In case anyone’s looking at this 3 months later, I finally got down to getting an RSS Feed Reader and downloaded NetNewsWire on my iPhone.

Appreciate hearing some positive news for once!

Also, on iOS I am having trouble scrolling at all on the page. Had to open up the Reader View to view the article.

https://getindie.wiki/

I would definitely buy that. I usually keep my game volumes on low and click through the dialogue because I already read the subtitle, why wait around to finish having the line delivered verbally? (Interestingly enough I’ve never ever thought “hurry up, speak faster” in an in real life conversation, this impatience only exists in video games.) Because of the value of voice acting, but for me personally voice acting is just not a priority.

While there’s a need for fighting injustice, for stopping other people from tearing queer people down, there’s also a need for lifting them up. And although big things like trying to make a blockbuster hit movie that focuses on queer perspectives or making a website that hosts resources to learn about LGBTQ+ people and issues (both for LGBTQ+ themselves and allies!) are important, so are smaller day-to-day things. Especially when we’re not all webmasters who work in the movie industry.

I especially appreciate the time you spent typing out this response!

I am a little confused about one part.

The balance is finding ways to engage in your local community. Work or volunteer at the library or a non-profit performing arts center, get involved in the bills that are being proposed for your city and fight for them if they’re worth it and fight against them if they’re not. Change starts locally. We may be inspired to hear about the people of Hong Kong, but if we don’t actually do anything about our local problems then why are we cheering them on? Oh good, at least someone somewhere is doing something? Do your schools have funding for arts? Mine do not, so if kinds want to learn music or theater they have to do it as an extracurricular. These places are normally non-profit, heavily volunteer sponsored and are chronically understaffed. If you don’t like kids, senior facilities, hell the entire caregiving field if you don’t like old people either!

I feel the bolded part was leading into something, maybe another thought. As it stands, it’s placed right after a way to help that involves children, far away from the sentences near the start of the paragraph that are ways to help that are less connected to children and the elderly (get involved with local politics, volunteer at/support the library and nonprofit performing arts). So I’m confused about what you’re trying to say with that bolded sentence. Would you mind elaborating?

This entire thread is already full of ways other people have managed the balance. I have not found a way yet but others here clearly have, and reading their experiences could probably help you find a balance yourself.

As an asexual who’s only visited a porn site once to see what all the fuss was about before I knew I was asexual…

Porn sites have NEWS!?

I never understood the point behind “get them help” harassment. Not sure how getting links to suicide hotlines that I do not need and the like is supposed to hurt me. The only hurtful part is knowing that the other person did it with the intention of bothering you. Glad to know that people take this route though, instead of actually upsetting things like gorespam.

Just realized. Did the owls on r/SuperbOwl get lots of comments? If not, many upvotes with little discussion should probably just be expected for that kind of post.

I followed cute animal subs on Reddit but it totally slipped my mind about how often people would comment. I just looked, upvoted (after all, cute animals are on topic in a cute animal sub), and moved on.

I remember SuperbOwl! Unfortunately I don’t have owl pictures to contribute or anything intelligent to say about owls.

I’m using a different account to grow the community. Because I’m one of a few posters there and I’d rather not make life easier for potential doxxers, I’d rather not give out the community name. Don’t want to link two different accounts together as owned by the same person.

I’m using a different account to grow the community. Because I’m one of a few posters there and I’d rather not make life easier for potential doxxers, I’d rather not give out the community name. Don’t want to link two different accounts together as owned by the same person.

The interesting thing is this is that sometimes replying with a mind towards the audience instead of the person you’re replying is a beneficial thing to do! Most of the time, internet debates won’t convince the person you’re arguing with but they do have the potential to convince onlookers and change their minds. I’ve definitely had my mind changed by reading some debates. So you’d maybe address your opponent’s arguments with a mind more towards convincing onlookers than towards convincing your opponent, or towards your frustration with your opponent.

Of course, the part where this happens with little empathy to the person they’re replying to is bad. And the part where it’s happening as a ~epic clapback~ smackdown for upvotes, not as an attempt to present onlookers with your point of view.

