Unpopular Opinion

Because they are Hipsters.

Most lemmites don't have an actual personality, or likes even.

They never grew out of that teenage "this is popular and therefore I hate it" mentality. Even when they themselves deep down want it.

Look at those same gaming subs when the thought of an AI vibe codes slop emulator, that will bring those games they claim to hate (GTA6 and anything Nintendo specifically). And they practically trip over themselves to get it.

I agree Lemmy has a negativity problem, disagree it's driving off new users. If negativity drove people away Twitter and Reddit would be ghost towns. If anything people crave it.

The problem with negativity is it tends to drive positive people away. People stop bothering trying to have actual discussions because if you express anything resembling positivity someone is eager to respond with a memey "Oh you sweet summer child".

Eventually every interaction is like that, nobody feels like talking to each other and just want to one-up one another in how cynical and world weary they are. Happens long enough and you get reddit, happens even longer and the cynicism turns to nihilism and it turns into an incel space.

It'll have users, it just won't be pleasant to use.

What keeps me from posting more is that often times I feel that I need to explain the entire post or otherwise someone will nitpick it in order to find something wrong with it. It happened a few times when I returned to lemmy on this account and it's just been an experience that I expect from now on.

And I just don't have energy for that.

That said I think a larger issue is that we lack active hobby communities. I'm sorry to say this but politics in general tends to be very depressing. Politics and news is what lemmy mostly consists of outside of the cats community of various meme communities. We could use more variety on all.

First: thank you so much. I’m not a perfect fit here and have taken my fair share of lumps.

I too envision Lemmy a place where people tired of corporate surveillance and exploitation can come and share their enthusiasm for the work of Luigi Mangioni and other heroes.

I’m only partially kidding.

There are sadly a lot of people who do not rankle at corporatism and exploitation.

There are some people who will even stand in line to buy the shiny new thing just because corporations have told them it is shiny and new.

Yeah, you are right. I've gotten complacent with just rolling my eyes and moving on or kvetching more than I should, but I try to be positive to most people and especially in smaller or hobby communities.

My own thought on it is that in part some of the negativity stems from having so few places we can speak unfettered. So a lot of unfettered speech comes out here. There are still subs that police speech heavily or push their own agenda that directly leads to furthering negativity in it's own way. But the openness that can be had here is still greater than most communal places online.

I think it is social media in general.

I'd say it is just as bad though when you have some subreddits where everyone is forced to be happy and "celebrate" everything like trained seals.

If the world is increasingly a negative place, so are its inhabitants. I don't think there's anything particularly surprising about this.

However, most of the examples of 'negativity' you provide aren't even negative or toxic. They're just people informing others of harmful effects of various things, like indirectly supporting union busting or lowering of wages, among countless other horrible practices, by purchasing a copy of GTA 6, because Rockstar and Take-Two are very well known to go all-in on both of these.

Unless it comes down to specific wording - 'fuck you for giving money to company xyz' vs 'did you know that company xyz (...)'. As in the example towards the end of the post. That makes sense, and I can agree that antagonizing people for this is a bad idea.

Otherwise it's never negative or toxic to point these things out. They are incredibly important, and everyone should know about them to make informed choices.

It may seem negative, because the corporations, and nearly everything they stand for and do are extremely negative. It's hard to mention genocide positively, isn't it?

Of course, you can, for instance, buy and play GTA 6 without thinking about all the terrible things Rockstar and Take-Two do. You'll probably have a better time, too. But surely, you realize it's nothing more than willful ignorance, and at the end of the day you're supporting horrible scumbags in exchange for some fun, whether you want to or not.

One of the reasons the world is such a shithole is precisely because a lot of people choose to live in bliss. At least those who can afford to, because more and more simply can't. Many Lemmy users are trying to combat this, I think out of desire to create a better world. Which we should absolutely encourage, minus the part about antagonizing people.

Sadly that’s nothing new to the internet. I used to see it in Newsgroups, and IRC and BBSs and discussion boards.

