but as the sites get larger you'll notice they typical hyper-snarky "owned with facts and logic" attitude take hold of a community as more people with a weaker investment jump on the bandwagon and upvote everything that makes them feel smart.

Eventually, the site becomes just like Reddit, but for a smaller and more insulated community, and users begin to question why they're here instead of Reddit which has the established user base that can reliably cover more topics you are interested in.

We have not learnt from history, and we are doomed to repeat it. Maybe it'll be different in the future.

Think of it like this, we as a civilization stand on the brink of collapse. Can we change it? Yes. Are we trying to? Yes. Is it working? Debatable.

About Lemmy, there's all kinds of people here. Those with the know-how segregated themselves into particular communities and blocked out all the rest. They're just quietly doing their thing wherever, with no fucks given about what's happening outside of that.

Beyond that, in my opinion, are two types of people left to roam the default maelstrom. Those without the know-how and those who thrive in the drama. The former are usually driven out by the dramartists.

I'd see it to be the same as in society. There's people doing their own thing, trying to be left alone. There's people just stumbling through life, not knowing what they want or need, nor the means to get them. And then there's the people who thrive through conflict and making things miserable for everyone else.

Both on Lemmy and in society, guess which ones usually end up in charge...

The answer though is simple. Get involved. Don't want to deal with the toxic waste? Well tough shit, because the planet's full of it. We're at the stage where we all have to clean it up. There's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Want to give up and run away? Good luck with that! When there's no more room left, all that toxicity will just spill all over you, no matter how hard you tried to get away.

As individuals, each of us is a minority. And if we keep running from the issues that plague us as a group, we'll never be allowed to thrive.

Whoa I missed this whole man bear thing. Is it like ManBearPig?

Well my block list on lemmy grew a whole lot faster and is longer now than on it ever was on Reddit.

But This was even before the bear debacle.

Lemmy is not as good as advertised.

Meanwhile its the opposite for me. Character assasinating everyone who wasnt a fan of the bear meme and mods deleting any post that wasnt fully inflammatory has made me second guess whether I want to be here far more than the Tankies ever did

the internet is a machine that turns attention into currency, it does this at the same rate for negative and positive attention, and negative attention is a lot easier to get. you just burst onto a platform unbidden and say something that will piss people off. You get rewarded, the platform gets rewarded, everybody wins except the users who have a gross toxic time in the comments. Lemmy may not run ads, but it's structured the same way that other platforms are and we already have a way of using those types of platforms built into our cultural knowledge, so Lemmy just turns into a loose confederation of reddits.