Having just experienced my first comment removals without any sort of notification or explanation, I was suddenly reminded of how things went down on Reddit during the API thing and people's attitude towards it.

Do you know why the API thing failed to cause a mass exodus? Because the moderators were spearheading it. The same people that have been doing things like setting up automod with buzzwords because they're too busy collecting subs to control to actually do their jobs, and silently removing non rule breaking comments without notification or explanation, and being cold unfriendly dickheads whenever you questioned them; suddenly these assholes were asking us to all join them in solidarity and feel sorry for them over their lost modding tools in 3rd party apps. In fact they did a fantastic job of making it all about themselves without giving many good reasons for the end user. And honestly people cheered when Reddit forcibly removed them.

And it made me realise that a good majority of these moderators that spent years on Reddit campaigning for less transparency and helping to turn it into the shit hole it is now, are probably here on Lemmy.

I don't know where exactly I'm going with this other than to say that I'm seeing things here with new eyes now. Just wanted to get these fun facts off my chest and remind everyone about who we're actually dealing with here.

I hope that this is the right place for this, please let me know if there's somewhere more appropriate because I'm not sure where it actually fits.

Let me just start this off by saying, I recognise that these are kids movies and I also thank these movies for bringing me back into the franchise and revisiting such a big part of my childhood. In fact what's great is that it's introducing a new generation of kids to it.

Just finished Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and after spending the last 6+ months (re)watching all the animated adaptations and (re)playing the games, I really don't think I enjoyed it as much as the first two movies. And I've realised that Sonic has actually been characterized pretty badly here and completely tamed and watered down. And even more so, I feel like this displays a larger problem in mainstream media right now.

Sonic in the '90s and 2000s:

Back in the '90s when I was a kid, we had two Sonic cartoons running at the same time. In both of them, Sonic was an anti-authoritarian "freedom fighter", trying to topple Robotnik's tyranny. One of them had little PSAs like calls to respect those who are different from you or warnings about scammers and false info. It was woke before woke was a thing. The other one involved Robotnik, the tyrant, stomping out free thinking by turning people into robot slaves. A not so subtle message.

In fact even without the cartoons, from the first game it's a pretty easy assumption to make that the little blue guy with the mohawk / spikes that runs around smashing machines and freeing the animals is supposed to be some sort of rebel. I promise that it wasn't too much for my little 7 or 8 year old brain to handle back then.

Then we get to the Modern era of Sonic, which gave us Sonic Adventure with wall to wall heavy metal and cool guitar solos. And little surprises like weed leaves placed in certain locations. And the defacto animated adaptation of this era was Sonic X, where Sonic blatantly shows no respect or even disrespect to authorities fairly regularly. But always with the message of doing the right thing. At one point, he inspires the 'freedom movement' which sees people quitting their jobs by the masses, dyeing and spiking their hair and just living their lives their way (I'd love to know where they got their income from though).

Sonic the Hedgehog movies:

Which brings me to these movies. I had fun watching all of them but now I am realising just how watered down and wrong a lot of the characterisation is. Instead of being about rebellion, it's about 'family'. Instead of heavy metal and weed leaves, it's top 40 pop and McDonald's references. Apart from an Easter egg thrown in here or there like a bone.

And I realised that the characterisation of Sonic, Knuckles and Robotnik are more like Sonic Boom than any game or other adaptation, except with all the adult references and humour removed. And Sonic Boom isn't known for its faithful representations either but still at least has some edge.

The Declawing of Media:

When I look around at the world today, I think that we need anti-authoritarian icons like Sonic the Hedgehog more than ever. But all of the movie studios and all of the artists are beholden to fucking suits that don't want to take any risks in case their precious money flow gets harmed.

And so we're left with a world where the art that used to inspire kids and teenagers to rage against the machine and keep it real has all become safe and boring and paint by the numbers. And so they're being attracted by douchebag podcasters that give them something to rebel against instead.

I feel like the Sonic the Hedgehog movies so far are a great representation of just how stale and corporate everything has become. I believe they call it enshittification. And I'm thinking that maybe Hollywood and the music industry are just as much to blame for the state of affairs today as social media. And not because of the wOkE agENdA but because no one has a fucking spine anymore and everything is trying to chase numbers on charts that go up and down. Enshittification is more than just social media design IMO.

It was suggested that I post this idea to the community proper. So I'm just copying and pasting the comment that I made, edited to make it clear which post I'm referencing (which is the next most recent post here anyway). I hope I got the link right in order to work with all of this federation mumbo jumbo.

I’m too new to be making these kinds of suggestions and I’m far from the moderator type myself but multiple times throughout this week, I’ve been thinking that it would be pretty cool if there was an AskBlåhaj. Or even just general Ask Lemmy based here, that could be asking for unwanted attention from shitty people on other instances though.

Not even 24 hours after seeing this post, I’ve seen someone else getting the snark and a non answer for a simple question. And also a Blåhaj user.

As much of a public bathroom as it could be, AskReddit was pretty fun for ‘silly’ questions and general chatting. And a nice place for new users to hang around and gain karma and confidence. But with the gatekeeper neckbeardy types around, maybe what it needs on Lemmy is to be in an instance with rules that promote friendliness and good vibes.

Just an idea to throw out there anyway.

I hope this isn't a question that's already been asked to death, in app search for "mbin" isn't all that helpful.

I'm still in the stages of looking for a permanent home here in the fediverse. So far mbin has really caught my eye because it's basically Lemmy+ for all intents and purposes (at least for mine). I'm not all that happy with what looks like the only Android app though.

So I was wondering if there were any plans to add mbin functionality to any existing Lemmy apps? Even if I used a Lemmy app solely for the 'Threads' or Lemmy section of mbin, then used the web page or only mbin app for everything else, I would be fine with that.

I tried to see if I could sign in with the app that I'm currently using (Eternity), with the kbin.earth instance and no luck. So obviously the API is just that much different.

Are any devs here thinking of expanding their apps in future? Or is there one I've missed? I've seen more than one app with the description "For Lemmy and the Fediverse", but what exactly is meant by "and the Fediverse" is unclear.

First the bugs:

• Trying to edit the top tabs such as rename or rearrange seems to do absolutely nothing, although the changes that you make in settings seem to stick.

• Changing the default server for the 'Anonymous' account also seems to do nothing. Once again, the setting does stick though.

Observations / suggestion:

I notice that there is a placeholder for 'multicommunities'. And I think I came across one or two other things that are placeholders / leftovers from Infinity. So it's all good, everything from app to the platform itself is WiP.

My suggestion is that for now, while we can't create or add multicommunities and have a bit of variety in our feeds, what about being able to add the local feeds of other instances? So that regardless of which instance I'm signed up in, I can have my Subscribed, Local, All tabs, as well as for eg. a 'World' tab, 'Blåhaj' tab etc. Is this something even remotely possible? Don't think I've seen other apps with this idea either.