The people at [email protected] and [email protected] and [email protected] would probably like to know about this. !thelittlethings seems to overlap in intent too, although it does not seem very active from what I see on my instance, so you might want to message the mod. Thanks, I really appreciate positivity communities.

Birthdays and the like used to feel inherently special as a kid, as an adult no longer and it just feels like another day. But I still like to celebrate because it’s a nice excuse to see people I care about or treat myself to something nice, or to just relax. I don’t believe we should always do things just because that is what is done, but this is one place I’m happy to just do things because the rest of society does and thinks I “should.” We get something nice out of it, and those who are not interested in celebrating are free to opt out (which I’ve done a few times too, and didn’t regret it.)

For example, I don’t think Valentine’s Day itself is all that important, but it’s a good reminder to pay attention to your loved ones and spend time with them, and because it is enough of a societal thing there are things done (think a couples’ dinner special at a restaurant or something) to help you do just that. So a lot of people do celebrate on the day. Some will celebrate on a different day to avoid higher prices on the day of the usual celebration. Some will totally disregard.

But that’s just me. It might be different for others.

The Unhook browser extension for Youtube lets you choose what to block. You can choose to toggle the Shorts off without toggling anything else off.

I agree. I want to see positivity, not general anything (which could also include rants or complaining, lots of negativity). I respect the effort to consolidate communities to ensure you have more active communities and not just dead communities after awhile, but I do not think that is the right move here.

As a certified “Reddit wasn’t so bad actually” person, as someone who wishes society weren’t so prudish, I still wish we left the NonsexualtopicPorn naming convention behind.

Adding extra NSFW to a title for things that are not actually NSFW does not seem like a good idea to me. Tells people who are not in the know about the naming convention and who do not have a sexual interest in Nonsexualtopic that the space is not for them, shrinking the audience. Don’t have to be a prude, just a newbie, to see “MistranslationPorn” and think “cool for people who have a fetish for mistranslation, but even though mistranslation is a cool topic I’m not interested in it as kink or a sexualized version of it, time to scroll by”. Also looks bad for browsing where people might see, and then having to explain “no it’s not porn porn, it’s just a silly naming convention”…

I think [email protected] would like this too. Would crosspost myself but Piefed has made that hard for things that are not link posts.

On one hand I definitely respect where you are coming from. “Too political” is frequently wielded at the oppressed by oppressors; “two genders, male and political” and all that.

On another hand, as a queer, neurodivergent person of color I don’t handle the constant aggression and “another bad thing happened because of a country’s government, or a political party” posts well. I get paralyzed into inaction. Fediverse “apolitical” communities, at least in my experience, tend to be safe spaces for people like me without bigotry. I’m far from the most oppressed person on earth or even the USA, but I do think I am correct when I say that sometimes, some oppressed people want a break from constantly thinking about and reading about their oppression. If I don’t aggressively curate my feed on the Fediverse and instead take what is hot and popular, it is going to be chock-full of people arguing about politics (specifically in the sense of big actions and policies taken by governments). So I curate, avoid these posts, and find enough energy to take political action in real life instead of scrolling thinkpieces on why this political happening happened for hours online. If there were no spaces free of that specific kind of politics (that yes, also made the political choice of removing bigoted posts and comments), I’d probably eventually just be chased off the internet entirely.

But yet again, this could be my own specific perspective talking and other people do feel silenced and suppressed, so…