As a person who only used downvotes for incorrect information, spam, or rudeness, I mostly agree because apparently most people would use the downvote button as a disagree button.

But I do miss having the “fucking [insert slur here]” “kill yourself” “only a basement-dwelling loser would have this opinion” comments auto-hid because the average passing user disapproved of it and decided to express their disapproval via downvote, instead of coming across it myself semi-frequently and reporting it. Also meant that I could contribute to hiding the bad stuff, without fear of getting lashed out on. Sometimes I don’t reply to comments that have good points but seem unnecessarily mean because in my experience, there seems to be a 50/50 chance between getting decent discussion and getting some rude snarky reply with a lot of unflattering personal assumptions made about me no matter how civil I was and how I deliberately avoided addressing the mean tone to avoid getting called out for tone policing (I know that tone policing is a problem I personally have. I don’t want to cause problems and I don’t want to face backlash for tone policing). And there is something to be said for if people only used downvotes on incorrect information, spam, or rudeness, the Beehaw admins would probably find themselves less overloaded with work.

Too bad people try to use downvotes for ”I disagree with your civil, well-thought out opinion” instead of “spam and cruelty not welcome, misinformation not useful and sometimes actively harmful, hide this.”

The main thing I appreciate is the federation, which helps make us resistant to getting bought out by a corporate entity and subsequently enshittified. Theoretically, even if you buy a few instances you still don’t get the entire Fediverse.

In practice, people congregated on a few big servers. I exist on some smaller Lemmy and Kbin servers as well, because I want to help with the decentralization. Spread out the server demands and all that. I’m not the only one who’s on some smaller servers, but a huge chunk of us are on a couple of big servers that, if bought, take a lot of the Fediverse with them.

But even having to buy a few servers > buy one, all set.

For more my immediate concerns though? Less big-picture “what if” future thoughts? Editing titles. It’s really nice.

I’m having a similar problem. Trying to grow a niche community. The subreddit for it has rules about promoting other communities that condemns my post to a weekly self-promotion thread nobody looks at even though I have no authority in that community, so that method of growth is essentially locked off. Already advertised it in some “look at this new community!” communities. I am one of a few posters there, and it feels bad. I’m lucky enough to have a small close-knit Discord group surrounding the same interest, but if I wasn’t I would probably have to go crawling back to Reddit to discuss the topic. For what it’s worth I do try to post comments on any post where I have something to add. Sometimes it’s even a fairly useless “thanks, this was really interesting” comment just to help boost Fediverse engagement.

I’m using a different account to grow the community. Because I’m one of a few posters there and I’d rather not make life easier for potential doxxers, I’d rather not give out the community name. Don’t want to link two different accounts together as owned by the same person.

Is this a reference to something? I’m not sure I understand your reply. If it’s meant to be taken at face value, I do honestly appreciate that we can edit post titles. No more noticing a mistake in the title, copy/pasting the text of my post, deleting the post, and reposting with a fixed title. Instead, I can just change the title. This is especially beneficial if I don’t notice a mistake in the title until I have several replies on it already.

I am the kind of pedant who values correct spelling and the absence of small mistakes. I am also accident-prone and sometimes overlook things. So I am being entirely genuine in my appreciation of this feature.

For a certain type of person who heavily values utility, yeah, go with money. Most useful, the person you replied to has a point.

They’ll likely also appreciate that you know them well enough to know that they would like money the best instead of making the assumption (that would be correct for a lot of people, but not for this particular example person) that they’ll feel money is too impersonal. 😛 Sentiment probably would play a role, with the sentiment still being “you know me well enough to get me the gift I’d like the most.”

I like giving gifts because I feel it’s me showing the other person that I know what they like, that I see them and listen to them. I like receiving gifts that show that the person who got me it knows me well enough to know my likes. I would absolutely prefer money if you’re uncertain of my likes—I also value utility. Even if the gift of money was low-effort and not out of “I know you would prefer money over an incorrect guess at what you like,” I’d still prefer the money. More useful to me and would bring more joy than something I didn’t like.

So I mostly agree with you when it comes to gift-giving, but the person you replied to also has a point!

A nice thing we do that’s different from Reddit is being able to edit post titles.