Because I’ve talked to people who say things like that and it just makes me lose my faith in humanity a little 
But I have to remind myself that this tagline is some western Marxist (or maybe socdem?) verbal diarrhea and isn’t common among the people who matter
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You can block the taglines in uBlock. I did that months ago, can’t stand the irony poisoned bs and the ragebait and the snark. Same reason why i blocked comms like fakenews, badposting, slop and chisme and only browse by local. You do not have to expose yourself to stuff that causes you psychic damage like some marketplace of idea liberal. The internet is only usable without lasting mental damage if you curate it at least somewhat.
Thanks for sharing the tip about uBlock. The taglines don’t bother me that much, but I agree with your point that we should feel empowered to control our experience online.
I have similar thoughts about interaction at the device level. Modern operating systems use a push philosophy when presenting information to the user. This manifests as feed algorithms, spontaneous system notifications, app badges, and so on. But it is mentally healthier if your device works according to a pull philosophy, in which information is exposed only when you ask for it. That way you aren’t bombarded with more than you can handle. This can be further improved by reducing, as much as possible, all attention-grabby “features” like oversaturated colors and overstimulating animations. Maybe I’ll compile these ideas and post it.
Fully agree. I recently switched from youtube to freetube originally as part of my general degoogling plans, but i have noticed that not being sucked into endless streams of algorithmically sorted shorts has saved me a ton of time i could spend on other things, be they productive or be they more conscious and deliberate media consumption.
you were watching shorts?
I only watch shorts at work. Butterfly meme: “Is this praxis?”
badposting
But its the best comm???
it’s pure poop
Yes. Which is why it’s good.
The sound of someone who didn’t do the assigned reading but spouts off confidently in class anyway.
It’s the kind of argument made by someone who only learns socialism from non-expert sources (breadtube etc) where theoretical precision is sacrificed for popular appeal. If you only ever listen to those people, and never read Marx directly, you are likely to end up with the most confused ideas.
This particular idea might have originated with Richard Wolff, who I’ve previously complained about so I’m not surprised if it did start with him.
Understanding capitalism in terms of workplace relationships differs from how others define capitalism. […] Using my definition instead, the last century’s epic struggle was not between capitalism and another economic system. That is because both capitalism and 20th century socialism relied upon basically the same employer-employee relationship for their workplaces’ organization. The difference was who the employers were: private persons in capitalism versus state officials in socialism.
This is why no one should listen to Wolff.
That might have contributed to his split with David Harvey, maybe? Harvey is not good about imperialism either. Vijay Prashad called him out on describing imperialism (and not too badly), but completely avoiding the actual word “imperialism”, dancing around the issue. But at least Harvey centers capital as “value in motion”. A socialist state with central planning is clearly fundamentally different from a society, where a huge mass of capital spirals economy into worse and worse crisis on the quest for profitable investment. The socialist state doesn’t need growth or rising profits or any profits to reproduce itself. A specific bureaucracy might be inefficient or even corrupt, but it doesn’t need to be to reproduce itself. Capitalism causes crisis necessarily.
I think Wolff is reaching some people in a positive way, but only as a stepping stone. I used to listen to him a lot, but my understanding developed further. Eg he has a good take on inflation as basically class warfare. But he can’t explain some important crisis tendencies without understanding capital.
Capitalism is about capital. As much as I hate to do the meme, it is in the name. We don’t need a millionth definition of capitalism just like we have a million of fascism.
Exactly. Marx never really used the term capitalism as such, except as an adjective e.g. capitalist mode of production. The point wasn’t to define an abstraction but to explain a concrete, historical form of society, in terms of its particularity (the capitalist form) and how that is the manifestation of the general or universal (the mode of production) which is independent of the form of society.
Some early Marxists tried to generalize it as a theory of commodity society or of money but even that is imprecise, as Rubin explains in his essays, partly because commodities and money can and did exist outside of capitalism. Capitalism is about capital.
Yup. Marxism is all about reducing things which most ideologies consider to be universal phenomena to their historical forms. That’s why it’s a science and why so many people just cannot grasp marxism
Americans need to be put into reeducation camps
Don’t threaten me with a good time!
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
You need to be somewhat educated before you can be re-educated
“the proletarian republic is basically a giant unaccountable corporation, like Exxon, and it does whatever it wants no matter how much i complain.” - a very serious and totally not shit-tier, Rothbardian analysis of political economy.
Taglines used to be a collection of the funniest and most defining moments of the site’s history…now they’re just a rogues’ gallery of the most asinine brainfarts by crypto-nazi lemmycrat #9,999
I don’t know where the idea of rage-baiting ourselves came from, or why it’s perceived by some as cool or interesting, but it’s a definite vibe-killer
I think it’s nice to see a take like this that you can’t engage with, it’s like exposure therapy. The big problem with Internet arguments is that the other person is right there being wrong and you can type at them until your fingers fall off while they continue to get more and more wrong.
I don’t understand this mentality at all
Looking at exhausting, low-effort political bait on a daily basis doesn’t cure internet addiction or build character; real exposure therapy is a controlled, intentional psychological process designed to reduce irrational fear or anxiety, not slowly desensitize users to toxicity and degrade the overall culture of the platform by acting as a glorified advertisement broad for lemmy fascists
It’s like saying, “Yeah, the local park is covered in broken glass and trash now, but look at it as agility training! Confront your fear! And watch where you step; it’s great for your reflexes.” Meanwhile, I’m over here wondering why the hell is the park covered in trash and glass in the first place
Insider humor, community history, and shared joy, gone for the sake of toxic therapy lessons? How is this argument not an admission that the platform’s vibe is dead?
I have nothing positive to say in disagreement
Most taglines really are bad vibes. Sometimes they are sort of funny. I only like the ones that say things like “tocopherol needs to log off” or links to a good essay or book that sometimes appear. It would be interesting to see a straight yes no vote on the question “do taglines help your vibe?” Why should we encourage an irritating thought most times we look at the front page? Usually it’s just a mild irritation and not very serious, but if someone wants psychically damaging takes on socialism you can go to basically anywhere else to see that.
I didn’t mean for the post to be a referendum on taglines, but I’m glad if it can open up a conversation. There are a few improvements that could be made:
- opt-out in user settings
- a “talk page” for each tagline (maybe exposed as a small info button) where users can discuss, give feedback, or even ask to remove the tagline
- user-specific hiding of specific taglines so they dont come back (ideally this is not needed at all)
I don’t feel that strongly about it really, they aren’t usually so bad and I did get a chuckle out of one just now. A talk page would be great though if that was feasible, some of them I would really like to know the context or comment on
They got us there, it’s all about owning the means of production so we can give it to “the state” (which is a big monster that lives in a cave in the mountains) so “the state” can be the biggest capitalist ever.
The people who matter have much worse takes
Every time I tried to do anything about the irony poisoned shit, I got crazy pushback and some dick would blow it up into a site-wide struggle session (largely because they were allowed to do so numerous times instead of being banned).
This is what the IST actually believes
