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As the space becomes more popular, the level of social cohesion goes down.
Also, every space on the internet where users talk is now infested with shit chatbots trying to keep poor people angry with each other to prevent us from flaying rich people alive
It's not a Lemmy thing. People (at least here in the States) are feeling anxious and defeated about the state of the world. That shit makes people irritable. Irritable people are prone to lashing out at anything that trips over their last nerve.
My wife works for a nonprofit that focuses on providing services to families with children who have emotional or intellectual needs. She told me she's witnessed more meltdowns from parents these last 6 months or so than she's seen in her 15+ years in the field.
Exactly, it's not just lemmy, and it's not just the US either.
Essentially it's late stage capitalism, the root of all our recent discontent in the past 30ish years. Enshittification of everything...
I think part of it at least is reaching a critical mass.
Lemmy was definitely a collection of relatively like-minded geeks at the start. Even when we disagreed on issues, we all agreed that we needed to work together to make the community grow.
Now that it's grown to a respectable size, there are more dissenting opinions as well as less tolerance for dissent; and more to the point, there is space for absolutely vile content that used to get choked out. Now to stop this sort of thing, the 'old-timers' are more likely to say "shut the fuck up, sit the fuck down, and behave!!!' before they can get a solid foot hold.
Meanwhile, the worst of those people are feeling both entitled and persecuted, and shouting their garbage louder than ever.
This happens everywhere that gets to a certain size. I remember when reddit stopped feeling like a secret community and more like a warehouse.
Of course, there are other reasons that people have mentioned below: The world is tired, worn out, and PISSED OFF at the half that disagree with them. The president of the United States has broken every rule of diplomacy, grace, and civility that people tended to follow in social life. Social Media has made it far easier (too easy) to dehumanize people and turn them into a one-dimensional pastiche of their posted opinions.
And we're facing the destruction of the planet, genocide, and the global resurrection of fascism.
The world is getting worse, I'm afraid. I really wish it wasn't true and I spent a lot of time emphasizing the good to my mom before she died; but honestly, it's getting worse.
Fuck off /s
I hope your dog gets bit by a skateboarding pug 🖕🖕
Facism is making the people that would normally be reasonable get really emotional and people love to lash out anonymously.
Check your communities, and what instances they're on. Not all are created equal. lemmy.ml tends to be pretty wacko unless you're of their particular ideological alignment, lemmy.world is very very large and thus has a very very large number of obnoxious shitheads compared to other instances. On the other hand, beehaw.org is intentionally and pathologically positive. I also find lemmy.ca quite friendly, though I might be biased.
Can confirm some asshole on .ml is chasing around my comments wasting both our time, isn't that right mistermodal, you incel loser.
Lemmy users are much more entrenched ideologically than an average layman. We all have strong opinions and it can get pretty heated. I avoid posting inflammatory posturing if I'm self aware enough. But I'm just as human and fallible as the rest.
There has been a noticeable uptick in new rightist accounts lately.
Instead of blocking people, I tag the bad actors in Voyager and have noticed that most of the toxicity comes from the same small group of specific people.
I haven't noticed much, but I do have a lot of people blocked...
The most important thing for me is that the amount of truly thoughtful comments I've seen is higher than on any other platform I use.
The world is kind of a shitty place right now. And to be honest, I'd be surprised if it wasn't, at least to some degree, affecting everyone's calm.
While Lemmy might be getting a larger variety of personalities, some of them being jerks, I still find it a far more pleasant place to be than reddit.
From a neutral viewpoint, the world is more divided than ever, no matter what values you have, there's someone who opposes them with few, if any exceptions. Those opposing viewpoints have only grown in strength and number on the Internet, for years.
Additionally, the "us vs them" mentality of everyone is blinding them to even understanding why someone would disagree with their viewpoint. Of course that's not everyone, but it's a growing and very loud group.
Political violence is also starting to run rampant. Escalation after escalation. It keeps building.
