cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/47584733
Trita Parsi May 18, 2026
We should first recognize that restarting the war amounts to an admission that Trump’s previous escalatory gambit — the blockade of the blockade — has failed. That, in turn, was itself an admission that the war had failed. Which was an admission that the threats of war in January had failed. As I have argued before on my Substack, this relentless search for an escalatory silver bullet capable of bringing Iran to its knees is not unique to Trump; it has become a defining pathology of American Iran policy for decades.
Although negotiators have made meaningful progress on several fronts, talks have thus far failed to produce an agreement, largely because of irreconcilable differences over Tehran’s highly enriched uranium stockpile. And as Washington has come to realize that the blockade is backfiring, a new and dangerous dynamic has emerged: both sides now believe another round of fighting will strengthen their hand in the negotiations that follow.
It still has the best niche subs though. Like /r/weeviltime, or any random hobbies, it has the largest community anywhere. Anything remotely about news or politics or anything is dogshit though and I try to stay away from all that (and keep it here).
If you don’t build it here they won’t cum. Fuck u/spez
They still won’t come here even if you do.
They are centrists, we have tankies here, it simply is what it is.
Some people don’t enjoy reading the incessant calls for murder e.g. Luigi-ing or guillotining. We can be anything that we set our mind to, I’m just trying to illuminate how we are - wishful thinking about what might have been does not help us in any way.
We turn them away, we routinely say that we don’t even want them here, we (collectively) don’t want them here. So they both do not want to come nor are welcomed if they did. This matter has been settled and decided and seems extremely unlikely to change.
Meh. I came here from Reddit and it’s fine.
We all did, and agreed it is better here:-).
Here is the last discussion about it afaik. Here is a quote from the comments in that discussion:
Here is another quote:
These were both highly upvoted, with tens of upvotes and almost no downvotes. I could go on… and in fact, here’s one more:
(this one had many downvotes, but it had >3-fold more upvotes than down so…) Another one is:
On the bright side, the upcoming Lemmy 1.0 software should help a bit, as moderation reports will finally federate out to mods on other instances besides exclusively the one that the community itself is on.
But there are more downsides too - such as the fact that since that discussion the anarchist flotilla has been pushing strongly to defederate from lemmy.world, and any instance that runs PieFed software too, for being “zionists” - thereby further fracturing the Threadiverse into tankie-tolerant vs. tankie-intolerant spaces, and increasing the complexity of someone having to pick an instance. This includes lemmy.dbzer0.com that is the #7 most popular instance.
Leftist in-fighting and the complexity of signing up are the top 2 reasons why people do not join. Lack of content is the third, which is further aggravated by defederations and in-fighting.
I am so very glad that you felt welcomed here. I am so glad that you persevered through all of this. But… I can understand why people choose not to. At the end of the day we cannot control how others feel.
I think you wildly overestimate “leftist infighting” as a reason people wouldn’t join.
It’s peripheral drama at worst. Just here for the memes. I just want to grill for God’s sake!
Every month or so I see a post such as https://tarte.nuage-libre.fr/c/fediverse/p/198468/do-we-need-more-users discussing this topic. I barely look at Reddit myself anymore, but this is what people say that Redditors (and people on Bluesky, and even X) say about us here. Which also matches my own experiences too - although yeah if you personally block it all, then your experiences will ofc differ. I’m talking more about what someone who has no account would see, by default, as they just check us out.
Here’s another relevant discussion post: https://piefed.social/c/fediverse/p/1897818/how-to-sucesfully-post-about-piefed-on-reddit, with links to actual discussions that took place on Reddit about us here, if anyone wants to read primary source material.
Whenever people speak so broadly about social media platforms, describing the prototypical user… it’s pretty bizarre. Most people post NOTHING, a handful post some, and then like 0.01% of users post like 50% of the total content. The “vibe”, even the discussion about the vibes, are made by a very small percentage of the users.
PugJesus, ThePicardManeuver, and SatansMaggityCumFart do a LOT of the heavy lifting in terms of setting a tone/vibe/discussion etc. Just those 3 accounts.
In short, making inferences about users based on platform is pretty sketchy at best. I GET that human tribalism inclines us to form strong opinions about “the other”, and to then apply those overly broadly… so im not blaming anyone.
I’m just suggesting stepping back and recognizing that a bunch of what you (and others) are thinking on the subject is informed by:
A faulty assumption that the median content of a social media platform is evenly contributed to by the platform population as a whole (it isn’t, not even clise)
An out-of-time instinct to “otherize” groups which isn’t super valuable anymore.
It all reeks of any other immigration discussion. Immigrants who insist they were the last good ones. Ranking which are the shithole countries. Grandstanding about how many generations one has been “here”. I’m hesitant to even call it a “parallel”, because it’s honestly the exact same thing and the exact same arguments get made.
Just instead of people trying to like… live … they just want some memes. Build a fucking wall and make Reddit pay for it. Drama for dramas sake. A complete and utter waste of energy.
Post has real “you people” energy
there are current subs, that are niche that people want to ask questions about, like trying to solve a specific issue. just not replicated on lemmy, if its even possible.