I’m already preparing some simple art to do in the canvas. Nothing fancy, just a few (30px)² pictures. And if people make some Tux or distro logos I’m happy to help, too.
I just wish that people didn’t waste SO MUCH FUCKING SPACE with government flags in this sort of online game.
I only ever participated in the original Place years and years ago, putting down maybe two or three pixels.
Maybe where you’re from it’s easy to separate your government flag as its own symbol that doesn’t represent real people but when you’ve got like 20x30 pixels it’s hard to represent a local community online with something better than a flag. I think we ended up with less than ten pixels inside of a heart iirc.
At least for me, in my own country, I associate flags with popular protests and other symbols make me think of the government. Law enforcement uniforms and mismatched old automatic rifles from fifty years ago. Crippling bureaucracy that operates four hours a week that stretches five hours of paperwork errands into a six month chapter of your life (not a symbol but when you say government that’s what I think of).
Point being I don’t find it weird at all that people wanting to represent themselves will default to a national flag. My understanding is that in like Germany there’s a line where nobody wants to seem too proud of the flag, and in the US people are so desensitized to seeing every McDonald’s have 4000 flags on display, in England the red and white flag has different connotations if it’s in a football context or not, etc etc etc
A lot of flagpoles here are faded and tattered and often with one of the stripes almost separating off the flag. Might be doomerism but I think it looks cool, I think it very much is an appropriate representation.
I’m from Lebanon, this flag is for me, and when the government uses it, it’s using it deceptively to pretend it has any interest in our lives and our problems
People covering and fiercely defending huge chunks of the canvas, for something that is completely unoriginal, repetitive, and boring. And yet it still gets a pass - unlike, say, The Void; everyone fights The Void.
Another additional issue that I have has to do with identity: the reason why we [people in general] “default” to a national flag, for identity, is because our media and governments bomb us with a nationalistic discourse, seeking to forge an identity that “happens” to coincide with that they want.
But, once we go past that, there are far more meaningful things out there to identify ourselves with - such as our cultures and communities, and most of the time they don’t coincide with the countries and their flags.
As such I don’t think that this is a discourse that we should promote, through the usage of the symbols associated with that discourse.
Maybe where you’re from it’s easy to separate your government flag as its own symbol that doesn’t represent real people
I think that this is more of a matter of worldview than where we’re from, given that some people in Brazil spam flags in a way that strongly resembles how they do it in USA.
I agree with your basic point that just claiming the space with a flag and not using it is no fun but if you look at the final state of the section you posted the flags are very nicely decorated with artwork
Eh, I know a bunch of people who left Lemmy just because they did this, I’m not gonna do something else, but they should also realize people don’t want a Reddit clone and this stuff will make people leave.
People left Reddit to get away from this stuff, try being unique instead of emulating what you left. Like the tired old trope of your very “unique comment” as well…….
I don’t know what Canvas is, but I JUST came to Lemmy because AI bots tagged me 3 times in one month. And I sat there, thinking to myself “Well…now what?”
I thought to myself “There has GOT to be more people affected by this, and by all reddit’s shitty decisions over the past 2 years…”
And then I started thinking “What if there WAS a reddit clone, except with some sort of balance system to ensure mods can’t get TOO powerful, and run the whole site?”
Then I found Lemmy. And, other than userbase size, and demographic, I’m pretty pleased here. If Lemmy.World makes some boneheaded decision, I could just migrate to another instance. From a functionality standpoint, Lemmy is superior to Reddit in everyway…except for the fact that Lemmy is still trying to cater to the Linux audience. Once you GET OVER that learning curve, and once Lemmy catches up with Reddit for not only number of users, but also general audience types, THEN it will truely be better than Reddit.
But I think a good barometer of if you’ve reached that point is, “Does Lemmy have an active community for women to discuss fashion?” and then “Does Lemmy have an active community for kids to talk about how much they love monster trucks?” and then “Does Lemmy have a place for men to talk about every single sports team that’s ever existed?”
If Lemmy is going to grow, you CANNOT cator to certain groups of people, and ignore any critisism about how hard it is to use. Because the people who don’t want to learn, will just not bother. They’ll ask “well why should I use this, and not reddit?”
Because whatever you are most passionate about, whether it’s the independantly owned instances, whether it’s the interconnectivity with mastadon, and every other service, whehter it’s the customizable apps others develop, or maybe you develop…with all that, you have to remember one thing. YOU care about that. The majority of people do not give a shit. They just want an easy place to talk about shoes, and monster trucks, and sports.
Now you can say “But you can CREATE any of those communities on any instance.” And that’s true. You can…but THEY won’t. They want fast, free, easy, and active. You have to design everything around the idiot…because the idiots are everywhere. Linux has the same issues, but that’s another topic for another day that’s been said repeatedly for 20+ years and hasn’t changed.
Question is, do you want to be like Linux, or do you want to be like Reddit? I don’t care what your interests are. You can find already active communities for it on Reddit. Can someone else find whatever they’re interested in on Lemmy?
Me, some of my interests are here. Not all. I want to help this platform grow, and they will come. In the meantime, the developers need to decide if they want a niche platform that cators to their kind, or if they want to grow and cator to EVERYONE with all interests.
Lemmy is not a “they” who did this. Lemmy is the platform on which a user decided to share their canvas idea thing. Anyone who is not interested in this idea can block the person who posted it and any community where they see the same idea again.
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