Yes, this is an echo chamber. Yes, most things are very samey. You don’t see alternative opinions because this is a TINY community. Like crazy tiny. Lemmy has what, 60,000 active users? You know a ton of those are bots too. Even after a reddit exodus that site gets what, 2 million daily users*? So you’ve got a crazy small group but it’s also very similar in type of person who is here. It’s overwhelmingly educated middle aged men with a tech background or focus. So you’ve got a limited pool of opinions to draw on, and then EVEN if you do occasionally get a different opinion, even within that narrow band of experience it can get voted down or swarmed.

Look, I only lurk here occasionally, and I see stuff I disagree with constantly. I see stuff in this thread I disagree with. But I don’t post about it because it’s not worth it. I also don’t have time to argue a minority opinion on the internet, and my life is better since I stopped doing that. And I guarantee I’m not alone. But I ASSURE you this is a bubble.

…but if it makes you feel better though, most people live in bubbles. I have been lucky to grow up in a very different place than I live, and I’ve found that politically, most Americans absolutely talk past one another because they are incapable of understanding “the other side” because they’ve never truly talked to people on the other side or listened to them, much less lived with them and understood them. This isn’t enlightened centrist BS, I have a side I agree with, but I also don’t misrepresent the views of people I disagree with based on no actual knowledge. And with non politics it’s very similar - small groups beget small opinion spaces based on a small pool of experiences. Whether that’s cars or AI or Linux.

We used to get exposed to people with different life experiences and opinions in so-called “third places”, and we don’t have them anymore. Way fewer people go to chuch and the middle of the road protestant mainline has been subsumed. Social clubs like the elks and masons are far less popular. 12% of the population doesn’t serve in the military with a socioeconomic cross-cut. Kids don’t even have malls, sports start specializations early, and the Internet, almost worst of all, has made it easier than ever to get a social fix consuming only content from those most like you or what is algorithmically fed to you.

Anyway, things are bad, I do not have a solution, but I have a little bit of time and feel compelled to post when you are practically begging for unpopular opinions. So my unpopular opinion is holy shit is this place an echo chamber, and if you don’t feel that deep in your bones you need to immediately drive 2 hours outside of whatever city you live in and go to a pancake breakfast hosted by some local scout troop, go to some small town festival and talk to people, or hell go visit a church of a religion you don’t belong to. And don’t talk to people your own age, or same familial structure. Talk to someone who thinks voting is dumb. Talk to someone who doesn’t care which Linux distro you’re on because they don’t even HAVE a computer, they just have an iPad.

…and yes, realistically you’re probably not gonna make a connection that way without moving somewhere, and I’m obviously being mostly flippant, but at least don’t turn on conservative tiktok or watch Fox News and expect that to be “the other side”. Experiencing a different bubble is “growth” I guess, but people aren’t the bubbles they live in, and actually talking to them is a way better way to understand WHY we disagree, not just how. Again, like I said, I don’t have real solutions on how to do that. I just have the answer to your question and yes this place is a bubble.

*Note I’m pulling those numbers out of my ass, but I bet I’m close on orders of magnitude. And yes I know reddit is half bots too.

I think I’m gonna fix my partitions so I can distro hop, then check out bazzite.

I’m glad you’ve had a good go of it. I’ve been very unimpressed with Linux Mint. I expected it to be fiddly, I didn’t expect it to just…not work out of the box. Like freezing up on the initial screens as part of the welcome tour? Baked in features like linking up with Google drive just…not working? Losing sound in games when messaged on discord, the de facto standard for side by side gaming audio? And all of these issues reported multiple times in multiple forums, with like 8 different solutions proposed depending on who you asked, with a healthy amount of “well that’s not a problem, it must be your machine’s fault” when it’s happening to multiple people?

I fixed some of the issues after serious googling, and I’ll get it working fully eventually, but I could never in a million years recommend it to someone unless they shared my desire to go mostly open source with high privacy, or were very tech-savvy. I even thought it would be a scenario like, I play admin and get things set up, then can hand off a working computer to my wife or daughter. Not a chance for the wife, and we are going to really need to keep leaning into programming for the kiddo. Maybe she’ll be a tech whiz who likes fixing things, but if she needs something reliable for school some day it’ll be a Chromebook or (gross) a Mac.

It’s customizable as hell, it’s free and open-source, and it’s helping my computer skills, so I’ll keep going with it for sure. But if I didn’t love learning and problem solving and simultaneously have HUGE issues with privacy and Windows whole direction… I can’t imagine sticking with it.

Obviously the Internet plays a big role in this as people have said, but it’s worth mentioning this was also the era where tv stopped sucking (from reality tv awfulness to a bunch of absolute banger dramas), AND where Netflix and then other streaming services became available. So there are huge competition effects.

I’ve also never bought fully into the “reading good TV bad” mindset. Leisure is leisure, especially if the article’s raised point is “identifying with literary characters”. That certainly happens in other forms of media. Even if it’s reading to learn, I watch a LOT of YouTube these days, and probably 75% of what I watch is how to and instructional. Also let’s not forget with each new form of leisure: “fast-paced music” (classical), books for the masses, magazines, tv, jazz, rock and roll, DnD, the internet, VR etc…there was always someone saying the new stuff will rot your brain while they pine for something that was maligned when it was new.

I don’t think there’s some nefarious “they” cabal here, certainly not an organized one trying to discourage biking. Occam’s Razor is there are a few different types of people supporting this Chief among them are just carbrained people who can’t fathom biking for transportation, who don’t realize how slow that is when they’ve only toodled on a 35 pound mountainbike recreationally at 10 mph. Then you’ve also got people who have almost been hit by a delivery scooter thinking “ebikes are a menace” solely because they’re new and something some “other” group of people uses, and so it’s easy to say “they must be stopped” while ignoring the crazy fast, way heavier cars they’re already desensitized to.

It’s not for bike lanes, the law is for “NYC Streets”. It’s a very dumb limit.

That attitude is crazy prevalent. I ride an ebike in DC, and after passing a guy on his acoustic bike, he caught up to me to bikeshame me for riding “a motorcycle”, and complained how he almost gets run over by ebikes every day (I was nowhere near him, I think he thought he was being funny). Ok, sure dude. I’m sure it’s ebikers almost run over you every day, not the thousands of distracted drivers.

The worst part is the dude ran two stop signs to catch up to me, while wearing no helmet. I’ve never seen such a clear posengeur who couldn’t deal with being passed. I am not your safety problem, bro.

It is a ROAD speed limit for ebikes. It’s like no one responding to you read the bill. It is not a mandated governor for ebikes, and has nothing to do with sidewalks or bike paths. The speed limit for cars is 25, for human powered vehicles is 25, but they want to limit ebikes because “they are heavier” and implied therefore more dangerous. It is a crazy bad law.

Did you read the bill? This is a road speed limit, not a mandated governor for the motor. It’s still super dumb, but it shouldn’t do anything to class 1, 2, or 3 sales.

This proposal is for the road, which is why it’s crazy. 25kmh on a bike path is fine. A speed limit that is lower for bikes than cars is insane, when the justification for pedal bikes having a higher speed limit is that they’re lighter than ebikes. Cars should have a 5 mph limit in that case.