I heard from dentists it was better to do it before eating or drinking anything, as you’ve coated your mouth in the good shit to protect it. But I guess it’s splitting hairs.

Man you brought receipts big time and still got downvoted. I guess Lemmy likes their race based attacks on religion too much to care.

They do. I boycott Chinese made goods, and I don’t make much money. It just requires a small amount of introspection on if I need the item. It has actually turned out I buy much much less because what I do buy is of quality and lasts.

Cosmetics, Household goods and food are easy and generally fairly locally made and produced, unless you insist on buying exotic fruits or stuff way out of season.

Clothes, shoes, anything fabric, again easy. Massive market of quality eco-friendly EU/US/UK made stuff that means I pay $30 for a lovely shirt that will last me decades than $5 a shirt that was made by a child in Myanmar and fall apart within the year. So I am slowly developing a modest wardrobe of high quality natural fibres.

You don’t really need much else. But it just takes a moment to Google and consume conscientiously.

Some stuff is nearly impossible and is actually outside of your control like fuel and SOME electrical devices. But nothing can be perfect.

Yeah these are all logically sound. Most examples people are putting in comments are also pretty true.

That’s not what I’m saying. Not only the USA. Other places where domestic cats are very new, like USA, NZ, etc also probably shouldn’t do outdoor cats.

In the United States.

Field Marshal Charles III, King of the United Kingdom and the 14 realms, Lord of Mann, Master of the Arts, defender of the faith, Admiral of the Fleet, is what his friends call him.

Practical EVs exist too. It’s an open market so there will be something for everyone I’m sure. If you really hate EV design you can buy the conversion kits for a classic.

Styles are changing, I guess they’re focus grouping it and people want cars from blade runner. No longer requiring a radiator or exhaust has actually produced some interesting designs.

No, how dare you throw shade at this fictional character from 30 years ago, don’t you know she was abused?!

The gamer careful with his money has already bought Elite Dangerous on sale for less though. Even $45 for what is currently being offered is embarrassing.

My purpose is to work out if Lemmy is social media, and solidify my position on it through debating (arguing) with people about it, I’m afraid I’m using you for my own ends 😉.

My point about calling lemmy Wikipedia is like calling cereal soup. I agree, because if we widen this definition to include Lemmy, we start having justifications for calling things that clearly aren’t social media, social media.

My ideal is that we just have old style Internet platforms in their own box called forums. And social media can continue on its way with phone number verification, blue check marks, and whatever else goes on.

I suppose the actually productive thought process is to think why we need to differentiate sites from each other like this, and come up with a definition that has function without being confusing. I’d argue the endless debate and confusion around this topic, especially on Reddit, for years and years, indicates a poor definition.

Content curation and discussions sounds like Wikipedia to me, and honestly most information sites. As basically everything on the Internet is community driven by a small vanguard of committed posters. I guess we can just call all websites with social interaction social media.

My issue is, to me, lemmy, 4chan, and old forums are completely different to Twitter, Facebook, bebo, Instagram, Snapchat, tiktok etc etc in look, form and function. But I think if we still are just calling them social media, and there is no consistent definition that also umbrellas most of the Internet, it seems silly at that point. Much easier to just not call lemmy social media.

I could also argue people calling lemmy social media are trying to be contrarian and get a rise out of people. Like calling cereal, soup.

If the expression of opinion or interacting with that opinion is all it takes, then YouTube is social media, IMDb is social media. Blogs are social media, any news site is social media. It has to be more specific than that because every site has a comment section and it’s a pretty useless definition.

I think the object of interest has to be people, and the engagement has to come from fixed personalities. Who develop a rapport. For example, you add friends and follow people, who you recognize, interact with and develop a social or parasocial relationship.

Although Reddit has maybe gone that way in some respects, sites like YouTube (maybe) Lemmy, 4chan, Q&A sites (Quora, stack overflow), and more traditional forums have anonymous people jumping in and out, and the focus is the idea (meme, article, creation, question).

Maybe we ditch the term altogether as everything is adding a social component and it will all devolve into a digital singularity.

It’s not mental gymnastics. My reasoning is straight forward, and I disagree.

I hope we do pull off a 90th minute 720 backflip into futurist utopia, that would be mega. But until people start doing basic stuff like voting in their interest, I’m going to prepare for the worst.

They’re forums though, are forums social media? I don’t think services people use anonymously and not for the primary purpose of interacting are social media. The stat has always been 90+% of people are lurkers who just look at memes. Doesn’t sound very social. Scrolling lemmy and reading articles doesn’t get at that part of the brain. We’re not a social group, looking at each others lives.

What stops being social media if we broaden the definition. YouTube is social media if Lemmy is imo.

To be even more doomer, people will have to stop living their lives when we run out of everything, so we might as well start winding down now.

That’s grasping at straws. The Holocaust is tangentially related. It’s not doing anything for people who don’t believe.

If you think ‘get a girlfriend’ is some deeply misogynistic language indicative of how terrible the patriarchy is, you need to get some perspective.

This was a throwaway joke about struggling to find a girlfriend. There is nothing toxic or dangerous going on here. They’re not blaming an outer system. Lots of men do genuinely have problems getting the confidence and self esteem to approach women, calling them whiny assholes is not very helpful.

Tirade against incels elsewhere.