Need a politics-free safe space? It's called "going for a walk"
this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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Point me to a time/place when politics were not completely intertwined with meme communities.
Oh, right. That doesn't actually exist.
One time, back in the 90s, a baby danced.
The prevelance of computers are inherently linked with the corporate desire to minimize cost and maximize productivity and profit. The origin of computers comes from military use; first seen in WW2 to calculate angles for artillery use and crack codes as with Enigma. Later, financial and educational institutions saw an ability to reduce labor cost by using computers to automate some record keeping. Why would they be interested in reducing cost? Capitalism, of course! And who were the ones programming these machines? Mostly, wealthy white men. You see, because computers were still giant, expensive machines, they required a college education to learn to use them. At this point, this was the 50s/60s, and non-white people had very little wealth due to, yknow, all that discrimination stuff. Plus, wealthy people especially back then were also very misogynistic ("i hate my wife" jokes, anyone?) And these wealthy whites were sometimes passionate for the industry, and as computers miniturized, they brought these minicomputers home, where they could use them for much more casual use. Enter the 70s, and these computer users start to make video games. Companies for this new fad start to show up. Fast forward a decade and people start making these new home computers play recorded audio and videos too, and before long, the baby dances. But not everyone had the money for home computers in the 90s, so not everyone is aware of the baby - which is where the discrimination part plays in. Most of the people who experienced the dancing baby in its prime were wealthy, majority white families, so the experience was unfortunately not universal. Or fortunately, idk lmao
Of course I'm stretching super hard, but politics are everywhere when you look into it.
Apologies for the sin of linking Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/NonPoliticalTwitter/
Sometimes humans do stuff that are not at all related with politics. But we are masters of linking any non-political action to political arguments. (The classic 'I like pancakes.'-'So you hate waffles!'-problem)
Sometimes I just want to have a space to engage with funny memes without the mental strain of filtering out political comments.
just a random assortment grabbed from their top week:
yeah the american lawn is totally not a political topic
also yeah totally deriving joy from sabotaging megabillion dollar companies with collective action isn't political
neither is trespassing as revenge for corporations eating up public areas
and what about a police force so sprawling and weaponized that we use it to reprimand children who make jokes?
sure, it may seem a little contrived to you, but when we talk about how a fish who has been in water all its life can't actually see the water, that's how we believe liberals are with their own politics - you believe there's no politics there because you've only ever been immersed in your own politics for the entirety of your life.
I get, and largely agree with you, but the lawns and mall jewelry stores is a bit of a stretch. The first thing that comes to mind for the lawns (in the context of the meme) is people not wanting to rake. Most people don't look at a patch of grass and conflate it with it's political underpinnings. And the jewelry store is just about overcoming the mild discomfort from a very minor break of social etiquette. The meme and the act itself aren't consciously political.
Sure, if you think about them for a little bit, the implications become obvious. But these images aren't meant to be thought provoking treatises on the nature of society; they're quippy, topical jokes meant to make you blow a little air through your nose in amusement. Fwiw I'm not bothered by the amount of clearly political posts on Lemmy, this is the first place I've found political memes that are actually decent (for the most part). But they're not for everyone and even people that do like them would like non-political content on occasion. It can be a bit of a pain to find that here
If you want to understand the lawns thing, try ordinary things video about lawns. And levvitt towns... And white flight... And racism.
I know and understand the political history of American lawns. What I was saying is that the meme itself, while existing within that context, is not consciously political. Life and society is complex, if you think about anything for long enough you can make a political point about it. Just because there is an underlying political narrative behind things like mall jewelry stores and American lawns, does not mean every single meme or conversation about those things is or has to be political.
Look through my comment history, you'll find I am very much not opposed to talking about politics
I haven't been on this sub for a while. It was once my go-to for just memes.
If this is truly the top of recent week, the the sub has gone downhill in both moderation and content, which is sad to see.
Also thanks for proving my point. You somehow forced gardening into a political topic. A childhood prank into a political topic. We are truly master of politicing the most inane things.
The other topics I cannot say. Existing in a society is political. Breathing is political.
I just wish to see a place where a meme about gardening is met with conversation how things are for others. Ex: 'This is how I do gardening in [location], I dream of having a nice field of [local species] to support the bees.'
And not have it devolve into political us-vs-them tribalism and hostilitites. Ex: 'Those lawns are a product of American liberal colonialism! I hate you and you should feel ashamed!'
~~That these images are hosted on lemmygrad.ml is very telling and just supports the general feel that users interacting from there are just interacting to create hostility and dissonance.~~
~~Not everybody, sure, I had conversations that were pleasant. I even read Marx summarised work as a suggestion from one from the lemmygrad-instance. And someon corrected me on a misconception I had from it.~~
Edit: last but crossed out. Was stuck in primary response. I recognise that threads reviewed also has a lot of inate hostility for the 'us'-camp. And hostility breeds hostility.
I would say pre 2016 political jokes was at one level, where the onion could make jokes that was not just an echo of reality.
Somewhere after that we crossed the political joke event horizon, and now we live in bizarro world, where many news items could have been the onion jokes.
Sure that's true, but here it's like way above 50% of the posts being just full-on propaganda, disguised as memes. IDK, I'm just comparing it to other sites/communities where the politics to meme ratio is way lower and feels less forced.
OK, fair enough.
I think the fediverse in general attracts a lot of people who are tired of capitalist assholes extracting wealth on various tech platforms, which probably explains some of it. People are very angry right now, and that's gonna be hard to escape on Lemmy/kbin
Back in the 2000s, most memes were just cat pictures. Longcat [is long], ceiling cat [is watching you], keyboard cat, grumpy cat etc.
Also #BrusselsLockdown hashtag was used in 2015 to ease political tension.