Need a politics-free safe space? It's called "going for a walk"
this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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I'm fine with politics on the internet, but why spam it on a memes community...
Point me to a time/place when politics were not completely intertwined with meme communities.
Oh, right. That doesn't actually exist.
One time, back in the 90s, a baby danced.
The prevelance of computers are inherently linked with the corporate desire to minimize cost and maximize productivity and profit. The origin of computers comes from military use; first seen in WW2 to calculate angles for artillery use and crack codes as with Enigma. Later, financial and educational institutions saw an ability to reduce labor cost by using computers to automate some record keeping. Why would they be interested in reducing cost? Capitalism, of course! And who were the ones programming these machines? Mostly, wealthy white men. You see, because computers were still giant, expensive machines, they required a college education to learn to use them. At this point, this was the 50s/60s, and non-white people had very little wealth due to, yknow, all that discrimination stuff. Plus, wealthy people especially back then were also very misogynistic ("i hate my wife" jokes, anyone?) And these wealthy whites were sometimes passionate for the industry, and as computers miniturized, they brought these minicomputers home, where they could use them for much more casual use. Enter the 70s, and these computer users start to make video games. Companies for this new fad start to show up. Fast forward a decade and people start making these new home computers play recorded audio and videos too, and before long, the baby dances. But not everyone had the money for home computers in the 90s, so not everyone is aware of the baby - which is where the discrimination part plays in. Most of the people who experienced the dancing baby in its prime were wealthy, majority white families, so the experience was unfortunately not universal. Or fortunately, idk lmao
Of course I'm stretching super hard, but politics are everywhere when you look into it.
Apologies for the sin of linking Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/NonPoliticalTwitter/
Sometimes humans do stuff that are not at all related with politics. But we are masters of linking any non-political action to political arguments. (The classic 'I like pancakes.'-'So you hate waffles!'-problem)
Sometimes I just want to have a space to engage with funny memes without the mental strain of filtering out political comments.
just a random assortment grabbed from their top week:
yeah the american lawn is totally not a political topic
also yeah totally deriving joy from sabotaging megabillion dollar companies with collective action isn't political
neither is trespassing as revenge for corporations eating up public areas
and what about a police force so sprawling and weaponized that we use it to reprimand children who make jokes?
sure, it may seem a little contrived to you, but when we talk about how a fish who has been in water all its life can't actually see the water, that's how we believe liberals are with their own politics - you believe there's no politics there because you've only ever been immersed in your own politics for the entirety of your life.
I get, and largely agree with you, but the lawns and mall jewelry stores is a bit of a stretch. The first thing that comes to mind for the lawns (in the context of the meme) is people not wanting to rake. Most people don't look at a patch of grass and conflate it with it's political underpinnings. And the jewelry store is just about overcoming the mild discomfort from a very minor break of social etiquette. The meme and the act itself aren't consciously political.
Sure, if you think about them for a little bit, the implications become obvious. But these images aren't meant to be thought provoking treatises on the nature of society; they're quippy, topical jokes meant to make you blow a little air through your nose in amusement. Fwiw I'm not bothered by the amount of clearly political posts on Lemmy, this is the first place I've found political memes that are actually decent (for the most part). But they're not for everyone and even people that do like them would like non-political content on occasion. It can be a bit of a pain to find that here
If you want to understand the lawns thing, try ordinary things video about lawns. And levvitt towns... And white flight... And racism.
I know and understand the political history of American lawns. What I was saying is that the meme itself, while existing within that context, is not consciously political. Life and society is complex, if you think about anything for long enough you can make a political point about it. Just because there is an underlying political narrative behind things like mall jewelry stores and American lawns, does not mean every single meme or conversation about those things is or has to be political.
Look through my comment history, you'll find I am very much not opposed to talking about politics
I haven't been on this sub for a while. It was once my go-to for just memes.
If this is truly the top of recent week, the the sub has gone downhill in both moderation and content, which is sad to see.
Also thanks for proving my point. You somehow forced gardening into a political topic. A childhood prank into a political topic. We are truly master of politicing the most inane things.
The other topics I cannot say. Existing in a society is political. Breathing is political.
I just wish to see a place where a meme about gardening is met with conversation how things are for others. Ex: 'This is how I do gardening in [location], I dream of having a nice field of [local species] to support the bees.'
And not have it devolve into political us-vs-them tribalism and hostilitites. Ex: 'Those lawns are a product of American liberal colonialism! I hate you and you should feel ashamed!'
~~That these images are hosted on lemmygrad.ml is very telling and just supports the general feel that users interacting from there are just interacting to create hostility and dissonance.~~
~~Not everybody, sure, I had conversations that were pleasant. I even read Marx summarised work as a suggestion from one from the lemmygrad-instance. And someon corrected me on a misconception I had from it.~~
Edit: last but crossed out. Was stuck in primary response. I recognise that threads reviewed also has a lot of inate hostility for the 'us'-camp. And hostility breeds hostility.
I would say pre 2016 political jokes was at one level, where the onion could make jokes that was not just an echo of reality.
Somewhere after that we crossed the political joke event horizon, and now we live in bizarro world, where many news items could have been the onion jokes.