So in this time of having a global voice, that can reach hundreds of millions of people with a single tweet or comment or thread or post or whatever, and with so much growing hatred among different political groups, it's unsurprising to me that conflict is rising.
Additionally, Lemmy is growing. Not everyone that joins Lemmy will be the same type of person that joined Lemmy after the Reddit API incident. That influx of people had a very similar value set, because they almost all came here from Reddit for the same reason. So there's at least a good amount of overlap in everyone's values.
Over time, more and more diverse people have been joining Lemmy, and it's not surprising that they have differing opinions on a lot of things.
This outcome was pretty much inevitable.
As far as I'm concerned, as long as it's done respectfully and civilly, then disagree. Debate. Try to understand the opposing viewpoint, even if you don't agree with it.
Yea the shitposting has steadily increased. That is probably to be expected on a platform that is also steadily increasing.
However please don’t let the trolls think they turn this into the failure that is now Reddit.
Instead just call out the bullshit for what it is and carry on.
I first joined and started using Lemmy probably a couple months before you.
Back then, when anyone was being uncivil, needlessly hostile, rude, or aggressive, there was a very high likelihood that other users would call it out quickly. Many, many wonderful folks did it on my behalf multiple times and that's one of the big reasons I stuck around, because that's cool as hell if you ask me. I'm here to enjoy myself and have a little fun, not to be verbally abused because some problematic person lacks reading comprehension or prefers to make wild assumptions based on very limited information.
I won't say there's been a recent uptick in hostility, unless your definition of lately is a lot more lenient than my own. However, I will say that with each new outrage from Reddit comes an influx of new users and with each new influx, it's only a short period of time before I notice things are suddenly a bit less nice, friendly, and casual.
Sadly, things are at the point now where I rarely bother to read any responses, replies, or messages in my inbox. I usually just go in there to click "mark as read" to clear the notifications without reading them and move on. There's just too much negativity directed my way, often super randomly to the most innocuous stuff, or random users I can't recall ever interacting with who somehow seem to have a chip on their shoulder. It's actually kind of bizarre at times. Regardless, for my style of participation, which is mostly parodying old people facebook and sharing random anecdotes, feeling like I need to ignore replies is still okay, I guess.
Anyway, glad I'm not the only one who has noticed the shift. Wish there were an easy button to get things back to the welcoming place Lemmy used to be.
Lately? Were you not here during elections when a bunch of kids were accusing everyone of supporting genocide?
"Republicans are fascist"
"I know. That's why I'm voting Democrat."
"Democrats aren't real leftists"
"I'm aware but this isn't the time for purity politics."
"Democrats support genocide."
"And Republicans don't?"
"Both sides are equally bad so voting is dumb. Don't vote."
"Listen, I've got friends and family with skin in this game. Both parties fucking suck but you know what really sucks? Having a fucking fascist dimwit who thinks your cousin is subhuman because she was assigned male at birth as your president."
"So you support genocide? Typical libshit."
"Ok, then what is your alternative?"
"You would know what it is if you read this dry, arcane bullshit about the reification of contemporary autonomous groups in Third World popular movements."
There's a facet of internet culture that revolves around ridicule. I'm not sure but I think it stems from the streamer world. It's like a modern form of celebrity gossip (read: harassment) that got commoditized into social media. So it's not just gossiping about celebrities like in the past era of media.
Harassment used to be driven by publishers. In this era of social media anyone and everyone is a content publisher. People trawl the internet for things they think can be made spectacle. Right down to a random internet comment 100 replies deep in a thread. If for whatever reason they think this person is to be made a fool of then they proceed to reply with such belligerence.
They engage as if they are an outside observer. As if they've an audience like it's Jerry Springer or something. As if they are the only human being. They don't see others as human. Everyone else are caged animals for them taunt. To throw objects at through the cage bars or to tap on the glass. They think they are the main character.
I think there's some psychological effect where their parasocial relationship with their favorite streamers and the herd of loyal viewers gives them a false sense of power based on the crowd effect or something. They can't see it from the perspective that they are a lone poster being deranged.
