What’s a wanky? I’ve been here for a while and that one’s new to me.

Yes, and there’s a scientific basis to this: The double empathy problem.

One of the symptoms of autism used to be considered a lowered sense of empathy, as autists seemed to struggle relating to other people. But that’s not the case: Autists only struggle to relate to non-autists (and vice versa), among their own both groups get along fine

So it’s not an innate trait of autism to have lower empathy, we just communicate on a different frequency, which has to be decoded (which takes energy). If we meet someone who’s on our wavelength, communicating is intuitively a lot easier.

It reminds of being in a different culture and meeting someone of yours.

Kinda like we have Shirts with nonsensical Chinese characters.

I somehow never thought about that. How does that work? Do they use a giant network of pneumatic tubes?

Ich kannte bisher nur die von Konservativen gemochte Version: Wer mit 20 nicht links ist hat kein Herz, wer mit 50 nicht konservativ hat keinen Verstand.

Same. Plenty of free hobbies exist though. Hiking, learning a language, identifying plants (check your local weather service if you can contribute your findings), geocaching, streetcomplete, attending a communal board game night or gardening group. Libraries hold all kind of events for all walks of life.

Some sort of political engagement can also be fun and additionally help find friends. There’s cryptoparty to teach about privacy. Some environmental groups host day trips with volunteers to clear or repopulate strips of land. You can ask your library if you can offer a workshop of some skill you possess.

There is honestly so much free stuff that I didn’t know about yet a couple of years ago.

One could frame this as “Leftists are more naive and reckless, while Conservatives are cautious”. I wouldn’t, but I can see someone make that argument.

Not sure about Lemmy, but I have noticed a very recent influx in loops.video content recently, especially in my native language. That’s probably because Loops is starting to be usable now. There’s some YouTubers I already followed and even some local progressive politicians. This year a project named “digital day of independence” started, that educates people every month about how to switch from big tech, which probably also has something to do with it.

Absolutely this. I banned the big platforms from my phone and only use Fediverse apps now. When I opened Instagram it kinda felt like when I had a relapse and became flooded with sadness, rage and Weltschmerz. Here I check for a couple of minutes, still my conditioning to reach for scrolling and move on with my day.

And whenever I write a comment here I’m not scared to regret it soon after.

Exactly. You can’t change people’s minds, you can only inspire.