According to one of the latest kurzgesagt videos we all should be in smaller communities like this and large ones like Facebook and Reddit are generally bad for our mental health.
Well a few months after leaving reddit I do feel a lot better in general so I'm not surprised.
I go back occasionally to check for something or just to see what things are like. I dunno if it's just gotten insanely more toxic since July or if it's just been that way for a long time but oh my god. Every comment section is just angry and bitter and hateful. I was looking at a post yesterday and thought it was cute and interesting so I open the comments. Every single one of them were either saying it was fake, that it was stupid, that it was cringey, that it didn't make sense, etc. It's like no one has an ounce of positivity on that site.
It's really a mix of both. More heavily the way the site has been for years because people love drama more than anything else. If you want the sweet serotonin of karma, you've gotta be simultaneously the funniest, meanest, and most jaded person in the room, and everyone is jockeying for that position.
It just breeds assholes by design. I've noticed my own behavior has changed, too, since leaving that place, although partially that's because I just didn't want to be like that anymore.
But it really has been noticeably affected since the protests. I was originally trying to stay for one single sub I was in, because they were the kindest, calmest community I'd met since back when forums were a thing.
Just the best group, for reasons none of us really understood and some of us kept trying to find psychological commonalities to explain. Truly 98% of them were people I'd chill with irl and I still know a few on discord. And also here. If you're reading this, hello!
But the migration away was enough to completely alter the atmosphere imo. A lot of the more conscientious users left for other pastures, leaving behind those that were more neutral or even openly hostile about the protests.
There began to be fights and insults thrown where before this, any aggression had been unusual. The posts took a turn that reflected that feeling and I really stopped bothering with the place after a few months. I'm still a bit sad about it and there are things that I miss, but there just wasn't enough to hold me anymore. It seemed to increasingly echo every other part of the site.
For the moment, this place is quieter but better. We still get dumb shit every now and then, but it's not to the same degree and hopefully never will be. As above, I blame the demographic. We've grouped all the people with stubborn morals into a little room and it turns out they have things in common. I do miss a couple people I used to see everywhere all the time when kbin first ramped up, but we run in different circles and they've gotten lost in the crowd.
And yes, btw, I am also going to name you one of my favorite users to see around. You seem as kind as you are prolific.
They banned those of us who were challenging the bitterness and hate. Whenever I’d argue against bitterness, they’d call me a bootlicker, and within a couple of comments, a nazi.
Eventually, I got banned from reddit for being a nazi.
So now that their “hey maybe stop being so bitter and take responsibility” nazis are all gone, they’ve concentrated themselves into an echo chamber based on resentment.
I dunno if it’s just gotten insanely more toxic since July or if it’s just been that way for a long time but oh my god.
I feel like it's a mix of both: the community there became bitter, more aggressive and more assumptive, while we (people who migrated out) got less used to how things work there.
I don’t know about that. I feel like being a big fish in a small pond puts the spotlight on you more, leading to caring a lot more about whether or not your contributions are received
well. And when you don’t follow the zeitgeist of the small community lock-step, that can cause lots of anxiety and lead to more mental health problems.
I wish kurzgesagt joined the fediverse. They are quite big (21M followers). Being able to watch them here without going to youtube would be a nice step in the right direction.
I would suggest there’s also a lot of lurkers and folks who just don’t post much. I’ve noticed The Fediverse has a good and healthy number of folks on the Autism spectrum, and it’s not surprising they don’t actively post a lot.
It’s a lesson I learned being a professional puppet builder (yes you read that right) and running a little community around the craft. There’s a lot of people on the spectrum in that field too. They may not post a whole lot, but they are definitely engaged.
The freedom to have a voice is also the freedom to remain quiet 😁
Depends on which old format you mean. The late 90s php-bbs is rare, but you can still find some of them around, I think the forums for the Commander X16 (a new retro computer) uses that style, or something closer to 2004-ish.
The golden days of IRC were the best. Every day I use the current internet, I miss the way of the old internet. Back when everything was just run by a bunch of nerds doing whatever they wanted, as opposed to everyone being shut out by the big names now, looking to control everything and maximise profit.
when I was young (but still way past the prime time of IRC, 2000's), I was invited to a few IRC servers for raids and etc. I didnt realize other kids werent doing the same...
Mostly only the very active users moved over from Reddit, so we have a lot of content for not as many people. But it's nice how active and invested most people here seem to be.
It'll largely be an echo chamber regardless of size. The fediverse tends to lean into tech, and is very left wing. If you don't fit the bill, you are either driven off, de-federated with, or realize the content posted here isn't what you're looking for, and you leave.
