Well what would happen if anyone else plagiarized copyrighted works? I've seen people get locked away for piracy even. Remember what became of Aaron Swartz? Why the fuck should these people get special treatment now?

You might appreciate this: Leaked Memos Explain Why Every Mega Man Cover is Terrible. (satire)

Literally the opposite.

After the French Revolution, parliament was arranged so that the people who supported democracy and freedom literally sat on the left hand side; and all of the freeloading, self serving, bootlicking monarchists that wanted to return to rule by a king or queen sat on the right hand side.

Far right are that but more extreme. They don't just lick boots but also the assholes of the politicians and billionaires that they worship like gods.

Even if this person is a troll, setting up all of these communities and making multiple posts all across the place to audience of none is pretty fucking sad. I mean, look at this:

This person actually spent time typing all of this as if they're speaking to all of their close friends. And two days later there it still is with the one default upvote and no comments.

In fact, this is making me literally sad for this person now. They probably need professional help.

Yeah you're definitely right. They're looking at an all black show and calling it DEI. So they don't actually care what DEI stands for, when they say DEI they mean "black". Or more accurately probably the other word. I guess we all already knew that though.

I hear you. I could go on about how pop culture is lame etc and not really answer your question but I think, the more the merrier. If I'm not interested in the Lakers, I can ignore it and scroll past it. Easy. It would be nice for people who want to discuss the Lakers to have a place to discuss the Lakers, though.

Honestly this place is starting to piss me off a little bit sometimes. Because it's like the users here actually want 'All' to just be politics all the time and for there to be no variety to anything. You can talk about missing features from Reddit and think of ideas to make this place a little better and you'll get responses like "No. Why would anyone want more features? I know that I don't have to personally use them if I don't like them but I prefer pretending it's 1998, so no one can have them. And why would we want more users? I like empty communities with no activity. And then complaining about empty communities with no activity."

So I dunno. It's gonna be interesting to see if this place actually grows or if it just stagnates. I'm right there with you though. I'd be more than happy to see pop and sports and things I'm not really interested in because then there's a bigger chance of things that I am actually interested in taking off here.

I'm half expecting his next executive order to be that all ocean cleanup efforts must immediately cease and that in fact dumping in the ocean is now mandatory and anyone caught trying to dispose of trash sustainably will be jailed.

Seriously, it's gone long past the point where anyone has the slightest excuse of supporting this orange painted clown in his blonde wig and comically oversized tie without just looking like evil pieces of shit.

It's like he's actively making his way through a list of anything actually good that society has managed to achieve in the last few decades and dismantling it. I mean, we all hate cardboard straws but this clearly isn't about straws.

The guy seems to literally want to see smog fill the air and plastic fill the oceans. While simultaneously making sure that everyone is as fucking miserable as possible in terms of both human rights and economy. So what the fuck is anyone's excuse for supporting this? I don't believe that there is anything a Trump supporter could tell me now that would convince me that they're not just evil, cruel, profoundly stupid, walking talking pieces of shit.

Oh look, the kiddie fiddlers and book burners that accuse others of being pedos and anti free speech are accusing people of things again.

I hope Trump bans all your genders.

Funny enough, this is the second time in as many days that I've seen one of you people specifically singling out LGBTQ+ people in your little temper tantrums. Makes it pretty obvious that Palestine was just your excuse to welcome the christian nationalists in. You see, we suspected that you didn't care before but now it appears your masks are slipping off.

Thanks for the enlightening thread. And that puts a dampener on the enthusiasm that I was feeling for this place. Not that I should be surprised or anything.

I might misunderstand how things work here but it sounds to me like if entire communities are getting bombed by downvotes, then it's the various admins across instances that are allowing this to happen. And it puts a bit of a dark cloud over this place now for me.

Someone needs to start keeping a central list of all corporations and organisations that have been rolling over like they've been waiting for this moment all their lives. Just to keep around as reminders, any time they decide to do a little rainbow capitalism or black history month marketing.

If the world, and especially the USA regains its senses, please all I ask is that everyone remembers exactly who these people are when they're begging for your money and support again.

They're really not meaningless though. For one thing, they allow moderators and admins to more easily detect trolls and bad faith actors. And on platforms or with add-ons that allow better tracking of vote history, it allows the user to more efficiently moderate their own experience, should they so choose.

Also, I think you've got to be kind of an asshole to not recognise that a little bit of validation from communities that you participate in is a nice thing to have and that downvotes can hurt to an extent, even if it's not the same as getting physically slapped. And to be clear, I'm not pointing at you or anyone, I'm just riffing here. I haven't even seen downvotes for a while now.

So yeah, I'd say they're meaningless in a video game sense. You're not going to win any prizes with them. But there's a reason they exist, plus no one is immune to the effects of positive or negative reinforcement.