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.
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.
I think you missed the concept of what I was saying. I am talking about what people think of when someone mentions that someone should come over here and join Lemmy. Posts like https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/16hkxua/why_im_giving_up_on_lemmyfediverse/. Since so few people seem curious enough to research things on their own, and before I get accused of making stuff up again, I’ll just copy the whole thing in its entirety:
This was from 2-3 years ago now. The content has gotten better, and the UX too, but the in-fighting has gotten worse (see calls on \0 governance community to defederate from Lemmy.world). You legitimately might have missed a lot of this - many of the BS posts end up getting deleted - but it is here, and when \0 defederates from LW it is going to affect us all, especially if they defederate from all PieFed instances too, and every other instance that they have accused of Zionist moderation practices.
And even (much newer) posts that are aimed at being strongly positive towards us, such as https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/1ixf1gb/lemmy_may_seem_small_but_its_the_most_viable/, get heavy pushback in the comment sections. e.g. calling us “Reddit but decentralized”, and “Lemmy is dreadful. Sorry but it’s true.”, and wow this one hurts:
I’m not talking about whether we deserve to be liked, I’m saying that those of who want to be here already are, whereas among Redditors in particular we have a certain… “reputation”, and it is not a good one. Some of those people might be happier with Nostr or Voat or Truth Social, and we definitely hope that those people go there rather than here, but the centrists…? Yeah they don’t like us here. They say so and everything. Anyone can read these messages. I’ve seen the same on Bluesky too, when I’ve gone looking.
I’m not suggesting that we make any changes necessarily, just saying that an honest diagnosis of the situation is helpful if we ever did want to make this place more welcoming. Which we do not, it would seem, but if we ever did… then we need to realize that for primarily American centrists (who are the majority audience of people on Reddit?), they don’t want to come to a 4chan version of Reddit. They are on Reddit for a reason - it meets their needs, no matter how enshittified it also gets alongside that. Spez was (at least partially) right - he did in fact get away with calling us all landed gentry. The company remains profitable at least.
Oh no, I hear you loud and clear.
I’m directly refuting the notion that any post, positive or negative, is a meaningful cross section of opinion on any platform.
I’m also directly refuting the idea that it’s even reasonable to expect a positive view of any platform from any other. If people really like a platform (or at the very least prefer it), they’ll move to the platform. If they don’t, they won’t. If I preferred Pepsi, I’d be drinking it by now.
I do genuinely appreciate your view, and methodical approach. It reminds me of the relationship, though, between historians and archeologists. There is reality as it is written, and there is a reality that is. Incredibly valuable to read the accounts. Entirely appropriate to consider the context in which they exist.
I showed you direct evidence of many people stating exactly this. It now sounds like you agree with me, but have nothing to point to as to why besides the notion that reality isn’t real. Believe it or not, I know what you mean and tend to agree, though nonetheless… (the reason being that those who enjoy leftist in-fighting are here, while those who do not are elsewhere - although in this case that isn’t a contaminating bias but rather the whole point underlying what we are talking about!)
I was arguing against naive optimism, not wanting to swing over to naive pessimism but rather realism, to open our eyes and see what is truly there. You seem to be arguing for a different method of finding truthiness, which however valid I would definitely find it difficult to discuss in the terms that I am most familiar with.
In any case, people definitely aren’t joining here, whatever their underlying reasoning. In fact our numbers are going down, not up. As is also true of Reddit, and most social media, which is probably the healthier alternative, though it would still be nice for it to exist to look at occasionally, especially for such things as hobby enthusiast forums that are much harder to bring people together irl.