Solarpunk memes gets a lot of users from other instances, which can see populare posts. Lemmy as a whole is fairly small and pretty much all the post in that communtiy have gone viral to an extend. Many might not realize the community they are posting in is solarpunk. That being said lemmy as a whole is fairly left. Most comments are at worsed neoliberal, which is in our world unfortunatly centrists.
At the same time I just looked at your comments. When you argue the matter and not the person, you got nearly no downvotes. Calling people a child got you a ton of them. You litterally insulted the person you replied to and well when you act like an asshole, you get treated like one. When you started actually argueing your point in a calm manner, you neither got the downvotes nor the insulting replies. I loose my calm too, which sucks, but hey that is being human. Generally speaking when you argue in private insulting the other person is a really bad idea. The general reponse is "you too" and closing off to the arguement and they end up trying to beat you. That kind of pissing contest is just bad for your mental health too and well the other person might be right. I certainly have changed my mind on things.
Second, I don't agree with obviously. First of all I had no intention to even insult the other user, to me it was just pointing out that the person suggested they weren't renting yet, so the natural assumption is it's some teenager living with their parents. Hence the "are you a child"
But even if I did, the "you get nearly no downvotes arguing calmly" thing is extremely naive. We have the past decade of western culture war backlash to social justice that shows that rhetoric lives or dies by the dunk.
A good dunk will give the onlookers a giggle, a bit of dopamine and a good association. The point of an internet debate isn't to convince an opponent, it's to demonstrate how the opponent is a stupid idiot head so that onlookers don't feel inclined to agree with them free from the shame of a long drawn out internet holy war, with interaction boiled down to "agree" and "disagree" buttons.
This doesn't always work ofc, the audience has to be receptive first, and most people's political opinions are pre-determined, but there's some space in the middle up for grabs, whether calm or not if people are receptive, it will get upvotes, and if it's a nice charismatic dunk it will get even more upvotes.
All that it shows is what you've said in the first half of your comment - the audience is already pre-determined against critiques of the internal issues if the west.
Just examine that one comment I made where it's coated in pro-western boastful motivational positive language, it's a simple matter of which aesthetics appeal.
In that case, I am worried that you seem to believe the average leftist is some kid sitting in the basement of his parents and blaiming capitalism for not getting laid.
What makes you say that at all? Those in fact seemed to be the accusations of other posters in the thread towards the OOP, rather than me who was defending them?
That you try to copy the social justice backlash. That was the main target group and trying to dunk the other site in a "Upvote" "Downvote" holy war sounds like that too.
People are people, they all love a good dunk, its about us being social animals first and foremost. IMO, Its all about optics to 99% of people. It's also where satire derives it's power, this is a more toxic nastier version of that, fit for the 21st century online discourse.
Just look at US elections right now as another example. Kamala doesn't have some sort of hugely popular policy, she is simply good at dunking, as a result Trump's optics have been utterly shattered.