Generally giving a socially repressed nerd an anonymous platform where they know more (valid or not) than someone, leads to that negative behavior.

Someone mentioned something about the dopamine hits and that rings quite true. It gives them a feeling of superiority. It was also the same framework that drew people into MAGA, and really the only way to counter it is to outnumber them, remind them they’re in the minority and that it’s not socially acceptable no matter how “right” they think they are.

I think Lemmy's userbase tends toward the chronically online, and as such you get very black and white viewpoints gathered through a 27" lens six inches from their face (or a 6" rectangle a foot from their face). I don't think it's possible to exist majority online and have a positive viewpoint about anything. And in fairness, we have watched the decline of the internet, but the Internet itself is a vector for propaganda, and what better way to coax people into a belief than making them mad or sad.

The cure is always get out of here, but it's a bitter medicine.

Misery loves company, so if there are a lot of miserable people they want to keep it that way.

Maybe it's a sign of our times?

I agree with you though that there are a lot of people here who are bitch asses. Some of the comments here are almost parody. I think it's best not to engage though. It's the most bitch assy of comments that get these hude threads where people are arguing with them. It dominates threads, so it's counter productive. Just stop engaging with these people.

There are entire communities though that are almost entirely negative. Fuck cars comes to mind. Like I get it's about reducing reliance on them, but it's in the most off putting way, and attracts zealots.

IDK, gamers are sucking steam here like every gaming communities anywhere else, and I'm always downvoted to hell when I point that it's a shitty business.

Oh yeah, rage has never baited an audience... And there's definitely not a term for that \s

... it's also the term for a particularly angry masturbation session.

I've joined Lemmy in 2023 after the reddit API changes, and to be honest I've noticed an overwhelming amount of negativity and hostile discourse since the first week I was here. I don't know if it's because of the instances I'm on or the communities I frequent, but I've found it almost impossible to talk about things here without literally everything turning into a huge toxic debate.

I can never find entertaining/worthwhile discussion here about silly, simple stuff like TV shows, cinema, music, celebrity gossip, internet culture, games or tech gadgets. It's a platform where its users take themselves way too seriously and the self-righteousness and moral superiority have reached insane levels lately. You mentioned HP and sports. As someone who works in tech I could add "not de-googling your phone", "not running Linux" and "having to use AI at work" as things that make you an absolute worthless piece of shit to lemmy.

What's funny is that while I could see the point in "educating" people or getting occasionally political on a huge platform like reddit, here it's mostly just preaching to the choir: I already am aware and agree with most of the takes. So we're adding nothing but negativity that just feeds on itself. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people only lurked not because they have nothing to say, but because the potential reaction to anything posted here makes them nervous.

It also doesn't help that for some reason people just flock to the main community posts that are just political or general news to comment on those but never comment or post on more specific or niche ones. Reddit has a subreddit for almost any tv show, band, underground culture, movie genre or game you can think of, and those tend to be very active hotspots for entire fandoms. Here it's very different, and I suspect it's less about the amount of users and more about the KIND of users. There's just this off-putting vibe of "nothing is worth my time except reminding people that everything they've ever liked, said or done makes them slaves to capitalism" that's seriously holding the fediverse back.

This tends to be more noticeable in smaller forums. May I introduce the "fuck 'em" ideology? I would prefer that everyone be chill/kind; but, ya know... differing opinions and personalities behind anonymity. "Fuck your burn" is a surprisingly apt way to deal with it. We're all welcome here... and that's the unfortunate beauty of it

As I mentioned in another comment, the lemmy community here has gotten significantly worse in the past 6 months or so. So much that I've stopped contributing and started pulling back. People are hostile, angry, and I don't feel like I can have a real discussion on this platform like I could in late 2023.

I agree with all of your thoughts here and believe that if things continue the way they are, this platform will die the way that voat or digg did. It will increasingly become an irrelevant circlejerk.

If anything it has a toxic positivity problem that becomes negative if you don't agree with it.