Sure that's true, but here it's like way above 50% of the posts being just full-on propaganda, disguised as memes. IDK, I'm just comparing it to other sites/communities where the politics to meme ratio is way lower and feels less forced.
OK, fair enough.
I think the fediverse in general attracts a lot of people who are tired of capitalist assholes extracting wealth on various tech platforms, which probably explains some of it. People are very angry right now, and that's gonna be hard to escape on Lemmy/kbin
Back in the 2000s, most memes were just cat pictures. Longcat [is long], ceiling cat [is watching you], keyboard cat, grumpy cat etc.
Also #BrusselsLockdown hashtag was used in 2015 to ease political tension.
Because political memes are hilarious.
Haha yes! The threehundreth variation of the same joke, feels like the first time I heard it
I will always find charlie kirk with a small face hilarious and I refuse to apologize.
We all have our guilty pleasures, I enjoy Stalin with a comically large spoon -memes but wouldn't bother others with them.
I like posting these
Though that never happened, it's good that it happened. Warm regards from my moms basement.
I also like pointing out how homosexuals and trans folk have always been the first ones to get camped under communism.
And that equality is a liberal ideology.
And that social democracy fixes everything commies claim communism does, except that social democracy works.
Gets em everytime.
The GDR had more practical rights for lgbt people than the best capitalist countries for most of its history, and Cuba was better on lgbt rights even before the family code. Marriage equality isn't the end all be all, especially in countries where marriage is less institutionalized by the government.
Could you back that up? They straight up had state sponsored gay bars and massive anti-homophobia programs
East Germany, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, filipino maoist insurgent marriages, oh and also all current socialist countries are making massive progress on lgbt issues while the minority of capitalist countries where communist led lgbt movements have succeeded in scoring some victories are backsliding.
-10,000 social credit. Bing chilling.
LOL like I had social credit! I'm an anarchist, typically among the first or second wave of political dissidents executed whenever a communist regime that would impliment such a social credit system takes power. Simply put: by the time that matters I'm already dead and hopefully took a few out omw.
I like posting these
Famines were common before the revolution and in fact were one of the main causes of the revolution. Quality of nutrition improved after the Soviet revolution, and the last time USSR had a famine was in 1940s. CIA data suggests they ate just as much as Americans after WW2 peroid while having better nutrition: https://www.scribd.com/document/430076844/CIA-RDP84B00274R000300150009-5-pdf
Meanwhile, 40 million Americans struggle with food insecurity today https://www.cbsnews.com/news/food-insecurity-americans-still-go-hungry-after-a-decade-of-recovery/
🤡
https://www.prb.org/resources/u-s-has-worlds-highest-incarceration-rate/
https://www.aclu.org/issues/national-security/detention/guantanamo-bay-detention-camp
Well I've hit my image limit lol, so unfortunately I can't keep posting pictures of stuff that "never happened and if they did they deserved it," lucky you.
Aww I guess you'll have to get off on gore porn in private now. Neanwhile nobody made that argument at all. The fact that you think posting pictures of bad things that happened under communism to make an argument that communism is bad is a sound argument really highlights the quality of your intellect. I think you've given us sufficient demonstration of that.
Communism objectively failed - the USSR no longer exists and modern Russia is a capitalist oligarchy. The PRC is economically capitalist despite all the hammer-and-sickle flags. Meanwhile, the USA and EU economically and militarily dominate the planet. I'd call that succeeding, dominating in fact.
Communism has not objectively failed. USSR managed to improve lives of millions of people, and the transition to capitalism has been an abject disaster. Claiming that the fact that USSR is no longer around is a failure of communism is a nonsensical argument though. Plenty of capitalist regimes fail, yet we don't see you saying that capitalism failed because of that.
Meanwhile, saying that PRC is capitalist shows a profound lack of understanding of the subject on your part. If you care to educate yourself on the subject then you could read this book https://redletterspp.com/products/the-east-is-still-red
USA got in the dominant position after WW2 not because of capitalism, but because it was the only major power that wasn't directly involved in the war and hasn't been destroyed in the process. The world order that US built is collapsing as we speak.
Hexbear and lemmygrad make that argument, and as a result they get to confront their own ideals until they block me. Fuck em. Tankies think it's good, here it is.
I didn't make any such argument, but clearly you weren't engaging with what I said and instead decided to fight a straw man being the intellectual giant that you are. The reality is that bad things happen in every human society. The question is whether the terrible things you spammed here are an inherent result of the communist ideology or not. And of course the other question is whether communists managed to create a society that has a positive trajectory and how it compares to other existing societies run by capitalists. Clearly considering such questions is beyond your intellectual ken.
https://lemmy.ml/comment/3692789
This you?
Yup, that's me, presumably you have some point you're trying to make there?
So you support communist China and it's actions?
Of course I do, communist China lifted over a billion people out of horrific poverty and has consistently improved the standard of living for its people. Only an absolute imbecile would ignore all that in favor of focusing on tragedies that happened during the revolution.
Ahem.
No u.
Yup, that's precisely the level of debate I've come to expect from you.
I don't waste my time arguing with tankies, only troll. Sick of 'em, and not worth the mental energy.
That's just how memes do, political or otherwise