SheDiceToday, 1 year ago

People have been conditioned over the past decade to not engage with long replies or complex thoughts

I think this has two parts. One, it’s just so easy for any long/complex comment to attract ‘attacks’ that will target some small minutia. The internet in general seems to find pedantry of grammar and small inconsistencies (in an allegory, for instance, which is not supposed to be an exact match for the tale it’s telling) to be the height of humor and the best way to ‘counter’ an argument.

Second, I think people in general are more demanding of having their space be as comfortable and similar to them as possible. My friends of nearly three decades and I have plenty of things we disagree about, and even argue about, but it seems as if differences are no longer accepted. Let’s pick a common and slightly humorous one from Lemmy: if you and I were to disagree about the extent of how evil a conservative is (not even that they are evil, or do evil, or whatever else), one or the other of us would be blocking the other, haranguing the moral turpitude that is said different belief, etc.

It combines to make anything but short, bland or ‘act like they are acting’ comments a headache to actually post. I’ve found myself typing up a response to a biology article somebody had posted, and eventually just hit the cancel button because it wasn’t worth the bother.