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Definitely.

I posted a fair amount on Reddit too, but mostly I’d just write something, then think about what was likely to happen if I actually posted it, then delete it.

I’ve been online since the early 90s, when it was just understood that there were risks, so you had to protect yourself. So it’s not so much that I got into internet privacy as that I’ve never done things any other way.

The only thing that’s really changed is that I’ve had to shift more from passively protecting myself to actively protecting myself, since corporate and government shitstains are constantly scheming to destroy our privacy in order to expand and protect their own wealth, power and privilege.

The one time I did that, I just switched my inbox from “Unread” to “All.” Problem solved.

I happened to run across a CD of the fourth one used, a couple of years after it released. I didn’t even know it existed before that, and definitely didn’t know it’d end up becoming my favorite. And I still don’t have a copy of the fifth. I do have the last two though.

25 On is sort of reminiscent of Tornado or The Good News and the Bad News - a return to form. It’s pretty good on its own, but sort of suffers by comparison. Monster Movie is odd but interesting. It feels kind of self-indulgent, but in a good way - just a bunch of guys sitting around playing what they want to play just because that’s what they want to play. It’s a bit disjointed, but I like it.

I happened on them when they put out their first album and have been a fan ever since, and that’s even without ever getting a chance to see them live. Bob Walkenhorst is easily my favorite songwriter.

Flirting with the Universe is their fourth album - after a bit of a recording hiatus after The Good News and the Bad News, and it’s far and away my favorite. It’s obvious that they took their time and carefully crafted an album designed to showcase their talent. It’s unfortunate that it still didn’t manage to bring them the recognition they’ve always deserved, but I appreciate it.

Off the top of my head…

The Presidents of the United States of America - The Presidents of the United States of America

Stan Ridgway - The Big Heat

The Rainmakers - Flirting with the Universe

XTC - Black Sea

Morphine - Good

Bloodhound Gang - Hooray for Boobies

Lloyd Cole and the Commotions - Rattlesnakes

The Mattoid - Great Lovers

Frank Zappa - Joe’s Garage

Was (Not Was) - What Up Dog?

…or something like that…

This is pretty accurate, but it should be noted that ALL ideologies can be and often are treated essentially as religions.

They all serve as dogmas and myths around which a set of true believers congregate, who then alternate between telling each other their myths of inherent superiority, proselytizing non-believers and lashing out at the followers of competing sects. They all lay out moral guidelines by which they can both affirm the faithful and condemn the heretics and unbelievers. They all demand absolute submission and attack any sign of deviation, and since they’ve defined themselves as inherently morally superior, they consider any of those attacks to be self-evidently morally justified. They all have a hierarchy (whether formal or informal) by which dogma is disseminated to the faithful, with the view (again, whether formal or informal) that ideas that have not been sanctioned by the designated people somehow don’t qualify.

And, pointedly, they all have their own “Satans” - the ideas and/or people that they can generally be counted on to blame for whatever evil might arise.

Yes - I’ve had many of those asshats over the years insist that I have to “choose a side.”

That’s generally because they can’t actually argue for their position, and the best they can manage is to find fault with a self-serving characterization of a falsely dichotomous opposing position. So they need to be able to assign me to one or the other team, so they know whether they can ignore me or if they need to hurl some emotive rhetoric and fallacies somewhere in my general direction.

And yes - they’re almost never worth engaging with.

And to go all the way back, it could be said that the exact problem is that they have unfounded confidence.

And it’s sort of ironic really, because they’re generally driven by a psychological need to be right, and clinging desperately to one fixed position pretty much guarantees that right is the one thing they will not be.

There’s a line in Nicholas Roeg’s movie Insignificance that has stayed with me for decades now.

There’s an obvious Einstein expy just called “The Professor.” At one point, he’s asked why he’s so cautious about his claims - why he habitually says things like, “I think that…” or “The theory is that…” or “One might argue that…”

His response is, “If I say ‘I know,’ I stop thinking.”

That, IMO, points to the primary answer to your question - don’t try to remove self-doubt. Nourish it. Revel in it. Because it’s the thing that will keep you thinking, and the more you think, the more likely you are to get to actual truth.

I browse on All almost exclusively, and if a community or poster is notably toxic or spammy I block them, but if they just don’t interest me, then I just scroll past them.

Honestly, I don’t even understand what the supposed problem is. The world is full of things that don’t interest me. That’s just the way it goes, and really it’s just background noise that I barely even notice.

One of my personal favorites, and technically an example of media universe crossovers though probably not quite what one would think of, is the Japanese manga series Saint Young Men, which is about Jesus and Buddha sharing an apartment in modern-day Tokyo.

3,000 - Oblivion

That’s spread over 40 or so characters, and dating all the way back to 2006.

That’s not uncommon in trades - plumbing, construction, auto mechanics and the like.

There are tricks and techniques that one can learn over time to make things easier or more efficient, but they’re often complex enough or require enough skill and experience that if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re just going to unnecessarily screw things up trying. So new people are taught the standard, safe, dependable way of doing things, even if that’s not the way the old hands do it.

Edit to add: in a moral context rather than a practical one, I don’t think it ever is appropriate. IMO, the first requirement for any moral stance is that one abide by it oneself, and unless and until one has managed to accomplish that most basic of tasks, one has no standing by which to even meaningfully comment on other people’s behavior.

Lemmy isn’t a platform at all. It’s a piece of forum software.

The platforms are the individual instances - lemmy.world or lemmy.ml or lemm.ee or whatever. There’s well over 1,000 of them total. And they range all the way from extreme left to extreme right, and from rigidly constrained to entirely open.

And since it is the case that there are well over 1,000 instances, each of them privately owned and managed by whatever standards the owners prefer, there is no mechanism by which any particular bias can be maintained at anything above the instance level. That necessarily means that any lemmy-wide bias you might see can only be organic.

You might honestly think about that, and what it says about the ideology you’re trying to pretend you’re not defending.