this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2024
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I remember this being a big problem back on reddit. Most upvoted posts in a subreddit were often posts whose authors clearly didn't understand the subreddit's point. What I want to say with this is that post getting upvotes doesn't necessarily mean they are good post for this community. Because that's the argument that immediately comes to my mind when I'm criticizing this post: it's upvoted, therefore people clearly want posts like that.
I won't respond to every one of your responses individually, because I feel like you missed what I'm trying to say. It's kinda hard for me to express my thoughts in english, so it might be my fault. I'll try again:
When I see regular memes in this community, I usually have good emotion from them. I often laugh, be it aloud or just in my head. I might send the meme to my friends. Overall, it makes my day a bit better.
When I see one of those memes like this one, saying something like "it's ok to shoot capitalists" or "both american parties are bad", I don't have any of those good feelings. Even though with the second one I more agree than disagree. These are not memes, at least not as I see it, for me they are just (often very hateful) political message written to some meme format. I'm not talking about every meme criticizing communism. I'm talking about these low effort memes that I could create tons of from literally any random meme template.
Now, the following is just my opinion: I don't think people who agree with the political message in these memes (communists in this case) do have the good emotions that I have from regular memes. I believe that people who upvote it do it not because they laughed, but because they agree with the political message. And I don't think memes should be like that.
If I'm wrong, I'm just unable to see it with your eyes, and you really find those memes funny and entertaining, then my whole point doesn't make sense.
Preliminarily: For better or worse, [email protected] doesn’t exclude politics, and it has been that way since before I even created my Lemmy user account. As far as I’m concerned, the comm is what it is. It’s been here since Lemmy’s inception, and [email protected] was created three years later (also before my time).
I agree with you that many people (up/down) vote on political memes not for the quality of the meme but for agreement in the politics. I was on Reddit for over 15 years and made the same observation as you. I, too, am not a fan of low quality memes bubbling to the top on account of their political message, and I personally don’t upvote them. One could try to argue that this behavior is a Reddit holdover, but I suspect that it’s human nature. Just look at how low-quality political cartoons often are in newspapers.
If someone wants to create a political meme community (of whatever political stripe), where the mods aggressively remove low quality memes, they certainly can, and I wish them the best of luck.
I understand that you don’t like the politics of [email protected], and I do sympathize with your frustration with the low-quality memes. We can’t police people’s voting motivations, so—unfortunately for you and me—the low-quality memes are not going away. The politics reflect the community, and if the politics don’t reflect you, then it might not be your community. Just block/unsubscribe and move on.