I became so exhausted from the toxicity on Lemmy that I began searching for alternatives, and I stopped trying to argue in the comments. This leads me to wonder: am I the only one who is feeling this way?
I haven't had a negative experience, so I checked your post history to see if your communities might provide any clues as to why you're having a lot of negative experiences.
It looks like you post a lot to unpopular opinions and politics. Is it possible that maybe you're inviting debate on contentious issues? For comparison, I checked my own history and it looks like I engage primarily with tabletop RPGs, technology, and memes. I also comment on world news, but it's not my primary form of interaction.
This just popped up on my feed and I was like "Wait didn't I just see you over there?" Yup, this is the same person who posted in [email protected] and now is upset that their opinion is... unpopular.
They may even be talking about my comment, who knows. They very glibly gave the (unpopular) opinion that Most people in the modern age can live without a car, but they are too lazy to do it. and are now upset that people (like me) are saying there may be some nuance to that and maybe it's not so simple. Most people didn't even disagree, but said that there is more too it than just "laziness". Maybe, OP, just hear me out, but maybe our points are worth listening to rather than just saying we're being toxic?
That and the general "I know better than everyone" authoritative speaking, that tends to rub people the wrong way.
I can't see much from my instance because I don't subscribe to political communities anyway, but I see comments with "I speak with the majority when I say" and followed by a long thread of people proving the opposite.
Yeah that never ends well.
I've mostly had positive interactions on Lemmy 🤷♂️
Well, I creeped through OPs post history and came to the same conclusion. Although I have to agree with him on his post regarding "Durrr, 42069 funni numbers".
Time to creep through yours in an effort to stay fair and balanced...
UPDATE: That's a lot of rpg stuff and memes. And I refuse to look into who or what andrewgross is.
The problem with people's opinions is that they're just that, some people get very upset when their opinion isn't validated by others.
My unpopular opinions is this world of only accepting inclusiveness and kindness and banning / blocking those who don't, creates a false world. Real life isnt like that at all, people need to learn to deal with alternate opinions and not feel personally attacked.
Also look through my history im sure its bad haha
Edit
I dont like grammer it seems. Added some punctuation.
Worth noting that the troll/shill accounts seem to have finally found the lemmy politics communities. Lots of ugly, bad faith arguments posted there. Might get better after the election.
If you run into someone and they’re an asshole, it’s likely that they are the asshole. If you run into people all day that are assholes then it’s likely you need to do some soul-searching.
I grew up with a quote that was "If everything around you looks like shit, you may need to pull you head out of your ass." Not saying anything about op, don't know them
I'm an Admin for a Lemmy instance, so see a lot if reports related to users' comments and, from my perspective, it seems like the vast majority of people on Lemmy are having reasonably respectful discussions.
However, your personal experience may vary depending on where you post and what you post.
Really? Because most of the antisemitic terrorist supporters I see are coming from lemmy instances. News topics are absolutely flooded with them. This is the big issue with fediverse.
Jk. I know what you mean, but I genuinely would argue that. Calling not supporting nationalism and an ethnostate antisemitic is the actual antisemitism. Oh and terrorism is only terrorism when brown people do it, so can't argue with that part. /s
That aside... Your problem is there isn't enough bots and propaganda on here compared to say reddit. I'd say that's a good thing. Go back there if all you want is to circlejerk.
Block negative people. After a bit you will find lemmy to be enjoyable with fewer people clogging your comments, embroiled in modern social media hate.
It makes a huge difference and this place is small enough to make blocking highly effective.
As a bonus you can tell when blocked people have commented. It brings me joy to know am not exposed to their toxicity.i
Agree 100%. Blocking the few random weirdos works really well on here. I imagine there may be one or two of them that are just shouting into the void at this point, and they don't even realize it.
You have to ask yourself what you hope to get out of with your comment.
If someone is asking for opinions, then it's maybe ok to post your opinion.
If you want to point out something wrong, do it without personal attacks.
If you want to disagree with someone, do it without challenging that person, and in a factual way with evidence that adds to the conversation, instead of trying to convince someone.
If you want to call someone out, you have to realize someone will want to do the same to you, and do it with a short and factual comment and keep emotions out.
