Just blocked lemmy.ml from my Lemmy account, and I swear to god it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done on this platform. My homepage feels actually clean now.
For the past few months I’d been seeing a lot of tankie posting and pretty much far-left propaganda on my feed. It got tiring enough that I finally checked my blocked-user list, and realized pretty much everyone I’d blocked was from lemmy.ml. So I just blocked the whole instance instead.
Saying this as someone who considers themselves a leftist: I used to think Lemmy itself was an echo chamber. Turns out lemmy.ml was the problem the entire time. Probably the reason I tolerated it for so long is that I agreed with a lot of what they posted, but like an oversaturated meme, I’d had enough. Browsing the platform was starting to feel way too tiring instead of fun, which defeats the point of being here in the first place.
The breaking point was seeing some dude post a “meme” implying North Korea and China are basically communist utopias and that the West sucks. I mean, the West does suck, but come on - you’re saying North Korea is the ideal the West should strive for? What the hell…
This is a real thing though; it’s called keeping an open mind and trying to reduce bias. Most people don’t get it because they’re basically running an operating system of biases and stereotypes and groupthink.
The hard part is resisting people putting you into boxes. Half my comments or posts on Lemmy, people try to force me into an extremist “take” or “position” so they can argue against me. But very often, there is no hard set belief here, I’m just stating my opinion. If I see information that convinces me otherwise, I’ll change it; but no amount of emotional arguments, name calling, or fallacies mean anything to me.