Ask Lemmy

Pee pee poo poop

Hostile, no not really. Less tolerance for bullshit isn’t necessarily hostile.

Insular? Yeah. It’s a small community.

As someone who's trying go find my place online... Having tried Mastodon, Lemmy, mBin, nostr, bsky, wafrn, etc. Lemmy is by far the most hostile and it's not even close. Yes there may be more trolls on nostr. But it's obvious trolling. Not serious hostility.

Honestly, Lemmy feels like an echo chamber. I only rarely see people disagreeing with the OP or being willing to accept different opinions without judging.

On other networks, I don't sense as much anger or judging based on single statements. I once made an unfortunate and unclear statement on Bluesky and while the immediate reaction from some of the other people in there was definitely negative, it was more of a conversation and it actually ended up feeling like we all ended up moving on. Lemmy feels more like a place where you say something that's borderline centrist and you'll be slaughtered in bright daylight and hung out to dry.

But I may just have been browsing the wrong communities I guess.

I'm not saying I'm not an asshat at times. I am human, after all. It's just that on other networks, I feel there's more opportunity to have an actual debate instead of being lynched by a thousand anonymous community-beloved personalities.

Sounds like Lemmy's already shaping up to compete with Reddit!

OK I'm kidding - I think you're kind of right, Lemmy can get that sometimes, but much like Reddit, it's only really on the bigger communities that you always see on the front page, smaller ones are pretty chill in my experience.

I guess it depends on what you're seeing hostility towards, but I will also say that with Lemmy's status as an open source social media trying to compete against the likes of Reddit and Facebook, I find that the people here are naturally more protective of it from the sort of thing you'll see on other sites. Also because of Lemmy's status, it also attracts a LOT of political discussion, which has always been the most likely thing to descend into hostile crap flinging.

Oh, I should also mention, please just block the whole entire .ml instance. I can guarantee that it will improve your Lemmy experience and your mental health. I did it in my first few days here, and I sometimes forget just how bad it was before I did block it!

Its raw internet. You gotta put effort into customizing it to your taste.

Not at all, actually.

Honestly, to me it feels more insular than Reddit. It feels like there's no room for nuance in opinion. So for example, if I argue against something that isn't a hard left economic idea I'll get down voted pretty heavily even though it's a pretty tame comment. It does feel like if you go against the grain here, it's actually worse than that other site.

On Reddit if I posted something against the grain there would usually be one or two people who would chime in and say "yeah. I agree with this guy." .. But on Lemmy there's no room for that.

Same as with Reddit, it probably depends what community you're participating in. But i find most of Lemmy to be mostly reasonable like the communities I participated in Reddit. And mind you, I don't have any particular Lemmy communities I frequent in.

No it just feels like a young forum.

Naa its mostly fun to me! And the people i interact with seem like good people for the most part.

Nah, I'm one of the baddies. I want conversation, not just memes and canned comments.

Classic internet warriors, but if you don't care about how much upvotes and downvotes you have, you are golden. Banned from a community? Probably not a place I would want to hang out then anyway, even if it is my topic, the community is simply toxic and it's better not to be there. Just be yourself.

Treating every comment you disagree with as through it were a dissertation is called Isolated Demand For Rigor and it's a bad faith tactic used to burden the opponent with a workload no sane person would ever take on for an internet comment and win by default. You should probably block anybody you see who does that.

I’m only a month in to my Lemmy journey (a few days or so of being actually active now I understand how it works) and I have so far found totally the opposite.

It’s sure a lot nicer than reddit, we can express ourselves better here without worrying about the banhammer or shit like that. Hell on Reddit I used to get permanently muted from communities just cause I said a ‘bad word’ - once was by a really good sub because I directly quoted an Australian animated skit with the word cunt in it. I’m Aussie so I’m not offended by it in the least, it’s an Aussie staple that can mean all kinds of things.

People here seem nicer, smaller community, more open for a chat, don’t have to autistically worry about someone getting offended as often. More likely to upvote comments too.

In short, fuck Reddit haha.

Lemmy is rather small, you might be bumping into the same 3 users everywhere.

No, not really. Are you spreading misinformation or something?

