What is this obsession with the term “tankies” on Lemmy nowadays? Fled here from Reddit because it had turned into a quagmire of American politics, rage and misery. The others fleeing seem to have brought it with them.
First, welcome to your second month on Lemmy!
Second, a cool part about Lemmy/fediverse isn’t that it is only one place with one core ideology. You and I are both on Lemmy.world which is a mildly left leaning general topics and population instance. However, federation means users from other instances post in lemmy.world communities ( = subreddits) like the one we’re in right now commenting on Bluesky posts. Many of those other lemmy instances were created specifically to cultivate a particular ideology or mindsets. Just because a user is from a different instance with a known ideological slant doesn’t mean that user subscribes to all the ideas, but its usually a good starting indication. When users from some of these more “passionate” instances post to communities outside of their instance, they frequently bring their ideology with them and turn or twist the conversations unrelated to their ideology to their ideology.
So back to your question on “tankies”, there is an instance or two that are highly correlated with socialist ideas and are frequently accused of painting authoritarianism with socialism. This isn’t an American thing either, most are unrelated to any US Politics.
Since many instances were specifcally created around political ideology (again, not American), I don’t think you’ll fully escape political ideas here on Lemmy. However, if that is a concern for you, instances can block posts from instances known to only be focused on those political ideologies. After that you won’t see posts from those communities or users.
Thanks for the explanation, it’s really helpful. Though I do appreciate open fora where all ideologies and viewpoints can converge and discuss in a peaceful manner, what I don’t like is the otherization, polarization and labeling of those not sharing someone’s opinions. I hope the discourse climate will move in the right direction soon.
First, welcome to your second month on Lemmy!
Second, a cool part about Lemmy/fediverse isn’t that it is only one place with one core ideology. You and I are both on Lemmy.world which is a mildly left leaning general topics and population instance. However, federation means users from other instances post in lemmy.world communities ( = subreddits) like the one we’re in right now commenting on Bluesky posts. Many of those other lemmy instances were created specifically to cultivate a particular ideology or mindsets. Just because a user is from a different instance with a known ideological slant doesn’t mean that user subscribes to all the ideas, but its usually a good starting indication. When users from some of these more “passionate” instances post to communities outside of their instance, they frequently bring their ideology with them and turn or twist the conversations unrelated to their ideology to their ideology.
So back to your question on “tankies”, there is an instance or two that are highly correlated with socialist ideas and are frequently accused of painting authoritarianism with socialism. This isn’t an American thing either, most are unrelated to any US Politics.
Since many instances were specifcally created around political ideology (again, not American), I don’t think you’ll fully escape political ideas here on Lemmy. However, if that is a concern for you, instances can block posts from instances known to only be focused on those political ideologies. After that you won’t see posts from those communities or users.
Thanks for the explanation, it’s really helpful. Though I do appreciate open fora where all ideologies and viewpoints can converge and discuss in a peaceful manner, what I don’t like is the otherization, polarization and labeling of those not sharing someone’s opinions. I hope the discourse climate will move in the right direction soon.
I hope so too, but with the number of bad faith arguments I see on a regular basis, I don’t hold much hope.