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Lemmy users project their toxicity towards Reddit. This place can be quite hostile if you don’t echo the ‘correct’ ideals.
The Lemmy users who call themselves “Leftists” are garbage human beings. Shitty, hostile, unnecessarily combative, will disagree with you about anything you say even when you’re on the same page.
And most of them aren’t really that left. Trying to talk about abolition of police and prisons is something they would never agree to, even though it’s a fundamentally leftist ideal. They’re just bad people.
Barrage of insults against leftists
Says leftists are insulting
The Lemmy users who call themselves “Leftists” are garbage human beings
And most of them aren’t really that left. Trying to talk about abolition of police and prisons is something they would never agree to
wait, is this a roundabout way of calling yourself a garbage human being?
Most users of those so open source, decentralizing apps are from the USA so, go figure…
Can second this
Graveyards are a disgusting waste of space. Their existence communicates to society that many dead people are more entitled to space on this Earth than some living people will ever have.
From everything I read in this thread… you won.
Graveyards don’t exist for the dead, they are a place where living people can mourn the loss of the dead person and remember older days.
I realize they’re not really for the dead, but the living decide that their dead bodies are entitled to more space than some living. Plots cost thousands of dollars. We ostracize the unhoused. Our priorities are broken, and graveyards are yet another thing for those “with” that those “without” will not have.
I don’t know. Personally I don’t need a “place” to go visit someone that is deceased, but I have very close family that needs that place in order to grieve. Pets or human family, they need to be buried and have a marker.
When I lived in a more urban environment the only way to achieve that was through graveyards/pet cemeteries. With some land and the option I’d rather bury people at home now, but lots of people don’t have that luxury, but still have the need to “visit” deceased loved ones, and know where they “are.”
I’m not one of those people, sounds like you aren’t either, but that doesn’t mean that a graveyard doesn’t serve a useful purpose for the majority of people.
Could they be more efficient? Sure, maybe. But honestly do they really take up THAT much space?
Definitely fits the unpopular opinion tag, but I think you’ve got some blinders on your empathy if you don’t see their value.
Graveyards don’t exist for the dead.
They exist for both relatives to mourn, and the wider populace who value the perspective on their own problems that graveyards provide. They’re also normally a peaceful place in an often unpeaceful world, much as urban green spaces.
Black liquorice tastes good
I prefer rap music by white artists because it’s less likely to feature the N word.
That isn’t just an unpopular opinion, but a very interesting one. Bravo.
Everyone should have to retake the driving test (both written and practical) every five years. And if you don’t pass on the first try or are in a crash where you are found at fault, it should be bumped up to every year for the following five years.
People drive dangerously because they’ve forgotten rules, or rules have changed, or they’ve had a physical or cognitive decline. And yet we’re like “yep, you took a test once decades ago, good to go.”
Dangerous driving kills so many people.
I’m guessing they would do this if they could justify the cost to voters. I recall having to wait months for my driving test. Sadly, I have a feeling it’s easier to kick that problem (i.e. accidents) down to someone else’s department. But I’m totally with you. Yesterday I almost got ran over by someone that treated a stop sign like a yield sign.
I’m frustrated more people are complacent with the state of the world, including myself.
Desktop computers are way better and more fun than using phone for browsing, wikipedia, news, and Lemmy
I rarely use my phone for anything other than texting. I like using my desktop computer to browse and post.
not necessarily more fun, but definitely much, much, much more usable and convenient
Fair point! Fun is def not the correct word I should have used. “Practical” is the better choice.
I’ve been reflecting on this a lot lately, especially after watching a video by an internet funny man I enjoy (Eddie Burback) about him locking his phone away for a month (not a feasible strategy for most people.)
I also enjoy pretty much anything online much more on the desktop. When things started pivoting to app-only it felt very weird at the time - the phone access was always the clunkier secondary backup nice-to-have.
That said, 80% of my browsing happens on my phone. It’s less fun and it’s more mindless, but that’s the truth. I think I’ll hit a point where I find my phone just too magnetic but as a dopamine crutch it’s cripplingly convenient.
I purposely avoid using my phone to browse. Unless it’s something like restaurant review or urgent news as I’m out. I try to stay present, enjoy my space, and tell myself that I can just wait to look it up when I get home.
When I 'm out and look around I see everyone just staring down at their screen. It’s annoying to see. So I decided not to be like that. Now I actually hear birds, feel breezes, take in sights and smells. And I take my time. For me pesonally, 100 percent improvement of life. I’m rarely ever in a bad mood now.
People even mention how I always seem in a good mood. It’s because I’m not doomscrolling on my phone all day (like most of Lemmy does)! lol
And when I get home and use desktop, I do fun things like create music, write novels, etc. Life is awesome without the 24-hour doom and gloom.
Abortion should be mandatory.
