Unpopular Opinion
Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!
How voting works:
Vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
Guidelines:
Tag your post, if possible (not required)
- If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
- If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].
Rules:
1. NO POLITICS
Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.
2. Be civil.
Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...
Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.
5. No trolling.
This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.
6. Defend your opinion
This is a bit of a mix of rules 4 and 5 to help foster higher quality posts. You are expected to defend your unpopular opinion in the post body. We don't expect a whole manifesto (please, no manifestos), but you should at least provide some details as to why you hold the position you do.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
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Yeah, my feed was pretty awful when I left reddit. Too many reposts.
Lemmy is better on that aspect.
But I feel that it should be possible for me to ask questions I couldn't ask anywhere else without people jumping on me with their accusations
Like what question do people jump on you for on lemmy here?
Personally I don't take that much offense, if someone is rude to me I give it back to them, or ignore them. It's anonymous online communication so you have to expect getting flak.
Well, I asked the question : 'Do you think strict 2 child policy be a thing?' Mind you, I didn't even say it should be. The only reason I asked that is because I wonder if it would become necessary in the future. And some guy accused me of wanting to control women and all that.
I hope you can see where, in the current political climate, questions like "Should 2-child policy be a thing?" "Should transgenders use the gender assigned at birth?" or "Should immigrants be immediately returned to their country of origin?" might seem disingenuous to the populations affected by those very real policy proposals.
Immediately proving their point with incendiary questions that aren't really comparable
You asked if people should be forced to live a certain way and were surprised that you got a vitriolic response??? In this political climate????? Maybe know your audience a little better.
I was online a decade before "Eternal September" started and having to check the "political climate" before making a post wasn't a thing until sometime in the last 8 years or so.
This kind gatekeeping has had horrible consequences for the culture of the internet.
You poor little baby. Maybe you can pay someone for a hug or something
I grew up with lesbian parents in the south in the 90s. Checking the political climate is all I have ever done my entire life, internet or not. I don’t agree that there has ever been a time when that wasn’t a requirement online or offline.
Like for real? Obama’s tan suit happened 12 years ago and you think the Internet has only been politicized for 8? You must have managed to avoid pretty much all social media before Facebook, which is weird because Eternal September happened in the 90s and came from Usenet which has been political since the 80s.
I didn't say the internet wasn't politicized. I said that having to "check the political climate" before making a post, i.e. self censoring, is new(ish). You gonna tell me that you never posted online that having lesbian parents is okay before it became accepted to do so? I'll bet you did and I'll bet you did it more than once.
This idea that posts running counter to the current cultural / political climate shouldn't be made is pure horseshit. Usenet was stuffed to the gills with counter culture of all kinds, it was expected and accepted. Yes there were epic flame wars but that's because people didn't self censor an unpopular opinion because of the "current political climate". I was there.
Online discourse is a pale shadow of what it once was and I put the blame squarely on the rise of this idea that people should self-censor in order to avoid giving offense. Fuck that and fuck people who believe that's how it should be.
Edit: One Usenet if a user really REALLY couldn't stomach what another user was spouting then they put 'em in the kill file. That's what "plonk" meant.
You are just saying what I said, that OP should’ve expected a flame war based on what they said. I never said that they shouldn’t have made the post. It feels like you’re ignoring what happened over the last 40 years in order to keep looking at the halcyon days of the Internet with nostalgia goggles.
Given the decline in birth rates, I don't know why you'd think it'd be necessary tbh.
Religious people were apeshit about china's two child policy. They hated it. I don't doubt you got some flak bringing it up, but it's also an issue of the government telling people what they can and can't do, which may be where more of these people are coming from.
One thing is certain, there is zero chance of it happening in the US anytime soon, because of the religious people.
There's a strong segment of Lemmy, perhaps even a majority, who have absolutely no problem with a government telling people what they can and can't do. The only thing these people disagree on is the details.
You should check out one or two talks by Hans Rosling, the Scandinavian statistics prof/king. Very interesting correlations between quality of life/healthcare and family size, and he makes the info digestible for a wide audience.
Also, I would advise you generously block anyone who proves to you that they are not interested in discussing, but only in... let's say shouting.
I know what you mean...