I've been seeing this a lot lately. Lots of bandwagoning going on. It is what it is though. People are fallible and often just follow the herd instead of thinking.
Most people are emotional and when challenged find it easier to justify their position rather than consider that they are wrong. So yeah, people will argue shit just to argue it.
Reddit had a lot of problems. Some of them were caused by having people as admins. Some were caused by having people as mods. Some were caused by having people as users.
Lemmy also has people as admins, mods, and users, so it will see many of the same problems.
Though Lemmy won't necessarily turn into Reddit because it's designed to have competition among the admins, so they are less likely to get a sense of "they don't have a choice even if they don't like what we're doing".
I'm looking forward to Lemmy growing and the freedom it provides. Being banned by rogue admins then to be unbanned then 3 months later being banned then unbanned, all with zero explanation was so irksome.
It seems like there is at least one down vote for every comment that gets enough attention for a few upvotes. I assume there is someone here who just really likes downvoting.
That and, at least on Memmy mobile, you swipe right to upvote and swipe slightly further right to down vote. Also upvote color is orange and downvote color is blue, which is counter intuitive to me personally. So if I get a few downvotes on a comment I think is awesome, I just figure it was an accident and someone was trying to upvote me. Because I'm awesome and who would down vote me?
ETA: See?! 👇 Thanks for the attempted upvote, kind stranger!
I’ve def seen it both ways, lots of this person/this thing is bad types of threads on here with tons of people agreeing while spewing out pure nonsense
I think Elon is a fuckwit but come on use some common sense it’s nowhere near treason this person has legitimately no clue what they are talking about and it’s upvoted to shit
On the other hand I’ve commented about stuff on here and if I had said the same things on Reddit I would have gotten downvotes, comments deleted or banned, and instead the comments were upvoted instead.
Idgaf about upvotes or downvotes it’s just interesting to see what the majority of people think is reasonable and that’s the way they show it.
Yea I saw that and thought about commenting but figured it would of been hitting my head on a brick wall. It's funny how people went from loving him to despising him all because they were told to because he brought Twitter
But the problem is, words mean things. A lot of people unfortunately, put the wrong words down - and they think internally that it makes sense, but there is context missing in the words they put down. I've had entire conversations that went on for days, only for me to be 20 threads deep, and the person say "I mentioned that!!", and I ask for them to show me where...only for them to realize they've been angry this whole time over something they assumed I was ignoring or misrepresenting. Turns out, they just simply internalized whatever it was, and didn't write it.
That looks amazing. I’d actually have space to work on a project car, plus store my daily, as well as extra storage, probably a server rack and a whole bunch of other stuff. One of the things I notice most about living in an apartment vs my childhood home is how much storage space we had in our garage.
Larger garages are more environmentally friendly. My garage is huge compared to my house. It has 2 cars, a laundry, and all of the stuff I don't use every day.
This is an area that is not heated or cooled. By having all the storage in the garage, I can get by with less living space.
Garages are cheaper per square metre than rooms, so you save money there too.
You get all the stuff into the same size house, but with less building materials, less heating and cooling costs, and less clutter in your house.
My car is 20 years old and has zero rust. The environmental footprint of manufacturing a car is huge. They last much longer in a garage. It also doesn't need to get washed as often. Washing has an environmental overhead too.
We are in that bucket and in this stupid country there aren't many smaller cars anymore. We're looking for a decent EV that is small and would fit in our garage. I think we have like, 2 options. Everything out there is some crossover SUV bullshit. I don't want a giant car, I just want something smaller and comfortable for 2 people.
I do find it particularly infuriating when it's a topic I'm knowledgeable in/involves my profession. But then I remember most people are stupid and it doesn't bother me too much.
I've had the "You don't work in X do you?" or the "tell me you don't know about X without telling me you don't work in X". Oh boy my fucking bachelors and masters and years of experience in the field say otherwise FFS!
But then I remember most people are stupid and it doesn’t both me too much.
Blame the system. Rating system was a good idea to encourage community self-moderation. But,most people treat upvotes/downvotes as likes/dislikes, even when specifically asked to use them differently. And, because of that, places with rating systems inevitably boil down to circlejerking, infobubbles, and tribalism. Too bad the only alternatives are spamholes, chaotic messes with power-tripping moderators, and AI blackboxes designed to control your mind.
Many users vote based on emotions here. I often see well written comments with the sources linked and everything, being downvoted, and some low effort reply with an opinion is upvoted, though factually incorrect.
Exactly, who cares about the arrows. Sometimes I vote, sometimes I don't. Sometimes my finger slips and I hit the wrong arrow anyway. I don't bother to change it so I take my place as an arbiter of chaos.
