When I first joined this community I saw it as a respite from reddit where I was free to chill with people without being constantly expected to debate or defend arguments or anything. Just a forum where people are nice.
Lately though it seems every active comment section is filled to the brim with, to be frank, obnoxious people who want nothing more than to fight with you about everything you say. I think they're known as "debate bros."
I'm not saying debate shouldn't be happening but to be honest it's disappointing seeing it be the only thing occurring. I've tried contributing in other fashions but have been met multiple times with people trying to start arguments with me about things or get me to defend "points" that I didn't make. This in particular has been very annoying. I've reported every instance of this due to it not contributing but I feel as if that's not helping.
I like talking to people I disagree with. I like conversing with differing opinions. But I feel alone in that this isn't the only thing I want to do on a forum.
Again, I'm not trying to definitively say we shouldn't debate at all, but just pointing out how prevalent it seems to be. Id like to just converse with people without being expected to make and defend points. I feel like that's a major thing we should've left on Reddit.
If people want to debate then they can do that. I just dislike that it appears to become the base-level expectation for the instance.
I read an interesting thread about “I hate politics” being an inherently anti-minority/anti-oppressed stance. Because to the majority, “politics” is often anything related to race/gender/social-status/etc. so it’s a disservice to those causes to ignore them.
And while I belong to a couple of minority/oppressed groups, I also get the idea of wanting to not be constantly inundated with those debates.
I’ve got no answers other than it’s complicated and something worth thinking about.
It’s well-docmented in Aotearoa, Australia, and the UK that low turnout favours the right so some centre-right parties - advised by Crosby Textor - try to create divisive issues because it puts voters off politics and voting altogether.
But, I think there’s often a big difference between engaging politically in your community and society, and debating strangers on social media.
Like @Ignacio@beehaw.org, I block things called “politics” on the lemmy and kbin sites because they are mostly catch-alls for well rehearsed/rehashed arguments relevant to America.
I think it’s possible for us to stand in solidarity with Americans without resorting to that, and in other countries their causes tend to come up in social media news so I try to take real world actions based on that, for example writing to our minister of foreign affairs to ask that NZ takes a particular stance or action.
Someone else where tried to tell me that I was “privileged” for not wanting to discuss politics - I told them that if they knew me (which isn’t that hard to do, I’m pretty transparent on the internet…) then the idea of calling me “privileged” is an absolute joke.
There’s definitely a huge difference between “I don’t want to discuss politics [with people who are most likely not going to discuss it in good faith with you and will only scream at you]” versus “I don’t want to ever be involved or know about politics whatsoever”. I don’t even discuss politics with friends because the potential consequences are… bad, to say the least. If I don’t discuss it with friends, then I’m certainly not going to discuss it with people I have no connection to (for lack of a better phrase, I don’t mean that in a harsh manner of course) on the internet. I too also tend to block any political discussion from any feeds I take part in because it also, tends to not go well.
Heck, I usually don’t even go into the “why” all that often either, because of what I mentioned in my first sentence.