Yeah it’s a pretty sad state that the system in the US is comparable to 3rd world countries. Here in South Africa, the standard healthcare isn’t awful. I’ve had quite a lot of dental work done over the years for a once off payment a few years ago that was less than a movie ticket.

But it’s a chaotic experience. There’s definitely no personal touch, you’re just one in a sea of people getting herded around until your turn comes, the staff are overworked and most likely underpaid so they don’t exactly have an aura of friendless and helpfulness, and you’re not even guaranteed to end up seeing the same dentist every time.

And I kinda shudder to think of what the mental health version of all of this would be. Not at all confident that they don’t just prescribe random generic pills to every second person and call it a day. I actually made a post asking for advice about it in the autism sub on Reddit around a year or so ago and never got a response, so clearly there weren’t many South Africans around there.

I’ve already subscribed to a few Blåhaj based communities from here in lemmy.world. If you search communities, you can choose between ‘local’ and ‘all’. The only difference from subscribing to a native community is that instead of immediately saying “joined” it first says “subscription pending” for a few seconds. But I haven’t needed to jump through any particular hoops to subscribe to communities outside of lemmy.world yet.

I think that when I successfully appealed before, I must’ve just caught someone in a good mood. Because to be honest the ban that I successfully appealed was for a much spicier comment than the ban that I was now unsuccessful at appealing. So the impression I get is that it just depends on if the person seeing your appeal is an asshole or not.

I started off on MySpace when I was around 17 or 18. But back then I didn’t have uncapped wifi and I would’ve had either a brick or a java dumbphone in my pocket, so I only really accessed it at work. Those were fun times though.

After MySpace I used various forum sites. I wasn’t interested in Facebook because my opinion was “been there, done that with MySpace” but a family member signed me up there. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t end up hooked there for a few years.

When I finally discovered Reddit though, I dropped Facebook like a hot potato and went all in. It was like the forum sites I loved but bigger and better and with everything in one place.

Never could get the hang of Twitter though. I don’t ‘get’ places like Instagram either because you can in fact, post photos on other social media too. And the comment sections are a dumpster fire. And I tried TikTok but see absolutely no value in being spoonfed content instead of choosing.

Nah you’re right, I’ve probably needed therapy for a long time. In fact, I’m pretty sure that I’m lifelong undiagnosed something, either autism or ADHD or both. And definitely depression, although I’m starting to believe that it’s a symptom rather than the cause. And going around like this without answers or treatment has kinda wrecked my life so far.

The thing that has been holding me back from seeking answers in recent years is that I really can’t afford private help and I have strong doubts about the public healthcare system in my country, particularly when it comes to mental health. But I’m starting to realise that the least I could do is try it.

I think what happened with me on Bluesky is that when things started off ok there, I started daydreaming that I could put the recluse life behind and re-join the world. I wanted to try something completely different from Reddit and I was invested in making something for myself on this shiny new platform, leaving the recluse life behind me and rejoining society. For years, apart from checking other platforms out occasionally, Reddit was my sole social media, so it was a new, exciting adventure lol. I built up some pretty big expectations of how it was going to go in my head and reality didn’t live up to it. Maybe I can be ready to try again once I’ve settled here properly for my main social media fix and it’s no longer this personal project that I can’t live up to.

And to answer your first question (sorry), as I understand it, it’s not federated but it is open source and available for others to make use of the protocol if they want.

Yes I’ve seen the Blåhaj instance. I’m just still getting my head around how everything works here and not sure yet what the advantage to signing up there in particular would be, when we’re all seeing the same content and interacting with each other across instances anyway.

Something tells me that I might end up there once I get my head around the intricacies and politics here in the fediverse. But yesterday when I was having trouble with the first server I chose, I got the impression that lemmy.world is probably where I should start out as a noob, if I want an all round impression of what this platform has to offer and what it’s all about.

Because they’re evil, fascist, thought police for wanting to take away our god given right to tell entire groups of people that they’re subhuman on the internet. Unlike those valiant and heroic free speech and freedom of expression warriors that burn and ban books, police other people’s identities and cheer as a handful of conservative billionaires buy up all the free press and social platforms.

Edit: /s just in case.

Haha I was also banned there after what seems a lot to me like report brigading and have been on a tour of other platforms since. And I already used up my previous two strikes getting suspended for even dumber reasons and didn’t even bother trying to appeal at that point. So there goes a 7 year old account (probably my 3rd Reddit account in total).

And it’s funny because I used to be a lot more wild and free with what I said back when I first started on Reddit and never picked up a single suspension. But about two years ago, I felt almost like I was being singled out suddenly, and I got suspension after suspension for stupid shit, all within a few months of each other. I actually picked up the 3rd strike then too but managed to successfully appeal it, so I’ve been on the final warning since then.

I miss the little niche communities and could probably use workarounds to make a new account but part of me thinks it’s maybe time to leave it behind. Besides, wouldn’t surprise me if it’s just a matter of time before they go on the same direction as Facebook and Twitter, if they aren’t already silently heading that way. Their current CEO used to be moderator of the jailbait subreddit. So just like Facebook and Twitter, they’re also run by a rich incel.

That’s the funny thing. Usually I’m not that interested in making ‘friends’. I spent a decade plus on Reddit not worrying what others think. But I got caught up in it on Bluesky, and it’s like that sort of social media does something to my brain chemistry and so I should just stay away.

