So, I do a lot of writing (mystery solved for people wondering how I can reply so fast and so much on Lemmy!) and decided to create a fun little community, Tales from the Cryptic Lemmy.
Mostly a showcase for “crappy” pulp writers like myself. I figured I’d leave the good writing for the better communities out there.
I’m hoping the new community will be all about celebrating and participating in crappy pulp horror writing, where people can just have fun with it and not worry about perfection. It’s all about embracing the weird, over-the-top, and messy, without taking ourselves too seriously.
My first story for this new community is The Man Who Hunted Sea Lions on Lemmy.
Inspired by the drama I stirred up in a politics community, where now everyone seems convinced I’m some Russian troll mining “Russian bitcoinz” and spreading propaganda on Lemmy. Why? Because I dared to support voting third party. And wow, some of them took it personally—parody accounts, stalking, and even posting stats on how much I comment. Hateful DMs, weird comments—the works. Oy!
Anyway, I learned a new term: “sealioning.” Never heard of it before Lemmy, but after asking what it meant (several times), I got banned from that community for three days… for sealioning! Still not sure how my posts fit that, but whatever—it gave me the idea for a fun little story in my new community. So, it worked out!
I’ll keep cranking out and posting stories there, and maybe—just maybe—others will join in on the madness!
And if not? No sweat. I’ll keep pumping out these craptacular tales, hurling them into the endless void of cyberspace, where they’ll float like ghosts in the dead ether, waiting for someone, somewhere, to stumble upon them. :)
I don’t usually talk directly to this person. I interacted with him a little bit in these comments, which might have been a mistake. You’re completely right that interacting in this way is often a waste of time. Most of the time, I’m talking to other people who might read the comments.
I am completely serious, though, in what I was saying about being concerned. To cut a long story short, I’ve been curious enough to examine a lot of these weird political propaganda accounts, and I think this person is just a freelance individual honestly spending every free waking moment posting on Lemmy about their particular brand of politics, and working themselves into a state of cognitive dissonance where it’s a good thing that they’re getting so much attention from it, even if it’s negative, and that’s why they keep doubling down. As you said, a troll. I don’t know why I decided to feed the troll, in this instance, but if you unfocus your eyes and really look at this story and this posting pattern, you can see someone behind the keyboard who’s really in a very bad and unhealthy state.
@[email protected]: I think you should try an experiment. Write the same three thousand word campy horror story, put the same mad energy into it, but don’t make it a mean-spirited attempt to open a new front in the conflict you have created between you and everyone else on US political Lemmy. Just write a story. Be creative without clinging to the conflict you’ve created.
See which process you enjoy more. Maybe you’ll enjoy the one where the mom-basement-dwelling person who called you a Russian bot finally gets their comeuppance. It has a certain mean-spirited satisfaction. I get that. But I think you will have a better feeling from just letting go of that, for a little while, and putting the energy into having fun writing a story.
Edit: I took away some condescension, some is still here.