I would disagree slighly. We definitely do a little trolling from time to time, but that is not what dunking is.

Dunking is ripping on someone for having terrible politics, advocating for terrible politics, or otherwise. It is doing so in a way that shames the person but more than that is a public spectacle. That is important to enforce acceptable norms. It should be quite clear by now on Lemmy that if you're federated with Hexbear and you do a transphobia you'd better be ready to be swarmed by LOTS of angry communists. Thats community protection online, without it you get communities that grow nazi problems. In addition to that, the spectacle of the dunking often includes reference to why the politics are terrible, links with other types of bad politics, these things are all interlinked as they are a part of the interdependent system of globalized neoliberal capitalism, which itself is supported on layers of classism, deep histories of racial tensions, homophobia, transphobia, and one of the most OG layers patriarchy. It provides opportunities for us to tie these disparate pieces together, and thats not to mention the inevitable effort post as one of us just cant stand it any longer and has to write a book on the subject.

But most importantly, its how we can get some catharsis. Its been said by many a leftist that its harder to face the world once you know. The suffering is just so blinding. Its a horrible world full of horrible systems that force people to do horrible things and I'm usually powerless to stop it, but I can make that liberal feel bad about it and since they support what this world is and does, and they're daring to do it in front of me, it feels great. In a grand and twisted sort of way its kind of like yelling at customer service, kind of. They're only like this because capitalism melted their brains, the poor fellas. I used to be worse than most of these libs so I know they could come around, but when I was that way I deserved it.

That was more than I intended to write lol