It was definitely the subreddit first on my end. I'd been nebulously distrustful of, alienated from, and exhausted by capitalism for a long while - though like I suspect is true of many apolitical, miserable working class people I struggled to envision an alternative, and didn't even really know what socialism was in any real sense. But in early 2018, the child separations were big in the news cycle and something sort of snapped in me - I had an overwhelming feeling that any system that led to this must be rotten to the core. And it so happens I stumbled across the sub right around then - the discussions going on at the time helped me contextualize what was happening within the larger framework of the mechanics of capitalism.
And broader than that, the subreddit was just the right blend of irreverent gallows humor, compassion, and genuinely informative content for me. Especially back then, the silly memes very frequently led to actual discourse and educational resources about socialism. It felt like a space where people spoke uniquely honestly (and hilariously) about the various absurdities of living under capitalism - absurdities that were not really permissible to address elsewhere (or even worse, were simply treated as features of reality), but which I had intuitively felt were obvious for a long time.
Even toward the end - when the quality had admittedly dipped - I think the sub was far and away the "best of the worst" of online left spaces. The other subs were way too self-serious and tyrannical in their modding, and Twitter is frankly 90% narcissistic hellscape. Can't really overstate how glad I am to have this space back! I've got high high hopes for the Lemmy.
PS: the pod is OK as well - it can be great at its peaks, more for humor and catharsis than education typically, but they've definitely lost their way post Bernie. I know I'm the millionth person saying it, but that Taibbi episode was god awful. Matt's streams are still mostly dope though.
It was definitely the subreddit first on my end. I'd been nebulously distrustful of, alienated from, and exhausted by capitalism for a long while - though like I suspect is true of many apolitical, miserable working class people I struggled to envision an alternative, and didn't even really know what socialism was in any real sense. But in early 2018, the child separations were big in the news cycle and something sort of snapped in me - I had an overwhelming feeling that any system that led to this must be rotten to the core. And it so happens I stumbled across the sub right around then - the discussions going on at the time helped me contextualize what was happening within the larger framework of the mechanics of capitalism.
And broader than that, the subreddit was just the right blend of irreverent gallows humor, compassion, and genuinely informative content for me. Especially back then, the silly memes very frequently led to actual discourse and educational resources about socialism. It felt like a space where people spoke uniquely honestly (and hilariously) about the various absurdities of living under capitalism - absurdities that were not really permissible to address elsewhere (or even worse, were simply treated as features of reality), but which I had intuitively felt were obvious for a long time.
Even toward the end - when the quality had admittedly dipped - I think the sub was far and away the "best of the worst" of online left spaces. The other subs were way too self-serious and tyrannical in their modding, and Twitter is frankly 90% narcissistic hellscape. Can't really overstate how glad I am to have this space back! I've got high high hopes for the Lemmy.
PS: the pod is OK as well - it can be great at its peaks, more for humor and catharsis than education typically, but they've definitely lost their way post Bernie. I know I'm the millionth person saying it, but that Taibbi episode was god awful. Matt's streams are still mostly dope though.
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