In a way, it seems to me like the microblogging format is all about validation from the start. Otherwise why else are people there putting up profiles like a shopfront and shitposting like clockwork all day. And I’m not after the kind of validation where someone says “wow you’re so cool” (I’m using the word ‘cool’ loosely in this conversation, partly snarkily but also as a compliment to the people that were ‘cool’ in my opinion, if that makes sense), I’m not really interested in being ‘cool’ and I hate that it came across that way. I’m just saying that monologuing on a platform where no one gives a solitary shit is pretty sad.

As far as bullying went, I did have a bully for a little while when I was a kid (going into more detail is one for therapy lol) and after that I was mostly a loner that did my own thing. Not completely friendless but I’ve never really fit in anywhere and learnt to enjoy my own company. But I’ll say again, platforms like Bluesky do something to my head. It feels a lot more personal than places like this.

But you didn’t come off wrong, don’t worry. It started well for me on Bluesky but for each day that passed there without the results or reception I was hoping for, the gremlins in my head got louder and louder.

Most of their design choices from 8 onwards have been pretty questionable. To me, the way they just slapped the new UI on top of the old UI with different things and ways to access them in each, just comes across as seriously half assed. Like they’re just not interested in putting the effort in anymore.

Even on Windows 11 (which I don’t use personally but have worked with), they ruined the old right click menu by slapping a new menu on top of it that has half the options. So you need to click “show more options” every damn time. Instead of cleaning up or upgrading the old menu a bit and maybe offering the option of customising it, they just hid it with a new, useless menu. And still haven’t learnt from Windows 8 because it still has that two different UI designs, half / half, new / old thing going for it.

As far as modern, nice looking, well designed desktop environments go, KDE puts Windows absolutely to shame these days.

I think I’ve mostly got to the bottom of it now. I’m sure there’ll still be one or two more obstacles moving forward but I keep inching towards a seamless experience here. The first server I chose was pretty bad and with this server, turns out that the problem was that in language settings, “Undefined” was selected but “English” was deselected. Seems like you have to ctrl click to select more than one and I think the first time I went through my settings, I didn’t realise that. Pretty sure that wasn’t the case in the first server I joined but I might be mistaken. Honestly I question why “Undefined” is even listed there in the first place and isn’t just a default, hidden setting. Seems very ‘beta version’ to me.

I’m liking what I’m seeing here though. So I’m definitely thinking that I’m going to power through any other issues I come across to stick around.

Very cool, thanks for pointing these out. I enjoy dishing out socio-political hot takes as much as the next person but I don’t want it to swallow up my life. You’ve been very cool and helpful to me here, including on the other instance, so once again, thank you very much.

Social media.

I don’t know if it’s just my server / app combo. Since I’ve been starting out here, certain things are hard to tell if they’re network issues or software issues, so I apologise if I’m wrong. But I’m starting to lose count of threads that I’ve visited that apparently have x amount of comments but absolutely nothing when I actually open the thread. Real Reddit moderator shit. Surprised they haven’t locked it and given no reason whatsoever. I think I need to start taking notice of the instances that this happens with, to see if there’s repeat offenders because there’s zero reason to even try participate when they’re running things like this.

I too was interested in knowing the meaning of these symbols. But apparently this platform kinda sucks.

Trying to decide if you’re calling me dull or just suggesting an interesting subreddit lol. It does seem like an interesting sub though, sometimes the mundane can be oddly interesting. So thank you.

Huh. I never would’ve thought that a country music artist would be the type. I’m shocked and surprised.

Looks like I’ve chosen a good time to join up here… I’m guessing that I’m going to be trying my 3rd instance soon.

I’m actually wondering what the draw of this place is gonna be once they decide to start behaving exactly like the rest of the platforms. It’s been quite the last 24 hours for me just trying to get set up here between web pages that don’t want to load properly, misleading servers and trying a bunch of different apps that all seem to have something either missing or broken. Like, you have to actually want to be here. I’ve put up with all of this crap so far so that I can use an alternative to Reddit, not just another Reddit with a different url.

If I wanted to hear conspiracy theories and put up with bigotry, I’d be using fucking Twitter.

I think that if tomorrow’s world is run by people that are actually interested in factual history, the history books will reflect poorly on all of our world leaders in this current age. Their legacy is going to be global warming, allowing advertising and marketing to enshittify every aspect of life and mostly sitting back and watching while society tears itself apart with misinformation and conspiracy theories.

I got banned from Reddit for, and I quote, “inciting violence or hate towards marginalized or vulnerable groups” for a comment calling out men in general for mostly allowing the 2020s to become the decade where men are represented by pieces of shit like Andrew Tate and Donald Trump without much resistance.

And the best part is it was a comment that I had made like a month before, but the suspension came right after making a popular post in Reddit’s feminism subreddit and getting more rewards than I’ve ever gotten. In order words it was clearly people who didn’t like what I said going through my profile and looking for things to mass report. Reddit doesn’t seem to care about people abusing that though.

So speaking out anywhere except where you’re just preaching to the choir can land you in trouble. I fully agree that not enough men have been calling out other men for shitty behaviour, following shitty ‘gurus’ and teaching their children and younger brothers in generation Z that rape ‘jokes’ are ok. And too many men that take huge personal offense to depressing stats and people describing their own bad experiences / abuse instead of being concerned about it and wanting things to change.

Just to circle back to Reddit. Never forget that Spez, current CEO of Reddit, was a moderator of the jailbait subreddit and that the only reason that Reddit has ever taken action against those kinds of subs is because they were getting negative media attention about them.

Edit: most of these platforms seem to be run by people that would be angry posting in incel forums in a parallel universe where they didn’t become rich and famous, so it’s an uphill battle now. We have to do the calling out in the real world, risking having to deal with monkey brain aggression. Social media isn’t on our side.