Being on Lemmy for 3 months almost made me a Republican
The first thing you'll probably notice when you get on Lemmy is a bunch of Star Trek memes from 15 years ago. Or maybe a series of reposted comics that your aunt might send you. I thought this was kind of endearing at first. It reminded me of a simpler internet where everyone seemed content to just kind of shoot the shit and sensibly chuckle at things.
Then I got a little deeper in and, yeah, it's a pretty progressive place. I'm a pretty progressive guy. So that's nice. But then... man, you start to realize how many computer programmers there are. It's somehow
all computer programmers and they're
all on Linux and
very passionate about the fact that they're all on Linux, for some reason. Okay - odd, but I guess it's just not a sphere I'm used to.
Then you get to the real political posts. And lord, that's where you start to get rough. It is those same computer programmers, all ranting and raving about how being a computer programmer is the most oppressed, overworked career in the country. Everyone is replying to every post about poor working conditions by saying "If your job is bad you should just join or, if they need to, form your own union!" but no one seems to know how that happens or what that involves. I once said that while I work a good amount of hours I actually enjoy my job quite a bit and feel like I'm compensated fairly and a shocking amount of people told me I was regurgitating capitalist propaganda given to me by the ruling class.
It's just such a strange subculture that I feel like I slowly delved into. Like I crash landed on some jungle island and at first the natives were friendly and gave me fruits and shelter but then as I kept going deeper into the jungle I started catching glimpses of them eating eachother and trying to burn me at the stake because I don't use a VPN.
I dunno. The best way I can summarize it is that at first I thought it was like the utopia from Star Trek but then it ended up being like the utopia from Wall-E, but all the obese people in their mobility scooters are really angry instead of really chill.
Kind of sucks to give up on it, but I genuinely felt like I was taking more psychic damage there then I take here encountering the stray 50 year old lady complaining about her doordash order.