im sorry for ur experience :( we're not all like that but obs ur not gonna hear about the ones that aren't annoying... cuz they aren't being annoying about it

its there. I have seen it. its also not there. use the block. make the experience you want.

This. It got notably worse recently, so don't be too picky with that block button.

yeah I mean that being said don't block somone just for disagreeing and check thier profile and post and comment history to verify. There are some who were being rather dickish at times but I looked over and you know maybe they were having a bad day as their history was not like that all the time.

Reddit has normies now and Lemmy is more basement nerds so that's probably why.

Not everyone struggling with compulsive porn use is part of the NoFap community.

I'm not, and I shouldn't have to answer for the "crimes" of anyone else just because they're dealing with a similar issue as I am. They don't represent me, and I don't represent them. It makes zero sense to take the views of the loud extremist minority and slap them onto the entire group. Most people who self-diagnose with the "porn addiction" label just want help sorting out their own life - they couldn't care less what anyone else does with theirs.

And I don't want to take that away from anyone. I just wish it didn't affect my own life to the extent that it has for the past 20+ years.

I call into question your claim that most aren't like that. But even if most aren't, it's what the community is known for.

If you don't like what the community is known for, you have options. You can try and fix the reputation, you can deal with being stereotyped, or you could just be a person who doesn't masturbate, and not part of a specific community.

I don't think there's a fourth option where you get to be part of the community, which is known for being horrible, but everyone just magically knows you're not one of those ones.

Personally, I've chosen option 3 for most of my proclivities. I don't drink, but I'm not part of AA because of their religious craziness. I don't eat meat, but I'm not out here supporting PETA.

Sure. And boy do I wish humans didn't do that all the time. But they do. And so to expect otherwise seems silly to me.

Maybe I'm just more jaded than I should be.

They’ve got the moral instinct, sure, but zero intellectual grounding.

And since we should not trust 'moral' anything without at least some understanding of it... that's not a good situation. At least, that's how I see it.

We’re seeing it happen in real time. People repeat opinions like they’re reciting scripture

Which is funny realizing how most of them are so hostile towards the Bible or anything religion-related while they're at the same time mindlessly repeating/mimicking (what I consider) the worst of all the religious traits: blind adherence to an ideology/ideal, as well as the refusal to listen to critics.

That’s exactly the kind of bullshit that got USA in the state it is right now.

Can't talk about the USA myself: the world is a tad larger and also includes a few foreign countries, including my own: France ;)

I have literally been called a fascist for telling people to think for themselves.

I have been called many names during my almost 60 years on this planet (fascist not even being the worst), and I learned to not bother: hateful believers will remain hateful believers no matter what, even those who only believe in 'social something' instead of 'god'. They won't change, or just maybe their believe switching from one to the latest trendy one. Meanwhile, I will keep on refusing to blindly adhere to any type of faith, with or without a god ;)

I explicitly stated in my previous response that I'm not part of that community. I'm just an individual dealing with an issue, and I have compassion for all the other individuals facing the same thing - people who are too ashamed or afraid to seek help or even tell anyone about it. Seeing the response it gets here, even from folks who probably pride themselves on being empathetic and compassionate - yeah, I don't blame those people for staying silent.

This isn't about supporting a community or pushing some ideology. It's about raising awareness that real people struggle with this stuff. It's not sexual shaming or defying God - it's about taking back control of their own lives. As with anything, the dose makes the poison. Nobody I've talked to about this thinks porn or masturbation is inherently bad - they're just the kind of person who takes it too far, to the point it starts causing real harm in their life. They don't have an agenda. They need help, and I feel for them.

If even a single person feels seen by my comment - the one that gets downvoted into oblivion by the haters - and gets even the tiniest sliver of help or hope from it, then it was 100% worth it.

Not saying if you should or should not be jaded but I would ask you: please, please don't give into the jadedness.

I do understand the impulse and I used to be that way myself. But it's something that eats at you more than it helps you. Online you can always step away from the strife and in the offline world you can find truly good and caring people who do listen to reason. I realize it might be easy for me to say but I really don't want to see any more people turn to hopelessness and cynicism. It only helps people who would add more misery to the world.

I'm not the best person to say this and it'll sound weird on this platform but I do mean it with all my heart. I hope you can find enough good in your life to protect it without despair.

Well said. It is so frustrating when people don’t understand that people disagreeing with them does not mean their freedom of speech is being violated.

Thx.

Quite a few of them will remain incapable to understand that, no matter what we can try too encourage them, but I want to think the vast majority can't because they were not educated to understand it.

Schools (as well as many parents, I’m afraid) have failed many of the younger people/generation. Being old myself, as a teen in the early 80s I started witnessing that failure spreading like fire in the few public schools I had friends in (I was lucky enough to be in a private school, a religious one where they insisted on using a… stricter approach to teaching, a more demanding one too).

Public schools have failed so badly it's hard to realize parents have not been on the streets demanding an urgent reform. But they obviously don’t manifest much for that, like if not educating their kids was no big deal. Those kids, if they were given the opportunity to access some proper education (and to the more… radicals out there: ‘proper’ should not be understood as ‘perfect’ or ‘faultless’) they would quickly learn to accept difference of opinions, and even extremely conflicting ideas. Even more, I have little doubt many would start to value it, realizing it’s an opportunity for everyone.

