I think blanket downvoting happens regularly in political communities and discussions, and a lot of time you can see it without even looking up any votes: if every single comment in a six-comment thread has two downvotes and three upvotes, it’s pretty clear. I looked those political ones up a few times but don’t even bother anymore. Everywhere else, by which I mean non-political and/or non-controversial topics, it genuinely seems to be just a core handful of users.

And no, you’re not an outlier, just a decent person. I like to think most of us vote for actual cause, and that it’s only a handful who don’t. But at some point I do think the admins are going to have to deal with it, because downvoting just to downvote IS toxic and does tend to have a stifling effect on the discussion and community as a whole.

These single downvotes were never followed up by further commentary, and at least one of them looks like a voting-only account with zero posts, so the more I looked the more they just seemed like fuck you votes.

I really don’t think there’s any link to content at all because I did this across multiple communities (whatever I don’t have actively blocked that crosses my feed) and it was largely the same handful of downvoters throughout, but with outliers here and there. I wasn’t taking notes, but when I started to see the same names over and over in wildly disparate communities it seemed less and less likely it had anything to do with content.

Because the fediverse is still fairly small, downvotes stick out a lot more. A number of them I think, “How could anybody downvote that?” and just wonder because often they seem to be “I had a shitty day and I particularly don’t like YOU” downvotes.

I often sort a thread by Top, and even the highest voted posts are often +(big number) -1. Because I personally do not downvote without cause, I assume they are sincere, but then it becomes a question of why, and I could never figure it out. Okay, whatever, no biggie.

But recently I had some time on my hands and I am aware of lemvotes.org, so one day I saw this again and decided to just informally start looking up these weird ass loner downvotes. Nothing sustained, just whenever one stuck out to me as being why??? I’d go and look it up. I’ve been doing this for roughly 2-3 months now, no schedule or commitment other than whenever I felt like it, across the board, no attention paid to community or post content (other than anything political pretty much not being worth the trouble, lol).

What I expected was a variety of usernames attached to these single downvotes.

But what I saw was a core handful of users across the board, with the occasional outlier.

Kinda pathetic, honestly.

deleted by creator

Says the 8-hour old account, lol.

Well said.

Truth. Especially if someone suffers from anxiety: quitting social media will help immediately. They may jones for it for a few days, but the world is full of other things to do, and they’ll be so glad they did. Even if someone is forced to use it for work or business, the personal use of social media can be limited to exactly that.

Also, and it must be said, it’s much harder to become propagandized when you’re not allowing yourself to be exposed to a constant feed of it daily. When you find yourself emoting over something you’ve read, that’s usually a clue to step away. The world is full of horrible, saddening things, but we now have a bunch of oligarch techbros who want to use that to steer us via our own emotions, and that’s what social media excels at. If you’re feeling angry, if you’re feeling fearful, if you’re feeling hopeless about the world at large, social media is a very expensive short-term remedy. Get offline and occupy your body as well as your mind: you’ll be grateful you stopped it when you did.

13 day old account, lol. Bye, Felicia.

Holy fuck that’s vicious. And perfect.

If you allow artists to display their work in various communities along with the ability to post links in their profiles, but you restrict actual posts to disallow self-promotion, it’s the best of both worlds, IMO.

In other words, if you can’t include self-promotion in your community posts, but everyone knows you have the links in your profile, it attracts less grifters and keeps the feed clean, while allowing anyone interested to contact a poster directly or ask them promotional questions via DMs.

That said, hosting a full-fledged marketplace is not a good idea, IMO. There are laws and banks involved, which mean lawyers and taxes, and volunteer management does not work for that. There are already marketplaces that do that well, and allowing artists to post their own links of choice in their profiles will let them steer actual business to other platforms, while keeping the fediverse for display, review, share and critique. My opinion, anyway.

Stalled. The Indiana senate will hold their “final” vote on it December 8.

Two day old account, lol. Blocked.

Gay folks can be edgy shitheads too, though. I would not let any of my queer friends get away with using the word “gay” as a pejorative. I’m not asking that you push back against them, just understand why I choose to do even if you don’t.

Not every gay person is a self-loather, kid.

Note: I had deleted my two comments because I genuinely did not want to offend, but when I realized that these “gay” observations, made by men my age who are simply glad to still be standing after the debacle that was the latter part of the last century, were being taken for internalized homophobia I put my comments right back. If anything they are celebratory and may they ever be so. Given what these guys have survived they have every right to be happy, and as far as I am concerned so does every gay person. Nothing wrong with being gay at all, and never has been.

So you need to sit down with that self-hating shit, because it does NOT apply to Every Gay Person Ever.