People keep arguing over whether abortion should be legal or not, but my opinion is that it should be forced on everyone whether they want it or not. Late term abortions up to 100 years after birth should also be considered for inclusion in this rule.
One of my favourite activities is finding controversial opinions, then taking an opinion so extreme that it makes everyone else look like a centrist.
Kill everyone now, legalise first degree murder, advocate cannibalism, eat shit!
But where would we scrape up the funding?
That’s a good argument for including very late term abortion. Inheritance tax.
I find it difficult to respect the way we exist in society. Most of us in the west enjoy what we have because someone elsewhere is being exploited. The general pride and vanity we have is unjustified and we should be using that power for good instead. We are focused on the
rightwrong things.You could say that this opinion isn’t unpopular, but just try bringing it up in conversation. Many don’t want to know.
That’s not unpopular at all yet, highly hypocritical. “Feeling bad” is just a way to feel like you’re giving something back, without actually helping.
If we feel good about it, we’re primed to continue the dark pattern. The first step is acknowledging the problem. If you remove the first step, subsequent steps can’t happen.
I get where you’re coming from. I see land acknowledgements used in colonies like NZ, Canada and USA yet treaties remain broken. I think (IMO) the answer is “all the things” rather than some. But we’re not even shuffling the deck yet as a population so making first steps accessible is important in my own experience. Too much in one go and peoples eyes glaze over.
Of course, it’s important to do the first steps. But that’s the thing. 99% of the population will stick to that first step. I plan to help people when I can in the future, but, I need to help myself first. Tho, see society around me, I don’t see that happening. I need to get rich and the only way to be rich is to either sell something stupid, yet “hypnotizing” or, to be corrupted and doing illegal stuff (and if you don’t have connection, will get caught).
People are dumb. Yeah, yeah, I know, everyone says that. But that’s another point. We are ALL dumb and especially weak af. Especially me! Cheers my friend!
You’re absolutely right but where do we as privileged and I guess inherently exploitative westerners go from here. Also the entire neoliberaljst system seems to be set up as a exploitation pyramid, where even us the privileged westerners are being exploited for the gains of those monetarily positioned above us.
Me I’m just trying to to understand all this so I can figure out where to go from there
Good question. The first step with any endeavour is mindset. So when people ask “where do we go from here?” my first thought is that we should stop the glorification of exploitation. Stop wearing brand logos. Stop showing our new devices to people with enthusiasm. Stop celebrating the “winners” of capitalism.
I don’t think we should despair - that doesn’t scale well. But we should (IMO) buy these things with a sense of regret or realism. We should normalise the discourse. I want us to be as up to date on this as people who follow sports.
Otherwise, not only will we never think of ways to fix this, but we won’t even recognise the solution when it’s in front of us.
We need to become conscious and informed of the dilemma of people who look different to us and consider them our brethren. That does wonders for the exploitative appetites we’ve developed.
The Beatles suck.
The Eagles are not as amazing as everyone thinks.I didn’t really like the Beatles until I started listening to all the non-#1 hit songs.
Me and my GF both agree that Beatles songs are fantastic… when performed by people who aren’t the Beatles.
I enjoyed the music in the film “Yesterday (2019)” muuuuuch more than i enjoyed the original versions.
Maybe it’s the 60s style of it, idk. I just don’t really get along with it
Agree in principle. Haven’t seen Yesterday, but Across the Universe soundtrack is my go to Beatles cover album.
Most people on Lemmy aren’t as kind or open-minded as they like to appear. There’s plenty of hate here on this side of the aisle, but it gets excused because they believe they’re “on the correct side.”
tl;dr: You’re just as hateful and close-minded as the people you claim to be fighting. Same behavior, different colored hat.
Ah, the ol’ “I have shit opinions and people told me so”
Well, the thread is about “unpopular” opinions. Tho with the upvotes, I guess my opinion isn’t as unpopular as I thought! :)
It’s insane how many removed call lots of the ideas here “Eugenics”. Eugenics is about producing the best GENES possible, while a lot of the replies here say that bad parents should not be allowed to make kids. Nobody talked about stopping people who aren’t so “perfect” (biologically-wise) to make kids. Just not have more kids suffering by growing in abusive and broken households or been poor and have it very hard in life.
People are Lemmy are not much smarter that those on Reddit, it seems…
your semantic understanding of eugenics doors not seem to understand why people opposed eugenics and eugenics policies.
Eugenics is a system of controlling reproduction. Many eugenesists may have believed that being a member of a certain race or having certain congenital diseases made one inferior (and thus unworthy of the right to reproduce), but the basic principle some people should reproduce and some people shouldn’t.
Like why do you think people are against eugenics? Because they’re afraid we might accidentally bring an end to genetic diseases? That there might be too many blonde people? That they care deeply about people who don’t exist yet’s rights to be some particular way?