If you want to change someone's mind, just log off. You cannot change anyone's mind on the internet.
No, I honestly haven't. Even the contentious arguments I've had are generally pretty civil. Sure, there are exceptions, but that's always true with human beings unless it's a highly constrained or moderate forum.
There was just a post by someone recently who said they could talk about being a woman here without getting an inbox full of gross personal messages, very unlike Reddit. It seems like it's generally good here, with exceptions.
So you basically slowly build your own reddit-like bubble by removing what you don't want to see (or disagree with)... Doesn't it go intuitively against the idea of "federating" with other communities?
Of course, the difference with lemmy is that you become your own censor, while on reddit the admins have control over everything; on paper this definitely sounds the more "freedom option" but I am afraid it's just going to lead to compartmentization in bubbles that don't talk to each others at all. And I'm not talking about spam or outright offensive idiots, I am talking about opinions you don't like.
A lot of users here have a lot of wrong opinions about a lot of things, but it's not our job to fix them.
and I stopped trying to argue in the comments.
This is allowed. Maybe if you let someone get their last reply, they'll think they won the debate and keep on being wrong. But if you keep arguing, they'll think you're an asshole, and still keep on being wrong. Myself, I rarely share my thoughts on a topic more than once per thread, even if someone disagrees with it.
I saw a saying (maybe here) recently. Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action; but by the tenth or twelth time, it's probably you.
Only ver recently has it felt this way BUT the amount of comments has also skyrocketed so it’s only natural to have more arguing and pedantry (god I hate the nitpicking).
Maybe it puts me at risk of forming an echo chamber but I make liberal use of the block user, block community, block instance features.(in connect for lemmy. I don't know which are app specific.)
Lemmy seems to be small enough that blocking a few dozen particularly argumentative users noticeably improves the experience. Although I do try to avoid the politics communities and posts as those frequently end up with arguments and eventually name calling.
I've experienced some of what you describe, but it works for the most part. I just looked through my blocked communities list and I haven't seen anything from them in a while.
The internet is toxic. You have to grow a thick skin if you want to post in message boards online, especially if you talk about specific topics.
You could write a comment that you carefully think out, rewrite a couple times, and genuinely share your opinion. And you can get downvoted to -20 with a bunch of people calling you an idiot or a bot or just a laughing emoji
There's an idiom, "You're over the target when you're taking flak". It's supposed to be a military term but the main idea is when you are hitting close to home, people get angry. For this reason, I think my best comments are the ones that get a lot of upvotes AND a lot of downvotes. It means I'm striking a chord in a lot of people.
Of course, there's a fine line between being the "intellectual gadfly" as Socrates would say and you just being an angry person who has no self awareness.
I'm not going to bother to look through your comments to see which of those you are - but you probably know.
I block many users and that seems to solve most of my problems with negative people. Like psyop type trolling of any kind I block or if someone is just an ass. I don't even reply. If they really piss me off I reply and immediately block so they can't even respond. I've had a few go through every post I've made in a month trying to down vote everything. That, now that, I get a kick out of myself. I never start the BS though, or at least I do not think I do or intend on it.
Also, use Alexandrite the 'a.lemmy' version of the interface. It basically ignores the downvote trolls by design so you won't even see their stupidity. This interface makes this place much more enjoyable overall.
Back a few months ago I was about ready to leave over negativity, but using a.lemmy.world completely shifted me in the other direction.
Usually it's the same users who always come into discussions in bad faith and simply argue against whatever is being said. There are a few people I have had blocked for months now and my experience as improved a lot.
My only gripe is, that I can still see them in my threads in the unread messages of kbin, and that kinda sucks.
But since the community at large is fairly small, it's not super difficult to eliminate the constant gripers and argumentative folks from your experience.
It was old almost as soon as it began. I'm still shocked that people seem to be wanting those parts of Reddit rather than leaving them behind.
A lot of people are the problems with that place, and like a bad smell it followed them.
Blocking entire instances I'm told improves things, but gods damn that's a huge block list to have to enact
Started encountering mods being asses now. For some communities, it leaves Reddit as the preferable alternative, which is a horrible state for things to be in.