Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
I don't agree that it will cause social unrest or that it tears apart the social fabric of our society. I don't see a reason to discount interactions of people on the internet, or why internet communities are any less real than in-person communities (even if they have some differences).
You might be interested in this book, Bowling Alone, about the decline of participation in in-person social groups.
Online interactions aren't as rich as in person one, primarily due to the lack of social signals given off by text on a screen. There's little emotion, the tone of the words you read is the tone you read them in. The internet isn't a good enough substitute to replace in person connections. Many people suffered during covid when online interactions were the only choice.
Depends on the person, I benefited immensely during COVID when interactions mostly went online. Not everyone interacts the same way, or has the same capacities or preferences. What you're saying may be true for the majority, though.
A great example of what this Lemmite said is the fact that they got downvoted without a response.
In a face to face setting, the downvoter would need to interact with the speaker out they'd have to bad-mouth the speaker behind their back. Those are more social actions:
Interaction with the speaker would make it easier to find common ground.
Badmouthing the speaker would open the downvoter to criticism from other people in the conversation.
Or they take their friends and walk away in silence. Then less people listen to the original commenter because why would anyone listen to someone that's talking to nobody who's listening?
I can't say that my face-to-face interactions with people on contentious issues have been much better than my online ones, honestly, even when I am making a genuine effort to treat their concerns as reasonable and find common ground.