A lot of people come here because they hate what Reddit has become without acknowledging that their shitty Redditor behavior is part of the problem.

Hostile? Yes, in the sense of purity spirals spiralling. Sometimes.
Insular? Maybe, but I already know I live in a bubble.
And then there are communities on Lemmy which feel both hostile and insular to me, like the one with "cars" in its name...

I prefer it over the reddit way, tbh. Every comment section there is just filled with gifs and jokes, and you have to scroll miles to get a reasonable and sound answer to what OP was asking. It's especially frustrating when I've searched for an issue online and reddit pops up in the search results, and all responses are just bad repetitive jokes.

It's the complete opposite for me. I write stupid comments all the time, never bother putting '/s' or anything and most of the time people just get it and joke along. Serious discussions are usually quite civil and interesting. Sometimes people get angry over silly things but I just ignore them.

1. Default behavior is to allow emotions to drive thoughts, which immediately inform behavior. Times are very hard for people around the world, so it stands to reason most people online are going to be in a negative frame of mind to start with. Anger going sideways and getting projected or transferred where it shouldn't, and solves nothing.

2. Bots have definitely made their way to the Fediverse and like anywhere else their whole point is to foment disagreement and fights, as well as pressure people with a flood of information implying the majority opinion is far right, pro-AI and that sort of thing. See above, but it behooves them to create a stressful atmosphere since stressed people are angry people and angry people don't think clearly.

3. Every platform tends towards certain patterns of behavior and I am inclined to agree on the specific pattern here. It's almost always about something personal, including political beliefs. I have seen some incredible comments and comment threads based upon someone reading whatever OP posted as if it were a personal attack or a political press conference. People also seem here, like on tumblr a decade or two ago, to think that fighting with random people online is equal to real political action. It's not. It never will be. Worse, it seems a lot of people feel insecure about their intelligence because man do these arguments stink of someone trying to prove how smart they are against, again, some random person they don't even know.

tl;dr, people are angry but don't know how to handle it in a more mature manner, or they're deliberately fomenting discord with bots because they were paid to do so, which honestly circles right back to the beginning because why do that?

I do think it's still better here than on Reddit though. I hope that this remains the case for years to come. I had some bad shocks on Reddit which caused me to cease engaging there. Same to BlueSky, honestly. I follow some people who know what they're talking about, but... the keyboard warriors are just too much.

Insular has such a negative connotation. I'd call it "neighborly": I like seeing the same usernames over again and getting to know their idiosyncrasies.

Hostile, I have to disagree with outright. I only have reddit and oldschool fora to compare it against, but lemmy is much friendlier than both.

Are we given to long comments? Sure. Are those comments worth reading? Usually! And that's what makes the difference.

I know what you mean.

There's a lot of people here who just take everything so seriously, and want to one up everyone. That they don't even know why they're ramming a stick up their ass anymore.

I appreciate the people who come in with receipts, it really gives a vibe that critical thinking is worth the effort, which is something that, I feel, is super important in nowadays and times.

I've come across one or two grumpy gus' who seem mostly unhappy with their lives, or incapable of changing their mind, even if all evidence contradicting what their original brain blip stated.

But it's gunna be a mix like that. Because we are a subset of people, using this site. I tell my kids all the time, people fill the same pie chart of behaviours, regardless of what culture, place they come from or belief's they have, there's always a tiny percentage of dickheads, that seem more because they're very loud or intrusive. That have a very sad life, with no ability to grow wisdom or enjoy things around them, which is sad!

When I first came here from reddit a few years ago (I had to change instances etc, and I'm not as tech savvy as most people here) I was super sensitive and raw, from all the bruising reddit gave out. It's getting a little salve, being here.

I love the humour here! I've been so tempted to tell everyone how much I laughed at their humour! I go and read comments first before articles, for 2 reasons because there's just comedy gold everywhere. And most of the time the people explain the article better than the article explains the things, the people here are so smart! Theres so many people who explain things like they already know that industry intimately and in great depth. This is such a great place to learn, it's given me some great inspiration to deep dive into subjects.

The user base here seems rather worldly balanced, too. And they'll drop their impressions of a thing from the view of their culture, which I could not appreciate more!