That’s fine, but having heard so many times from openly gay people statements like the following, and I quote,

“Gay.”

“That is SO gay.”

“Gay.”

“Gay!”

“Oh. Yeah. Gay.”

. . . you have to accept that at a certain level of commentary, the call is coming from inside the house.

TL;DR: I don’t know what looks gay because I am some self-proclaimed cis-het expert on gayness; I know what might look gay because I was personally tutored by obviously authentic experts in the field. Just sayin.

Ken Klippenstein agrees, but for a different reason. He’s examined the bill’s language and thinks transparency was doomed from the start:

“National Security” Blocks Epstein Files Release

Beyond ignoring the fact that legal testimony is tightly limited in scope by both sides, you have your sworn evidence and non-sworn evidence entirely confused.

But she did give interviews, talk to friends, and even write a book. This is not sworn testimony. But it is still evidence.

There are zero indications Virginia Giuffre ever lied under oath, or committed perjury. Rather, those who spoke with her tended to find her genuine, and her attorneys were willing to go to bat for her all the way, which they would not have done had she been unbelievable.

Counting both sworn and non-sworn statements made over the course of the last thirty years or so, can YOU prove she did, or did not, reveal all she knew?

No. You cannot. And jumping from that to “She committed PERJURY!” is frankly just insulting to what she stood for. It’s becoming apparent that you are not writing in good faith, twisting a definition of perjury to cover all statements made everywhere at any time, so peace out.

And you’ve not even touched on the domestic abuse from the last few years.

Why would I? My comment is limited to the unlikelihood that Virginia Giuffre “submitted all the evidence she had,” and nothing else you’ve said changes that. I do not believe she told all she knows.

Nor do I believe that we, the public, have any right to expect anything from victims of trafficking, even the “full truth” at their own expense and with no personal guarantees of safety from those who use them, because if we were doing our collective job as a society, it would never be needed.

If Ms. Giuffre withheld names and/or information for her own safety, good on her. It’s not like anyone else was looking out for her.

She had already submitted all the evidence she had

That is a stretch, and probably a longer stretch than you might think.

Most, if not all, of her “evidence” was secondary to legal actions both by her and against her, and in that context would necessarily have been limited to the subjects of the lawsuits.

I do not for two seconds think she ever publicly, or in court-related documents or records, named ALL the names. Not every bigwig she saw on Epstein Island or in Epstein’s parties directly interacted with her, much less specifically participated in her own abuse, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t see them there as well.

Also, for someone who was in Epstein’s inner circle, day in and day out, she very obviously saw people who have now denied ever being there, or even denied being a friend of his since then, but which emails written by Epstein now demonstrate were there and friendly all along. Consider also that Epstein and Maxwell both were very big on threats throughout, to the point that at least one of the victims (Maria Farmer) informally changed her name and moved house frequently for the next twenty years after having gone through all that, and still got threatening calls to remind her they knew how to find her.

Thus it’s not impossible that, in an abundance of concern for her own and her family’s personal safety, Virginia Giuffre minimized or even denied the presence and participation of certain individuals who really were there, a silence she could revoke at any time. Unless she were dead, of course, and now she is: the silence is permanent.

That is absolutely perfect. YES. Thank you for the link.

He explained in three lines what took me a few paragraphs in another comment. I should have seen this first, lol.

Be VERY wary when you encounter a person trying ever so hard to lean into that invisible line between pedophilia and hebephilia or ephebophilia, because chances are excellent you are talking to a person who does not or will not understand the very real and lasting harm done by any of these acts, and possibly approves of one or more strongly.

To be clear, I’m not talking about a sixteen year old who looks twenty-five; to me that’s an entirely separate issue. If you genuinely believe you are looking at an adult, IMO there’s neither harm nor foul in having thoughts there.

Instead I am referring to looking at an obviously underage, clearly pubescent or pre-pubescent boy or girl and finding that sexually attractive.

People who defend that by slapping the label of ephebophilia on it, when clearly the age and/or appearance of the victim does not rise to that standard, are hoping you don’t already know exactly what ephebophilia means, that it is different than hebephilia and pedophilia, and that it, too, is incredibly questionable.

As a reminder for anyone not sure (definitions extracted from the first paragraph of the Wiki article for each):

Pedophilia: sexual attraction to prepubescent children; psychiatric diagnostic criteria for pedophilia extend the cut-off point for prepubescence to age 13

Hebephilia: strong, persistent sexual interest by adults in pubescent children who are in early adolescence, typically ages 11–14

Ephebophilia: primary sexual interest in mid-to-late adolescents, generally ages 15 to 19