So yeah, when you propose a rule controlling reproduction…
Eugenics is about producing the best GENES possible
“Eugenics” was a term decades before “genes”
Even if the etymology was different, you’d still be very wrong [about what “eugenics” is]
Eugenics is the action of preventing it. Saying someone shouldn’t isn’t advocating for its forceful eugenics.
I’m not saying that discouraging reproduction is eugenics. I’m saying that @Aitherios@lemmy.ml’s attempt at defining Eugenics is wrong. Saying it’s about producing the best “GENES” possible is just post-hoc reasoning to make it sounds more scientific.
Eugenics is based on 19th century racial science. If someone is advocating for any sort of population control that uses that framework (of bettering the “race”), they’re doing eugenics.
A good example of what’s not eugenics is China’s one-child policy. It wasn’t aimed at creating a “better” race of any kind, and It actually provided exemptions for ethnic minorities. The goal wasn’t to create a better type of human race, it was to prevent the population from growing faster that what the economy could support. IMO it was probably unnecessary, but definitely wasn’t eugenics.
However, if there was an alternate reality where china instituted the one-child policy only for ethnic minorities in an effort to make the nation a pure Han state, that would be eugenics. If they did it based on IQ, that would be eugenics. And if they exempted minorities from the policy out of a belief that the Han were inferior, that would also be genetics
A small but notable percentage of low income, low education people are just fuckwits who make terrible decisions. They had access to opportunities, they could have overcome their circumstances with just a little effort but smoking cones and stealing shit was less effort so they did that and these people are a comparable drain on society as the uber rich.
But that’s just inconsistent with the state of of current scientific knowledge.
Being poor makes you less likely to make a long term decision, not the other way around. In societies where income varies from season to season, you literally have less smokers when the money situation is good and more when the situation is bad. Long story short fighting for survival is extremely cognitively tasking. Thinking and planing is, literally, harder if you burned those resources on “what to put on the table… today”, problems.
OP is saying that of the people who are poor and uneducated, there is a small percentage that are fuckwits. Your description could be true for 95% of such people and it still wouldn’t be inconsistent with OP’s comment.
So… OP’s “hot” take is “losers exist”?
Not just that they exist but that they are a fucking huge drain on society.
As much as Billionaires are a cancer and the world would be better without them, Jeff Bezos never smashed the window on my car to steal my speakers, he doesnt come out vandalising public transport or parks and he isnt the reason my wife doesnt feel safe walking around at night. Billionaires are the reason we dont get more nice things, these assholes are the reasons we cant keep the ones we have.
They also make any sort of socialistic change harder, because any time you try to help the “underprivileged” anyone who wants to oppose it can hold up one of these wastes of oxygen and use them as the spokesperson.
Jeff Bezos never smashed the window on my car to steal my speakers,
True.
he doesnt come out vandalising public transport or parks and he isnt the reason my wife doesnt feel safe walking around at night.
If we could even comprehend the scale of his unpaid taxes, or their impact on our parks, we might discuss this at length…
Yes, thats what the very next sentence of my post was getting it.
It’s “losers”, but yes. I’d phrase it as “not every poor and uneducated person deserves sympathy; it’s not necessarily victim-blaming to refuse to accommodate such a person.”
That’s a quality summary.
Thank the both of you for summing up my point better than I did.
I’d love to take credit for the summary, JuxtaposedJaguar did the work.
Honestly, same for the well-off too. It’s probably the same exact people who would become failkids if they had the means.
Becoming a parent is not a right, it is a privilege (I guess). You need a license to get married, drive, hunt or fish, your dog needs one. There should be some sort of class and background check you must pass before being allowed to procreate. Just the basics like: this is the level of care and support this small helpless mammal needs to be healthy and grow to maturity. This is how much, minimum, that quality upbringing will cost and do you meet that bare minimum level of competence and income to raise a healthy baby.
The problem is that then you need the government’s permission to procreate. There’s always the valid concern that the government would prevent you from having children to remove some undesirable trait from the population and justify it as being a danger to a child. I know you described basic competency skills, but there would always exist a very credible threat of it being politicized.
In fact, this already happens for things like queer couples being rejected for adopting children or the Uyghur population being quietly genocided in China. And Eugenics was historically practiced such that criminals would be sterilized as part of their punishment.
It’s worth pointing out that governments already intervene with unqualified parents by removing the child from the household. Shifting the burden of proof from the government needing to show neglect to parents needing to prove themselves worthy is a dangerous amount of authority to cede to a centralized, corruptible power.
Also, it’s not clear how you handle unlicensed parents. People are going to have unsafe sex no matter how illegal you make it. Would you push for preemptively sterilizing everyone and trusting it can be reversed after a license is acquired? Forcing abortions? Confiscating the child after birth?
