Like was it a meaningful debate or a flat out flame war? And what was the main theme you were arguing over?
Sigh. That under Swedish law, it’s entirely probable that Julian Assange did rape that woman (reddit fanbois are a special kind of special).
That Elon Musk is not a real-life Tony Stark, but is in fact a slightly autistic narcissist who insists on inserting himself into the public eye and has an excellent PR team (reddit fanbois are a special kind of special).
That covid is real, and is bad, and is in fact deadly; and that vaccines are good, not a government conspiracy, and may save not just your life, but the lives of your families and friends.
Probably one of those three.
I feel like generally the POV of Musk being a narcissistic freak is now the default tbh, very few see him as the genius eccentric anymore
Unfortunately a lot of people still see him as an outsider tech genius who is standing up to the wealthy liberal elite. This is despite the fact that he is, on paper, the richest person alive. A lot of people I know, family even, curse Bloomberg and Gates as antichrists pulling the strings of the government puppet, despite the fact that Musk, Thiel, Kushner, etc. are literally doing that shit in the open
I would like to believe that, and in the social spaces I frequent Musk’s star has certainly fallen, but the number of people who sunk a ridiculous amount of cash into the SpaceX IPO speaks to there still being a lot of believers in his purported genius.
is in fact a slightly autistic narcissist
SLIGHTLY???
I stated that in a democracy fascist, racist, neo-nazi political parties should not have the right to form, campaign or run for government because - other than the obvious reasons - they are inherently undemocratic. I also added that this is not a paradox of democracy and that claiming otherwise is apologist bullcrap trying to justify fascism, racism or other institutional, totalitarian forms of oppression.
I got death threats.
Edit: maybe this doesn’t apply here since there was no arguing really? 🤔
Yeah, Lemmy is a bit more sophisticated and civil compared to other social media. That is why I always come back.
and that claiming otherwise is apologist bullcrap trying to justify fascism, racism or other institutional, totalitarian forms of oppression.
That’s just making a statement and refusing any challenge to it. Debate means searching for the truth and acknowledging you might be wrong. Now you’re just turning it into a personal attack toward anyone who disagrees with you. It’s intellectually dishonest and in bad faith.
Way too many people think trans people’s right to exist is a debate.
The reading comprehension and overall common sense on this website is piss poor.
I struggle to recall any “meaningful” debates.
There is no debate. Everyone has the right to exist. How could someone argue against that. They are just shouting idiocy.
how dare you say we piss on the poor
That women should have the ability to give informed consent at a doctor’s office.
I’ve had to argue for decades that birth control shouldn’t be held hostage until women submit to a pap smear.
It’s flat out unethical to hold a prescription until a patient does an unrelated screening, no matter how good your intentions are. It’d be like doctors withholding Viagra until a guy got his prostate checked annually. Yes, it’s a good idea to do cancer screening but no one should be coerced into any medical procedure against their will, especially such an intimate and invasive one. This only happens to women.
And yet you’d think I told them they should skin their new puppy alive. The amount of vitriol and even sexual harassment I got for maintaining this was mind blowing. And it was always from other women. I was told I’m a little girl, or not a “real” woman like it’s some sort of twisted right of passage.
I wasn’t debating that the exam doesn’t save lives or that people should stop having it done, just that women should have a choice and not be coerced - that it should be treated just like colonoscopies in that it’s entirely voluntary.
It hasn’t been that big of an issue in recent years. But early 2010s holyshit you’d think women didn’t think that they should have bodily autonomy (and a lot of this was coming from fellow pro-choicers!).
This was a thing in the southern US. I know the North half of the country wasn’t as insane.
People that believe all that ghost shit on YouTube is real. It’s basically boomers and religious tards with a 3rd grade education that don’t understand how easy it is to edit video for the average person. They all comment “May Christ protect you” and other crap like that. While these people pump out an episode every week like clock work where they’re possessed, attacked, or some other BS. Best part is when they go “we almost died” over and over, because name one person on a paranormal investigation that died that isn’t an obvious natural cause.
The treatment of those with disabilities or who are just down on their luck, by the mostly apethic “I’m alright jack” public. I’ve had many arguments with those who thought that just because somebody needed benefits that they were milking the system.
The most disgusting and revolting thing I can read on the subject from somebody is “if I’ve managed to get by fine without state help and support, so can/should they”… And yes many do actually think this way, sometimes even to those who need wheelchairs or other aids.
Sometimes I’ve managed to convince them to care about somebody other than themleves for a change, sometimes I’ve caused them to go away thinking about it, and other times I’ve caused them to double down on their stance.
Either way, the engagements were meaningful and eye opening and I’ll defend this position until the day I die because nobody has any business being that disgusting towards other human beings.
People on social media get irrationally angry when I point out that all science confirms that physical punishment of children for the purpose of behavior change or discipline is a net negative. For both the development of the child and also society as a whole. And as such, any corporeal punishment of children should be considered assault and child abuse. People will desperately defend their right to exert violence on their own children.
