Most of the misinformation communities are easy to spot, but !collapse@lemm.ee falls into a slightly different category, and it presents itself in an unusual way. It seems like one of the main mods flavors his postings with a consistent sprinkling of posts that say that Europe not buying fossil fuels from Russia is a catastrophe for Europe, and they must reverse course as soon as possible and stop trying to depend on renewable energy, since it doesn’t work.
Here are some examples from a most recent post. It’s far from the only post that includes this general shape and character, but it’s particularly on the nose. From https://lemm.ee/post/49292464:
That will leave Europe with expensive LNG from Qatar and the US, as well as some pipeline gas from Norway and through Turkiye, which is Russian gas in a roundabout, third-party way. As always: higher complexity comes at a higher price — a direct consequence of the EU’s economic war on its largest energy supplier.
With the predictable unpredictability of wind and solar, however, and with a massive reliance on natural gas fired power plants to balance electricity demand, Europe has just saw the fastest drop in natural gas storage in years. Yes, the weather was cold in the past couple of weeks, but it wasn’t nearly as cold as it could get in the dead of winter. Wind on the other hand stopped blowing, which not only resulted in lower electricity generation from wind turbines, but also in thicker clouds and more persistent fog… Leading to a much diminished solar power generation. Welcome to the good old Dunkelflaute (or the dark doldrums) so common this time of year, and by the way sometimes throughout the entire winter… Who could have thought that “renewables” produce much less electricity during wintertime…?
Whenever a large solar farm returns production it sends a shock wave through the grid, damaging sensitive equipment nearby. Similarly, when a cloud suddenly blocks the Sun a micro-blackout could occur (lasting a few milliseconds) till back up capacity comes online. These fluctuations in the supply of electricity has forced many companies with sensitive manufacturing equipment to install surge protectors and uninterruptible power supply units costing tens or hundreds of thousands of Euros (depending on size) or outright buying a natural gas powered generation unit to produce their own stable electricity supply.
In the meantime, and just for the record, the IMF has just named Russia the 4th largest economy of the world, surpassing Japan and Germany; after the World Bank classified it as a high income country. Despite all protestations, sanctions actually helped Russia rein in its worst oligarchs and encouraged investments to replace lost imports. Contrary to what Europe’s ruling elite had in mind, their policy has lead to a huge economic boom in Russia, driven by internal consumption and powered by an abundant supply of fossil fuels.
I asked the mod about what was up with this, on an earlier post, and they didn’t seem to have much of a response other than an appeal to authority. (https://lemm.ee/post/49069993)
Obviously, I could be right or wrong, and no one’s obligated to answer my questions about anything, but at that point I was looking at it as “You may be unintentionally posting misinformation” and warning the person, and their response didn’t line up for me with someone who is innocently posting informative content because they believe it to be true.
This is the the spinoff community where the mods straight up left because they as the near singular uploaders got pushback for some of the content they were sharing was false or problematic and they made such a tantrum they basically got thrown out and told everyone else that we needed to follow them because they were what’s best for community?
Yeah I wouldn’t exactly trust them and I didn’t hold much weight to their posts previously either. A lot of blog opinion posts masquerading as intelligent discussion.
This is also the same group that prior to the migration I saw saying that the earth had a hard 1 billion human cap and would often say that we needed to reduce our population down to that amount naturally or by not protecting people during catastrophe and even worse if you pushed them a little on it they would say 3rd world countries could give up the most people as the most polluting and fastest growing countries they should all take their different colored skin and die to leave more space for the rest of them.
TL;DR:
Yeah I would stay clear of that place. Honestly all the “collapse” adjacent communities on Lemmy are pretty conspiracy first and deeply problematic wish fulfilment at best, too desperately searching for the end of their suffering through the suffering of others
nonsense. Link sources to demonstrate you aren’t just making stuff up
I notice the nihilism is always selectively applied, too.
It’s never the case that Russia’s economy is going to be affected in the upcoming global collapse. Russia is always doing great. It’s every other country that’s so hopelessly on a death-course that there’s no point in even reversing anything, and so they might as well go back to buying Russian oil again, to stave off the inevitable before they all die.
Also, food crops are never a big issue. Sustainability of energy, specifically fossil fuel energy, is a huge issue underpinning the economy. But having stuff to eat isn’t important, and no particular issues might arise that anyone might want to pay attention to as regards it.
They have an idea of how they want the world to collapse in their mind and want to search for the evidence of exactly that.
Most people have that bias. Searching for evidence that makes them correct. Look at all those mom blogs which the collapse community is often closer too than not.
I’d prefer it if it was just a place to observe things basic to modern society breaking, regressionist acts or actions, and pre-emptive scientific flags of upcoming climate changes but that’s not what most people want out of their self confirmation bias.
show what you are talking about with link to source
Contrapoints: “'That’s what happens when the snowflake / shitpost tension collapses into pure shitposting. It’s boring. And immature. Like when someone says he wants to watch the world burn. You only get to watch when you have the privilege of not being on fire.”