Try to tell people to stop eating meat and reduce their consumption of dietary animal products because of the moral/environmental disaster that it is, and suddenly it’s too hard to have empathy.

Once you realise most people don’t give a shit about anything that doesn’t directly affect or implicate them, you realise why things remain how they are.

They are self-aware, willing to change and learn, and have a rational, logical view of things. It’s rare to meet people like that, but they are by far the best people. Someone’s philosophy on life is probably the best descriptor of a person.

Lemmy is far better than Reddit regarding the use of downvotes, but many people still use it as an emotional disagreement button rather than something used to hide useless/irrelevant content. I only downvote when somebody says something completely fucked or starts trolling.

I don’t think upvoting funny comments is necessarily wrong, but there is a lack of meaningful engagement a lot of the time.

No. Do you have anything to add?

I don’t think there are only 2 outcomes. I asked a question regarding a potential of one absolute outcome.

Add in surface level observations of ‘if you are so smart you would realise not everyone is an idiot’ or ‘you have to understand their perspective better’ and maybe 1/2 comments you are slamming a shot. I guess people don’t read comments anymore. (Probably never did.)

I’m very specific about my friends, I promise you that isn’t the problem. It’s more of an observational thing, and it is clearly present in western society at the very least. Even with my friends, we are still an insignificant minority compared to the larger population.

There’s also a chance everyone else is actually an asshole, but here that almost definitely isn’t it.

Communism and empathy for other creatures (humans included.)