I don't mind the small knit community, as I agree with most stuff, but this simply isn't a place you can host competing ideas, or at least not feasibly. This isn't a place for open discussion. You get down voted for your opinion, even if it is a shitty one. This isn't the fediverse I want to see. I want to see people upvoted for their opinion, and enticed to engage with whatever discourse is present, regardless of views. Downvotes should be reserved for trolls, bots, and fascists. Everyone else should be welcome.
Is there somewhere online where you can have an "open discussion"? I've been struck a few times by how some ideas (even presented in a balanced way) just get downvoted hard.
Well the simple reason is you can get stuck in certain world views or ideas which are wrong and hurt others.
In most cases you're fine, like talking about your favourite TV shows or whatever. But it's also easy to get stuck in a view like visiting your country's instance and it turns out it's a bit radicalised against immigrants, or certain places where you end up blaming everything on women and the "woke movement".
In a lesser way it can get you stuck in toxic ideas (e.g., PC/Playstation/Windows/Xbox/Linux is better than the other one and you are dumb if you disagree!).
Just depends on the community at end of day, but the more echoey chamber it is, the more likely you'll end up with those sorts of us VS them world views that are a bit blind and horribly biased.
Interesting! I wonder if the Eternity client doesn't show that? I have never noticed it at least. I am also in the habit of never looking at names though. Maybe it is good to be in the habit of remembering names because it humanizes the people on the other end or so?
I view knitting as a state of mind. I think people are thrown off by the fideverse when others try to explain it to them, but once they use it they realize, much like the social media of old, they don't need to fully understand how it works to enjoy it.
I wonder if others have some favourite posters that you they quite often?
For me, it's @Stamets and ThePicardManuever but I've noticed a couple other prominent posters lately although their names haven't stuck for me just yet.
as a former resident of the infopop forums, i liken the fediverse to bulletin boards in the 90s and early 2000s and it's nice - the kind that were super hyper localized by topic but everyone was friendly. :)
I definitely recognize some of the mods, and some of the key players in the communities that I follow. There's good people here, and I believe it's going to keep getting better.
I wasn't paying attention to usernames as much when I first started. For whatever reason, I've started to pay attention to the names, as well as the instances. I like seeing where people are commenting from, and it even gives some insight into places or things I might be interested in as well.
Sometimes I'll check out a person's profile to see what things they're commenting on. This feels kind of creepy a little bit. I don't think anyone really cares though, so long as you're not being abusive or something.
Yes but the glorification of the authoritarian all stars is so sad.
The premise is "the west" is evil and anyone opposed to that is a hero and can do no wrong. No matter that these heroes and their actions usually conflict with all other ideals they claim to have.
I saw many names frequently pop up on reddit, it was the reposter’s and karma whores.
I see many names frequently pop up on Lemmy and it’s people trying to fill the same spot.
Frankly this is exactly what I don’t want to happen. This small time celebrity like worshipping that comes with certain posters was extremely popular on BBboards and made it incredibly hard and uninviting for new people to join in these already established communities.
Yeah it certainly feels that way to me too. I can't speak for the rest of the Fediverse platforms (Friendica, Misskey, Mastodon, etc.) but Lemmy is certainly a tight-knit, active and generally friendly group...
You should have seen how it was like here before May this year, when there were only a few dozen users that posted or commented anything at all across all servers, call that tight knit.
Still, I'm so proud of everyone for help in keeping a friendly vibe for the most part, and for user reporting and mod actions keeping trolls at bay. There was quite a bit of concern that when people migrated from Reddit en masse that it Lemmy would be taken over by the same uninspired drivel or become a Reddit repost site. What we got are very healthy meme and shitpost communities with shitposters who engage with commentors, tech news, politics, environment news with active discussions where people have disagreed with each other without getting in a complete rage about it, and cute animal pics like [email protected] and [email protected].
There's still progress to be made on parts of the technical, moderation and community sides. For my part, I'm trying to post more and my goal this year is to share a lot pictures of the cityscape to Lemmy.
I very much enjoy running into folks from the various crafting communities in other contexts, bumping into Mastodon friends on Lemmy and vice versa and then dropping into each others PeerTube comments.
Irl I live in a small town and absolutely despise not being able to leave the house without running into someone who knows us. But for whatever reason I find it adorable on Fedi 🤷♀️
I bet it might be fun to, just once, get all the most infamous lemmings goofing around in one thread together. Because communities are themed, maybe they don't usually cross paths that often
Most names I don't even look at for longer than a few seconds. If there were a mode where usernames were hidden, it wouldn't make much of a difference to me.