This is a brilliant place, with wonderful people who might be having a bad day, here and there, as we all do. I really hope you can find your groove, and not let the turkeys get you down.

For me it's the same as reddit. Still there aren't specific communities I was in or at least they're not big so I can't really select what I see. But there're still lots of memes and stuff idk.

No. Get a feel for communities and instances. Different horses for different courses.

Having said that there are people here who take shitposts seriously, that have disdain for socialism and go to .ml, that run their mouth in Blahaj about things they don’t understand etc. Then there are the people who don’t understand that instances are governed by the laws of their physical location, like the entire UK being “banned” from .zip (?) and .world having an overly protective (imo) attitude towards Zionist atrocities etc.

It’s a defederated global platform - there should be no (or very little) homogeny.

I hope you find what you’re looking for and enjoy your time here.

I find it much more cynical than other places, probably just the nature of how everyone ended up here, jaded by the design of centralized social media.

I have to remind myself that everything isnt as 'sky is falling' as I see around these parts. Maybe I'm just blessed with a nice life, and I try not to take that for granted, but it does give me that feeling unfortunately.

I try my best to insert some humour into the headlines as some sort of way to make some light of it all, but that might just be playing into the fear and anger that I see around.

Initially yes, the most active communities are filled with incredibly pedantic and holier-than-thou users that are more than happy to call you a drooling idiot for not agreeing with their logical opinions.

Once you start subscribing to communities you actually enjoy and block comms that allow users to muse about how 14 year olds have a "consenting nature" (looking at you !shitposting@lemmy.world), Lemmy becomes a lot more useful and inclusive. There's a lot of communities that are more active than it seems. I suggest going to the communities page and subscribing to just those comms that interest you.

Also be the change you want to see! Start posting and commenting without worrying about what the average Lemming thinks of you. We can build the type of communities we want instead of allowing this place to become another 4Chan.

At first, I was very cautious here. After Reddit, I was expecting that people would go through post histories and attack me for misunderstandings and call me an AI bot, like some users do in sites like Reddit.. But no. I haven't had any issues, even when I have put out more controversial opinions or asked dumb questions. I have gotten downvoted occasionally when I have been wrong or misunderstood, which is fair. I have gotten replies from people with different opinions, but they have been polite and sticked in the topic, which is fucking amazing. I haven't had a single even slightly unpleasant interaction so far.

Folk here have been very helpful, polite, funny or neutral. I'm actually becoming more brave at posting and commenting, and I no longer feel fearful/unpleasant when I see that I have an unread notification. Of course there are communities I have blocked or instances that I avoid but that's just to curate my feeds.

Not trying to invalidate your feelings, but I have the exact opposite takeaway from Lemmy, as it stands. I wonder what weighs into producing such confronting experiences? If you could be specific and gather examples, maybe we could discuss it in less vague terms. I'm also kinda wary of sounding too serious when asking for hard data like this, and unwittingly contributing to the statistic. shit! reel me up I'm in too deep

Everyone on every social media seems hostile these days. Maybe it's a reflection of society's anxiety?

The only social media I have ever gotten into was Reddit. I was on that platform for over a decade. But eventually it became too toxic and caused me way too much stress. Every innocuous post or comment I made was subject to a barrage of unnecessary and unjustified criticism. I was constantly being banned anywhere from 72-hours to permanently for no logical reason. So after a decade I deleted my account.

I've noticed Lemmy seems to be going this way too compared to when I first joined a year and a half ago. The user base seems to be swelling with self-righteous Karens waiting to tear down any and all content. And, just like Reddit, the mods are falling dutifully into line behind them. Lemmy is far less enjoyable today than it was only six months ago. If trolls just ranted I'd ignore and block but the mods support them by deleting content. I'm a grown ass man pushing sixty years old. I can make my own mind up about content and comments. I don't need somebody else doing it for me.

Yep, the content of comments is often good, but geez, there are a bunch of people with no social skills being total dorks or confidently incorrect

Insular, yeah. Hostile, not really. That said, I don't mind seriousness being the default, and humor being clearly marked (to avoid Poe's Law confusions).

Absolutely. I wouldn't be surprised if you've been burned at the stake for this three times over already.