I downvote a lot of posts here because I don’t think they’re questions appropriate for this community. They’re either loaded questions, opinions, obvious bait, or asklemmy material.
If this community is supposed to be the Lemmy version of r/nostupidquestions, the questions should be things that you think should know but don’t. Things that might make you feel stupid asking.
A good question for this sub is “How often do I actually have to wash a hoodie?”
A bad question is “Why is [company] doing [something anti consumer]”
We get a LOT more of the latter here.
A similar problem would happen on r/ELI5 that drove me nuts. Originally the kinds of questions you were supposed to ask were things like “the origins of the Gulf war” or “the rules on how to play poker”. But instead there were too many questions that were like “what’s going on in my stomach when it growls”.
“Can someone explain [complicated geopolitical conflict] to me like I’m 5?” were my least favorite. At least pretend you tried to get the answer yourself
There should be a rule where someone actually has to explain it as if they were explaining it to a 5-year-old.
Or it might just be offensive or a dog whistle.
What’s a dog whistle?
urban dictionary Dog whistle is a type of strategy of communication that sends a message that the general population will take a certain meaning from, but a certain group that is “in the know” will take away the secret, intended message. Often involves code words.
Republicans say they want to make civil rights for gays a state issue, which is really just a dog whistle strategy for saying that they will refuse to grant equal rights on a federal level.
That’s such a bad example for a good definition
Hmm I wonder why muscilunge said 88 million in this tweet? It could have been any number, right? Why 88?
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1596439328338890752
What do you think, dog?
Just a dog: bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark
Erhm… Could you explain what that means?
In case this is genuine asking, here’s the coded logic dogwhistle:
H is the 8th letter of the alphabet So 88 = HH, which was used in WW2 communications by the Nazis for Heil Hitler.
So people who just so happen to randomly put 88 into a random thought online are signaling to the people in the know that they’re also in the know.
Before you say “but thats stupid and childish, why would anyone go through that much effort to hide their shitty beliefs that way?” that’s exactly the purpose of dogwhistles. It’ high effort enough that normal people wouldn’t expect anyone to put that much childish effort into it, and anyone who points out the dog whistle looks crazy to the normies because of how childish it the dogwhistle is and the dogwhistlers get to feign innocence being attacked by the twitter mob over a number.
I appreciate the actual explanation. I was genuinely asking, although I thought the commenter’s reply was much funnier.
What a world we live in.
Random thought; a twitter nazi decoder ring could be a really funny novelty item