This is an extremely popular opinion among those who’ve not unpacked that what you’re describing is eugenics
It is not, at all, eugenics. Nothing in my unpopular opinion has anything to do with genetic traits
whatever metrics you use to decide who gets to procreate, you will certainly bias the gene pool. That’s eugenics
Also the amount of effort and wealth expended by the medical profession just so that some people can reproduce is mind boggling.
I feel like the problem with this argument is that it’s consequentialist. You can never be 100% certain which parents will raise their children well. There’s no metric that will conclusively tell you.
But you can start them off on the right foot by making sure they have the knowledge and the means to do the job correctly
For all the reasons others have described, this is problematic. However, I propose a middle ground: develop permanent, reversible, side-effect-free birth control, and apply it to every child at 10 years old. When you turn 18, you can have it removed. You just need to show up at a government office, sign a form, and have the procedure completed. It is completely free, and you are out the door in an hour. The treatment can be reapplied at any time.
What happens? No more accidental pregnancies. No more getting knocked up in high school. No more scares after one night stands. No more becoming impregnated by a rapist. Everyone can fuck to their heart’s content, but babies only get made if both people actually want a baby. Most of the problems you are talking about typically occur when either one or both of the parents don’t want or weren’t expecting a child. Make pregnancy opt-in, and you’ll solve 90% of the problems.
That’s not middle ground. That BS! And it doesn’t even have anything to do with what OP said. It just prevents pregnancy.
For fuck’s sake, I know people think differently and I try to accept and respect that but, some of you make me really wonder how tf we can think SO differently…
I’m confused as to what your objection is.
Great idea except for the part where this is eugenics
Eugenics is trying to erase particular traits from a genome which is not, at all, what I stated in my unpopular opinion. I just would like people who are wanting (or whoopsing) a child into the world to have the bare minimum knowledge and tools to do the job “correctly.”
I mean I guess not every aspect of eugenics was bad per se, but I’m not so sure about this level of social control.
Protecting children from been born into terrible families is not social control.
If you want to have a system which determines which people will or won’t make terrible families, only permitting the former to reproduce, you want a system of social control. If children were delivered randomly by storks it would be something else. Aviation regulations? Avian regulations? Something like that I guess.
Not all social control is bad. Society and its institutions often limit what people can do. But of late we’ve mostly determined that restricting reproduction should be used sparingly, not defaultly, and I tend to agree.
It is a basic biological function so you could say pooping is a privilege too.
I am not worried about helping people poop better
Who decides who can pro-create? What is the criteria?
I don’t see a scenario where this works out well.
I laid out some bare minimums: knowledge about how to take care of and raise a healthy human child and the financial means to do so.
In the United States, political violence has ensured overrepresentation of minority populations below the poverty line. Requireing the financial means to have a child thereby limits minority procreation.
To address this, a universal basic income as well as a stipend for parents would be necessary. In the US, this is far away from ever happening, eere actively moving in the opposite direction. Mandatory birth control in this country is eugenics.
How tf does this shitty reply have 17 upvotes? How the fuck did 17 COMPLETE IDIOTS show that and though: “Hmmm… He is right!”
Like, hw stupid can you all be? Who’s going to decide? Obvious professionals who know of kids and have worked with them. Social workers, pedopsychiatrist, teachers, etc.
This isn’t even something new. This is how it’s done with adoption. You can’t all be so ignorant and dumb. I hate democracy because of idiots like you…
Ah, the age-old unpopularopinions dilemma. Do I upvote because I agree, or upvote because it is unpopular and I disagree?
You should upvote that specific reply if you have more than 2 IQ.
Are you that blind to the world? Do you really look at something like… The Trump administration, and think “Like, hw stupid can you all be? Who’s going to decide? Obvious professionals who know of kids and have worked with them. Social workers, pedopsychiatrist, teachers, etc.”.
Very clearly professionals and the people who have the best in mind are not the ones who are chosen by those in power. Get real, truly pathetic take
Thinking that Trump and your shitty country is the only one in the world is pathetic to say the least. Nothing will work in your country (and I’m not talking just about kids but in general) but that doesn’t mean it won’t work in other countries as well 🤦♂️
Challenge: USAns not be the dumbest nation on this planet for one day (impossible)
Lmao, not an American, but let’s use… Germany as an example. In the 2025 elections, the AFD (hard right fascists) doubled their seat count in parliament. I don’t think you have a solid understanding of how bad eugenics can get, or how it actually would take effect in a modern world. Actually, it seems you don’t understand much of anything.
The purpose of government is to take care of the people. I’d rather pay more taxes to make sure my fellow men are fed, clothed, sheltered, educated and cared for because it improves security for my loved ones.
I know this really grinds some peoples gears but by golly I love big government.
Why is that unpopular? It’s literally the main stated purpose of most governments.
