Definitely.

I posted a fair amount on Reddit too, but mostly I’d just write something, then think about what was likely to happen if I actually posted it, then delete it.

I guess if you want to just sort of vaguely gesture toward things that were very obviously the point and focus of the novels, and things that they do better than the vast majority of books, and instead lament the nominal failure to expand on side issues that aren’t even relevant to anything else, then you’re free to do so. I really don’t see the point though.

To me, it’s as if you’re looking at Van Gogh’s Starry Night and saying, “Well yeah, the colors and texture and movement and composition are all great and all, but I’m just disappointed that there aren’t any people in Victorian dress in it. And not even one madonna and child!”

SOS Pads and Oreos.

Gurren Lagann

Actually, the people who would only bother with the fediverse if it had more content are exactly the people I don’t want here.

I never really liked it much - too many assholes, astroturfers and bots - so I was always open to moving somewhere else, as soon as I found somewhere I liked better. And I liked the threadiverse better.

A link on Reddit.

It was immediately after spez’s fatuous AMA. I wasn’t specifically planning to leave Reddit, but I had never really been satisfied there, so I was open to the idea. And I ran across a link to join-lemmy.org, so I followed it, just to see what it was about. I had no idea then that following that link would end up being the last thing I did on Reddit, but that’s the way it worked out.

Setting aside the fact that this is a generalization and thus naturally overstating things, I don’t doubt that there’s some truth to this.

There’s a sort of rigidly intolerant moralizing that arose on the internet over the last decade or so, most exemplified by Tumblr, and gen z was right in the middle of it.

It puts me in mind of the Victorian era, with a group of people who absolutely and unequivocally condemn anyone and everyone who violates their rigid sense of propriety, or more precisely, the stereotypes that they substitute for those people. Of course, the biggest difference is that they have a completely different set of rules to which they insist that all submit - instead of a religious morality mostly concerned with sex they have a secular morality mostly concerned with social behavior. But they share that absolutism - the smug certainty that their way is the only way and that any who believe otherwise are not only wrong, but due to the fact that they believe otherwise, so monstrous as to be unfit to even judge.

That last is the trap - the thing that sets that extreme of moralizing apart and keeps it going when it takes hold. Those who come to believe in it end up believing not simply that they’re right, but that believing as they do is the defining trait of people who are fit to judge the matter, so they then can and do reject any and all differing views out of hand on the basis that the mere act of holding a different view means that one is obviously an inferior being, and since one is an inferior being, whatever one believes is and can only be wrong. It becomes a closed loop, in which people aren’t even capable of considering different viewpoints.

And that’s presumably the quality that’s being characterized, and with some accuracy, as them not having the skills to disagree.

I’d note though that this is just one manifestation of the problem. It’s a new version of it, made possible by social media, and it appears to be notably widespread, and particularly in a relatively narrow age group, but the dynamic itself is likely as old as human civilization.

I’ve been online since the early 90s, when it was just understood that there were risks, so you had to protect yourself. So it’s not so much that I got into internet privacy as that I’ve never done things any other way.

The only thing that’s really changed is that I’ve had to shift more from passively protecting myself to actively protecting myself, since corporate and government shitstains are constantly scheming to destroy our privacy in order to expand and protect their own wealth, power and privilege.

The one time I did that, I just switched my inbox from “Unread” to “All.” Problem solved.

I happened to run across a CD of the fourth one used, a couple of years after it released. I didn’t even know it existed before that, and definitely didn’t know it’d end up becoming my favorite. And I still don’t have a copy of the fifth. I do have the last two though.

25 On is sort of reminiscent of Tornado or The Good News and the Bad News - a return to form. It’s pretty good on its own, but sort of suffers by comparison. Monster Movie is odd but interesting. It feels kind of self-indulgent, but in a good way - just a bunch of guys sitting around playing what they want to play just because that’s what they want to play. It’s a bit disjointed, but I like it.

I happened on them when they put out their first album and have been a fan ever since, and that’s even without ever getting a chance to see them live. Bob Walkenhorst is easily my favorite songwriter.

Flirting with the Universe is their fourth album - after a bit of a recording hiatus after The Good News and the Bad News, and it’s far and away my favorite. It’s obvious that they took their time and carefully crafted an album designed to showcase their talent. It’s unfortunate that it still didn’t manage to bring them the recognition they’ve always deserved, but I appreciate it.

Off the top of my head…

The Presidents of the United States of America - The Presidents of the United States of America

Stan Ridgway - The Big Heat

The Rainmakers - Flirting with the Universe

XTC - Black Sea

Morphine - Good

Bloodhound Gang - Hooray for Boobies

Lloyd Cole and the Commotions - Rattlesnakes

The Mattoid - Great Lovers

Frank Zappa - Joe’s Garage

Was (Not Was) - What Up Dog?

…or something like that…

Because it’s never let me down.

I started using it pretty much from the beginning and have never had a reason to stop. When Chrome came along, I thought the whole idea of using a browser made by Google was obviously awful, so I just kept using Firefox. And I’m still using it.

Yes - I’ve had many of those asshats over the years insist that I have to “choose a side.”

That’s generally because they can’t actually argue for their position, and the best they can manage is to find fault with a self-serving characterization of a falsely dichotomous opposing position. So they need to be able to assign me to one or the other team, so they know whether they can ignore me or if they need to hurl some emotive rhetoric and fallacies somewhere in my general direction.

And yes - they’re almost never worth engaging with.

And to go all the way back, it could be said that the exact problem is that they have unfounded confidence.

And it’s sort of ironic really, because they’re generally driven by a psychological need to be right, and clinging desperately to one fixed position pretty much guarantees that right is the one thing they will not be.

There’s a line in Nicholas Roeg’s movie Insignificance that has stayed with me for decades now.

There’s an obvious Einstein expy just called “The Professor.” At one point, he’s asked why he’s so cautious about his claims - why he habitually says things like, “I think that…” or “The theory is that…” or “One might argue that…”

His response is, “If I say ‘I know,’ I stop thinking.”

That, IMO, points to the primary answer to your question - don’t try to remove self-doubt. Nourish it. Revel in it. Because it’s the thing that will keep you thinking, and the more you think, the more likely you are to get to actual truth.

I browse on All almost exclusively, and if a community or poster is notably toxic or spammy I block them, but if they just don’t interest me, then I just scroll past them.

Honestly, I don’t even understand what the supposed problem is. The world is full of things that don’t interest me. That’s just the way it goes, and really it’s just background noise that I barely even notice.

This’d likely a bit more than inconvenience, but honestly, to the degree that it would be more than that (or more accurately to the people to whom it would be more than that), I just don’t give a shit.

Make it literally impossible to knowingly lie. Full stop.

One of my personal favorites, and technically an example of media universe crossovers though probably not quite what one would think of, is the Japanese manga series Saint Young Men, which is about Jesus and Buddha sharing an apartment in modern-day Tokyo.

3,000 - Oblivion

That’s spread over 40 or so characters, and dating all the way back to 2006.