What!? Really!? That’s insane. It’s the whole boomer generation for ya. Millennial and even Gen Z are now having kids and most I talk to are completely against hitting their children. It’s definitely boomers and Gen x (maybe Gen x) .
No, not a generational thing. Everyone, including millennials and Gen Z. It’s more related to familial trauma. Those who lived through a violent childhood are the ones most likely to defend violence against children. They almost always use the old “I turned out fine, it made me a better person because I was a naughty child. So I will do the same.” It’s like survivors of hazing trying to rationalize hazing others in turn.
Oh. I see. My best guess was wrong. That’s okay. I understand where you are coming from.
I don’t remember exactly what it was that I said that I got absolutely dog piled on and told I was wrong repeatedly but it had something to do with fire hydrants. 30+ replies telling me I was wrong and stupid and didn’t know what I was talking about.
For the record, I work in water and fire hydrants are very much part of my work. But, a bunch of random people on reddit definitely know better than me. 🤷♀️
Charitably, could there be some kind of regional difference where people living in certain places truly have something different? Over the winter, I came across a thread asking for radiator repair advice, and people from parts of the world with water radiators were very casual “open it up for investigation” while people from parts of the world with steam radiators were like “do not open anything you will die”. Lots of confused comments, too, until someone figured out the disconnect.
I think the thread was region specific but this was a long time ago so I could be misremembering.
did you say that fire hydrants can be other colors than red?
Lmao no but my camera roll proves that. I used to know towns boarders by their hydrant colors before I moved 🤣
They will argue with anyone because there is no consequences behind an anonymous account.
Truth.
responding to people the youtube sub how they are supporting youtubes algorithim and slop by watching it and logging in, and they were complaining about youtubers that are producing slop. i was telling them how you cant complain about people like mr beast and defend him at the same time.
and saying how right wing content gets through the feed if you are not logged in, and i wasnt going to give google more data by logging in just to curate the feed.
The difference between socialism and social democracy and how most people actually advocate for the latter rather than the former due to a fundamental misunderstanding of what the definitions of those two things are.
sexuality is a spectrum, but politics is a rigid binary. welcome to 2026.
I recently had a discussion about the bible with someone who actually took the book literally. At least the bits he considered “good”.
He did not even understand simple concepts like “John the Apostle” is neither “John the Evangelist” nor “Apocalyse Fever Dream John”.
I am a fairly new Christian so I cannot relate. I know who John the apostle is but I don’t know about the evangelist or apocalypse fever dream John lol. Never heard those terms. I’ve been reading the Bible consistently for about a year. I still have a lot to learn in order to properly debate anything about it. For some reason I worked backwards. I read revelations first and tried to make sense of it by them reading the gospel and parts of the old testament. I still skip around but never do I take the Bible literally. I mean some commands are straight forward but I cannot wrap my head around the fact that Job was just whipped out of nowhere by the devil and it doesn’t show him like freaking out because the devil either showed up or was whipping him somehow from the spirit world. It was the first book I really connected with.
It is about getting the message out of the text.
Take Noah. Two different stories, two different boats, and both with differing writing styles. Some people seem to believe that the text provides accurate building instructions. Which leads to the issue of which one to follow, and needing steel, because building it from any of those texts with wood and reed in that size is a folly undertaking.
Or take the Gospels. You can basically condense the Gospels to a few lines of text along the lines “God loves you, regardless of who you are, and wants you to do the same”. That some people don’t get this “regardless of who you are” and that some televangelists shamelessly exploit people on the line of “Give away your riches and follow me” are the most painful failures of American Christianity.
Marxism-Leninism.
I used to go out of my way to argue with people on Facebook about vaccines and about representation of minorities in media. I liked to yell at antivaxxers and bigots
Meaningful never, I liked suggesting junk food/sugary drinks should be treated exactly like Cigarettes on reddit which is mostly American and watching the sparks fly.
That historical events can be approached and assessed without contemporary extrapolations. But to boil down years of internets, including old ezboard forums, I’d say it’s been over the Clean Wehrmacht theory/myth.
I used to be really into WW2 history communities and I would routinely approach things objectively and piss a bunch of nerds off who pervert history and just want to obsess over how Hitler could’ve won.
So I have argued far too much with people who hate Hitler just because he lost the war to Stalin. Like, primary sources would mean nothing. I’d have correspondence transcripts from commanders and diplomats, and they’d have their latest Hearts of Iron game run.
those folks aren’t interested in history, they are interested in fantasy.
for a lot of folks, that’s all history is, or why it’s fun, it’s the fantasizing about it. It’s not the boring staid work of a true historian who is looking at boring crap like cargo manifests to piece together the reality of history.
They’d sure extrapolate into conclusions for contemporary society and modern politics from those fantasies, which was the usual source of contention to start arguing.
For some reason they’re ceded the right to call what they’re doing history and not fantasy. Hence things like the Clean Wehrmacht theory become more than fantasy to folks.