You keep assuming that the living space is ~1500sq/ft for some reason; the houses I am talking about that are like this are not even half that size, but have 2 or even 3 car garages attached to them. Most of these are living quarters for field workers on the dairies and not even built to code.
Imagine a single 10x10 bedroom that has a kitchenette in it, and a room big enough to fit a shower, toilet and sink, attached to a 2 or sometimes even 3 car garage bay. That's what I see around here.
I mean, I'm not going to ask you to doxx yourself, but I'm extremely curious to know where you're seeing these homes that are, as you describe them, like 150 SqFt of livable area (10x10 studio + 5x8 bathroom) with an attached 3 car garage.
Edit: And to clarify, the 1500 was pulled out of an anecdotal average. My observations while shopping for homes here in the US have been; 2 bed / 1 bath, could be as small as 800 SqFt, but it's cramped. Whereas in middle-class suburbia, it's not uncommon to see 2500+ SqFt homes.
I've seen workers quarters like this in farms, oil fields, rural power plants etc. They're usually supposed to be for temporary or seasonal workers. Just a simple sleeping area + room for vehicles to drive to the jobsite.
I'm in a somewhat rural part of the central valley in California. Lotta dairy farms out here, and they have their own living spaces for the workers that are just absolute shitholes.
This has the issue of always assuming a household will always live in the most space efficient way possible (2 adults in 1 bedroom with no children or others).
Assume you need 2 bedrooms (2 adults and 1 child): A 800-1,000 sq ft home in the USA is somewhere close to the 10th percentile in terms of size, so going down to ≤750 sq ft puts you near the absolute smallest 2 bedroom houses available.
The first house I lived in after college was 950 sqft. Three bedrooms. No garage. It was also built in the 50’s. It worked for three (and then later four) people splitting rent.
Today developers wouldn’t dare put such a house on the type of lot it was on because it couldn’t be profitable.
I don't know the full context of this conversation, but is it normal for homes to have large garages? I live in a 620 sq foot house (way too small, I have only one kid), and no garage. I wouldn't even want a garage, I have a driveway? Some of my neighbors have garages but they are not that large, they certainly don't make up 50% of their space, but some of them 1/3rd, if their house is smaller. Most houses in my neighborhood are bigger than my house but not huge.
Depends where you live; large garages can be normal. Obviously not 60% of the space, but garages can seriously help protect vehicles and you from the elements. They're great if you have severe winters, frequent rain, strong sunshine, and are now helpful for electric car charging.
That's a good point, we do have hail and tornados where I live. But I guess growing up poor we just accepted damage to vehicles. Not that I'm saying it's ideal, just that I hadn't really considered it an avoidable part of life.
Fuckcars is just a cult anyway, they go REEEE at any suggestion that cars are a necessity for many people, and that no busses nor bikes will ever compensate for it.
I've followed the FuckCars community for a while (started on reddit). Being one of them car fuckers myself I would disagree. There certainly are people there whose thought process doesn't go much further than car = bad, but boiling the whole community down to that does a disservice to their more important points. I think most people there aren't so much advocating for less cars as much as they are advocating for policy and societal change toward a world where we aren't so reliant on cars. Obviously for a massive chunk of the world population (especially in North America) cars are a necessity like you said, but do they need to be? Wouldn't we all be better off if the world was less car dependent? We aren't saying that there should be no more cars, just that we shouldn't continue to design our cities in such a way that you need a car to live.
If you are interested in more about where the fuckcars comunity is coming from I would recommend checking out the youtube channel Not Just Bikes. All of his videos are great but I think this one is a good intro to the channel. I also like this one because it outlines a lot of the specific "first step" type things that could be much better (most applicable to north america). Also, his Strong Towns Video Series is really good if you have the time.
Still. I live near Mannheim, out of the 8 people in my circle of close friends, 4 either outright do not own a car or share a car with their spouses, because their households can make do with one or less cars. They can absolutely make do with walking, bikes, tram, bus and train for everything in their daily lives. In many american cities of the same size, that would simply not be an option.
Are you going to be first in line to give up your computer? Your phone? Antibiotics? Vaccines? Electricity?
Innovation is real, even if you don't personally like it. Motor vehicles are a legitimately good invention, arguably only becoming problematic due to increasing population and urbanization.
I don't think they live in the same reality I do, or maybe they've never seen Texas? Even if my local area was designed for foot traffic, the amount of space between literally everything here would make it impossible not to rely on a car.
In DFW you can sum about any trip to somewhere you want to be to a 30 minute drive. Favorite restaurant that isn't literally right next to you? 30 minutes or an hour without tolls.
Work? That's another 30 minutes.
Wanna go to a store nicer than a Walmart? You guessed it. 30 minutes.