Alas, we’re far from that. And, as an older person (I'm nearing my 60s), when you try to point out the issue, that catastrophic and dramatic failure of school and adults towards kids... Most will either refuse to listen, disqualifying the remark as mere nostalgia from someone too old to understand the modern world and its many new problems (which is another interesting demonstration of prejudice, btw). Entirely missing the point. Alas.

Even the banning example,

Being banned from a private space (online or IRL) is not a violation of the freedom of speech (which BTW is mostly an US-based thing, while a lot of the fediverse is not from there), it’s the right of the owner to decide who can and cannot enter in and stay to their place, and what they can do there.

The issue is when that legit right is used to silence dissent ideas and thoughts. Like it can easily be done on X or Reddit, or any other centralized platform. Hence me pointing out that the Fediverse is more resilient to that kind of abuse… even if it is not immune to it and to admins abusing their powers and behaving like miniature wannabe dictators. At least, like I said, one can always switch community or create a new one. Even a whole instance.

That is something (too) many will not be willing to hear. See my other comments: they've been educated in wanting that echo chamber more than anything else.

Changing that will take hard work and, even worse in our days and age, a lot of patience as it won't happen overnight, not even in a single generation's span...

Sorry to interject, I just want to check if I'm understanding this sub-thread correctly. I was skimming and didn't immediately realize what you were talking about:

So someone asked what kind of discussion isn't tolerated.

You brought up people discussing wanting to cut down their personal porn consumption.

You get downvoted and people imply you're just some conservative wanting to preach about the evils of masturbation. Which is a complete mischaracterization of what you're saying.

I don't follow nofap discussions etc. as it's thankfully not a problem for me personally but I know porn and masturbation addictions are very real and detrimental to one's well-being. I'm a bit stunned to learn that you get this much flak for acknowledging it here. I'm sorry to hear this :/

There are 2 options here.

• Creating a community for likeminded people, kicking out badly behaved individuals. Noone objects this.
• Peddling the mindset of christofascists like Mike Johnson, soliciting the point in other communities. Get dunked on, because you deserve it.

Pretty Much ha

The hostility toward anyone even talking about this caught me off guard too. I would've thought Lemmy would be the exact opposite - a place where people opening up about personal struggles get met with compassion. Boy was I wrong.

Here's the thread where I discovered it yesterday, though I don't recommend reading through it. It's quite awful.

Give us an example what you’re referring to…your comment doesn’t mean a lot of without any context.

“Freedom of speech” is a fraught concept. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean one must accept the views of another, for example. Freedom of speech is also accepting reaction to your speech. Each speaker is “owed” whatever freedom you’re proposing.

This might seem like a troll to some…but it’s a legit ask.

Contemporary western conservatism, especially on the internet, is very often using liberal coded language to present or give cover to inflexible ideology.

I checked OP's post history, expecting to find a bunch of offensive stuff in there, but I didn't see anything egregious in the first page. *shrug* And I'm not going to bother with digging deeper.

Yep. I bet many people I have hung out with who are chill and cool are vegans. They just didn't make it their entire life's purpose and personality.

Yeah, we've hand now hundreds, maybe even more low grade trolls butthurt here that they aren't allowed to be racist sexist piles of shit and whine about free speech. No dudes, we have the right not to host your shit. Not saying OP is one of them, but I'll throw a link at 90% of the people who post here about free speech are under that umbrella.

And every time I point it out I offer that they may start their own instance with all the hate they want. So far I have seen almost no one do that.

Your free speech is not violated when someone disagrees with you. Your free speech is violated when the government stops you from speaking your mind. "Bullying" may be not nice, but it's not a free speech issue. That's just two people having a disagreement in an uncivilized manner.

Way I see it, karma is good for posts, but terrible for comments.

I don't come here for friendly debate or to enrich my worldview. It happens from time to time but there are two many bad faith actors to waste time debating with people that don't already largely align with my priorities and morality.

Within those boundaries I'm happy to rethink things and have nuanced conversations and debate with people I already can largely agree on foundational thinking. But frankly at this point in my life if someone comes on here with "but what if Trump is good," I block. Like in order to get to that point, there has to be extremely little common ground to agree on. There is no hope of reasonable conversation.

Likely some people feel the same about me.

listen, veganism is inherently a criticsm of anyone who isn't vegan. People pick up on that and don't like it.

You're just going to have to accept that if you're a vegan. Moaning about it makes it worse.

Right, so when I pull a gun on you, it's just free speech?

No dude, it's assault. Lots of people control speech in online spaces by taking out virtual guns. Threats of banning, harassment, doxxing etc.

I don't know about you, I was involved in a subreddit years ago where members would stalk and harass people over online comments. Like drive to their house and take photos then post them online. That's not disagreement, that's bullying and being a psychopath who think they have every right to abuse and silence someone else for what they said.

Wow.... I'm glad that one guy at least amended their first post but yeah... I am so sorry you get responses like this.

I hope find the support you need, and if at all possible, have the energy to keep bringing it up despite ignorant takes. Recovery’s possible, even when the internet is a minefield. Wishing you strength!

pls be joke 😭

No-fap and anti-fap communities have historically been breeding grounds (irony unintended) for right-wing ideology. That's where a lot of the distaste for that kind of talk comes from; when someone starts moralizing about "porn addiction" it is so frequently followed by blatant misogyny and incel rhetoric that people have learned to immediately respond with derision.

I can't help but be curious, what made you choose slrpnk.net - an instance for environmentalist anarchists - as a conservative? Did you misread conservationism or something?

I chose it because I'm a conservationist myself and interested in topics like human-powered transit, homegrowing food crops, and fighting climate change. I personally think that environmental conservation and education are the two most important political issues, because those are the ones that will determine our future. Frustratingly, it's been a rough couple decades policy-wise for both here in the US.

I have had some very interesting conversations and learned a lot about anarchism in my time here, I will say. And while I still think that anarchism as a political philosophy requires a certain amount of naïvety regarding human nature, there's much about it to be admired as well, especially at a hyperlocal scale.

I’ll preface by repeating what you said: we don’t know what the OP is talking about.

But, yeah, very often when somebody is complaining about free speech…they don’t mean free speech. What they mean is that their opinion should be accepted without criticism or consequence.

What this outlook has resulted in, in many places in the contemporary western world (the world I’m familiar with), is that hate speech, aggressive speech and threatening speech are protected - even encouraged - while the speech of those functionally suppressed or intimidated is ignored or attacked.

My opinion is that conservative speech has become a huge problem. It’s ironically social media bubbles that make so-called conservatives believe that their once marginalized opinions are more popular or legitimate than they are. I believe that conservatives want everybody to be forced to listen to their opinions until they agree with them or face consequences if they don’t.

But who's moralizing about it here? The mere mention of struggling with compulsive porn use - or even just noting that others do - gets immediately met with vicious hostility and completely baseless accusations. It's totally unreasonable to dump that massive pile of imagined baggage onto someone and then treat them as if it all applies to them.

You literally cannot get some people to acknowledge that there are tens of millions of (mostly) young men who genuinely struggle with this. It's not about thinking porn or masturbation is bad. It's about having taken it to such an extreme that it's actively harming their life - and many of them seek help online. Unfortunately, these toxic communities are among the very few places available for advice and peer support.

Here's a little guide:

• Threats of banning, having unpopular views, being mean, uncivil discussion <-- Not against the law. "Free speech" discussion doesn't apply. Just two parties having a disagreement.
• Assault, legit harassment, libel, doxxing, etc <-- Against the law and you can be arrested/fined/sued. "Free speech" discussion applies, but in the case of these, the government has indicated that the speech is not protected under free speech. It's about the government enforcing which speech is allowed and what is not.

In the cases presented:

• What OP talked about in the initial post was not a free speech issue. The government isn't involved unless a law was broken, which I don't think it has.
• What you're talking about here regarding harassment/doxxing IS a free speech issue because the law will stop the harasser and technically infringe on their right to "speak." However, in this case, at least in the US judicial system has said that harassment falls outside of the allowable speech covered under the law and so it's okay for the government to infringe on that right for this case.

Does that make sense?

It's all guilt by association.

You can't talk about anything here without some significant number of crackpots telling you how you are evil for acknowledging it's existence, and how we must destroy anyone who says anything they find uncomfortable to acknowledge.

Discussion about anything spiritual.

As an atheist and a Bible-reading dude (as well as a few other 'spirituality' books, among many other types of books), the hate towards anything spirituality-related and religious around here was one of those things I almost immediately noticed after joining, it's even worse regarding anything Christian. The worst for me was not that hate, it is the fact that almost all of it rely on nothing but a desire to do like the others. And very rarely on actual knowledge of what is being hated.

It is one of those things that made me question if I should stay, if the Fediverse was a place one could really expect to have enriching discussions, or merely the exact opposite of those corporate-owned social media platforms that are populated by right-winged haters: collectively-owned social media populated by left-winged haters. Hate is a poor choice. It doesn't matter what one hates.

The one thing that made stay is that, thx to the tools available, it's also very easy to filter out most of that hatred and to suddenly realize that, hidden under that now gone noise, there are indeed quite a few persons wanting to have civilized conversations and that are able to not hate on anyone they disagree with. Not a large crowd, but enough to make it worthwhile to stay and from time to time have an interesting discussion.

That option to filter out the hate, even if it's not perfect, makes the Fediverse quite unique, imho.

passionate is a polite way to acknowledge that they have delusional beliefs and inability to knowledge reality outside of their own head where anything they claim or think is perfect and good.

The tolerance paradox. If we let intolerant thoughts through, they quickly become domineering and push for exactly what we see. So, the only thing to be intolerant of is intolerance itself.

This is the thing I like least about Lemmy. So many people have no friends or life experience, hate everyone, and want to constantly argue or insult others that it's difficult to avoid them. I block as many as I can, but it takes a lot of the fun out of meeting people and having discussions.

More of a rant than a genuine question. Locking.