Get home from work around 4:30? We'll now you have a cool 5 hours of time until bed time. Subtract an hour of the gym, an hour of cooking and maybe you've got 3 hours of time to do anything else. Waiting for public transportation or wasting time walking would just cut down even more of the hours in your day.
Maybe I want more out of life than sacrificing my time to public transportation and walking.
Even if my local area was designed for foot traffic, the amount of space between literally everything here would make it impossible not to rely on a car.
If your local area was designed for foot traffic, then things wouldn't be so spread out. One of the many reasons this is so bad in america (and this is the case in DFW) are the awful parking minimum laws that have ruined so many cities. Since the 1950's new business developments have been required to have a minimum amount of parking so that even at max capacity there would be enough spots. In a less car-centric city almost any place you would need to visit regularly -be it a grocery store, a department store, or whatever else- would certainly be within walking distance of (or a short public transit hop away from) your home and work. But the parking minimum laws spread everything so far apart that to walk or bike anywhere is unimaginable, and it also isn't feasible to build up good public transit because you would need stops at every major street corner (rather than in a reasonable city where you would be taking transit hops between dense clusters of businesses and other destinations).
In DFW you can sum about any trip to somewhere you want to be to a 30 minute drive. Favorite restaurant that isn’t literally right next to you? 30 minutes or an hour without tolls. Work? That’s another 30 minutes. Wanna go to a store nicer than a Walmart? You guessed it. 30 minutes.
Get home from work around 4:30? We’ll now you have a cool 5 hours of time until bed time. Subtract an hour of the gym, an hour of cooking and maybe you’ve got 3 hours of time to do anything else. Waiting for public transportation or wasting time walking would just cut down even more of the hours in your day. Maybe I want more out of life than sacrificing my time to public transportation and walking.
You said "I don’t think they live in the same reality I do," but not only is this pretty much exactly the case in the city I live in, but I have given very similar rants when complaining about living in such a car dependent area. Honestly I was confused for a moment because you have some great points on why living in a city designed for cars sucks so much. The reason I consider myself a member of the fuckcars community isn't that I think people should walk/bike more or that I don't like cars. It's that I want our city designs to change. Walking, biking, and even public transit simply doesn't make sense in most North American cities but it doesn't have to be that way. With policy change and redesign projects over time our cities could be so much better.
How exactly is doing the math unhealthy? This is like 60 seconds of math and a few minutes of graphics at most.
I'd rather have someone doing the math and posting it than people becoming misinformed on an important political topic. I think that's what OP was after.
Unhealthy to prove your point by doing the math and helping convince people with an illustration? That's just good practice on critical thinking. Maybe you need to go take a stroll around the block.
They actually want to bulldoze so much, just so we can cram more people in closer together. And no, no one wants to be walking around when its 90+ degrees out, or literally freezing.
Ive never seen any calls to bulldoze anything. We do a lot of complaining about how much was bulldozed to fill landscapes with stroads and parking lots. And dont act like we're not calling for buses and trains as well. Have you stopped and thought about why it's too hot to walk around now?
They throw out all nuance and have absolutely no empathy or consideration that others need to live differently than them. Or hell, need to live differently than them in order to support their own lifestyle. I swear 90% of them have never lived outside the city they were born in.
OK so the majority of people has to cut back on so much, especially a safe environment to get places, just so a few people with a car fetish can keep buying bigger and bigger cars. Got it.
This is exactly the point I've been making to them. I think it's a bunch of people who have never lived outside of a major city, or grew up in new-construction actual suburban hell like Phoenix, DFW, Vegas, most of FL etc. Try old Midwest small city suburbs by comparison. Maybe parts of the northeast.
They probably couldn't afford a car after used car prices spiked sometime between 2000-2010, and never experienced the freedom and autonomy. They can't imagine not being into a downtown club scene - it hasn't dawned on them that they will probably grow up and hate living in a congested apartment world and might want to stretch out in a bigger house in a quiet neighborhood. It's never occurred to them that not everyone works from home and their spouse may need to take a job 20 miles in the opposite direction.
Do you sell your house because your job changed? Get divorced because your partner's job changed? You can't have ALL of the employment in easy reach by public transit from your home. This ideal-city with perfect transit and no commute is a handwave. UNLESS you live in a sufficiently small town that has everything but hasn't blown up yet - and those aren't dense enough for transit, and require personal vehicles.
Public transit is also more inconvenient than convenient even if you give it a maximum advantage in density and stipulate that the trains will run 24/7 and frequently (NYC).
It's just inexperience with life or being an urban loving weirdo who can't imagine that other perspectives exist. I want to spend all of my free time in places you couldn't service with transit. They can't even imagine it.