I think the vote/like/share model gives them a false sense of power. When they see the uplikes number go up, they think they have a herd of supporters behind them. A simple little number on a screen emboldens them.
Nobody seems to see anything out of the ordinary with this. Such is the nature of this era of internet and the hostility. It's normalized. They don't know of any way of being.
You're not a streamer with a herd of followers. You're just a sole internet user. You have no crowd behind you. It's like you think you do. It's bizarre. From observers outside your perspective, you're like an unstable person wandering the city streets. Pedestrians avoid you. They don't want to aggravate you. You're seen as someone possibly having a mental break. Or is it drugs or some kind of substance abuse.
On the internet now it's unavoidable. These crazies are out here. They're aggravated. They jump down anyones throat. On much of social media it's the only way they know how to be. Just belligerence against belligerence all the time. Nobody talks like a normal human being. It's like they're derealized. Dissociated.
A basic fact that internet has no moderators anymore. They're moderators in name only. The definition of the word is lost. To "moderate". To preside over a discussion. Nobody does this anymore. The crazies are allowed to run amok. There's some hints of actual moderation on Lemmy instances. The extremists have been grinding away at wearing this down though. In general this kind of thing is completely absent on social media anymore.
The only time I see it anymore comes from people from the older eras of internet. Those to came about in the modern internet have no concept of civility.
Not that I've noticed, but the whole world is growing more toxic as far-right ideology becomes more and more accepted everywhere, so I wouldn't be surprised.
The world has been deteriorating a lot in recently years and inflation is high.
For sure. I posted content on selfhosted for the first time and got called a "filthy boomer" because it was a screenshot, then people basically told me to grow thicker skin went I complained. Why be better than reddit huh? Guess people just want reddit 2.0
It doesn't feel unique to Lemmy to me. I'm seeing higher levels of hostility in just about any environment broad enough to include left and right wingers
I don't know that I've noticed a real uptick. But in the past couple weeks I have noticed a few ridiculous right wingers and I blocked most of them since seeing their bullshit is bad for my mental health.
What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I'll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I've been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I'm the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You're fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that's just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little "clever" comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn't, you didn't, and now you're paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You're fucking dead, kiddo.
Isn't it just people? Why did Rome fall? They had better tech, more people etc. I think they fell because the glue that held the society together dissolved. They had enough success that the human impulses that tear things apart were no longer suppressed. Lets kill people for sport, someone else should deal with the invaders, etc. A big part of that glue is apparent need. That guy in my way is the blacksmith that I need or I don't know that guy get the F out of my way. Our major challenge has shifted from trying to survive to competition with other people.
I think this is where a lot of the hostility comes from. Now add in another force, marketing and business. It's not like they are really worried about your well-being. They prey on these things like a con artist preys on trust. Feed the easy things that everyone wants. A kid is going to choose the candy bar over the brussels sprouts most times. You deserve a break today, you deserve everything. Feed this and you end up with a lot of believers. I deserve everything and those people are preventing it. Plug in a system (AI) that only purpose is to get more of your attention and what will it feed you? Trolling, anger, hate are all easy. The feelings from them are strong, addicting even. They feel powerful. Stir well and spread widely. Pretty simple recipe.
For the final topping, the people who rule us. Yah rule us. Do good people chase power in this environment? Can a good person stop the mob of 50 people that are gonna do some damage? At what point to people start giving up resisting those impulses and joining the mob. I want to do some damage too. As we see our leaders and the things they do, our examples, the people we trusted to do the right thing, the people who get the make the rules, who are so removed from the people they rule as I am from that ant I just stepped on. As this snowball gets bigger and faster it's harder and harder to stop. Rolls over most things except that cliff where it will go splat. Everyone feels it. It's hard to miss if you look. Any attempt to stop it creates a conflict between the stoppers and those that are fine in that snow ball and the people that are actively pushing that snowball. It will eventually stop and most times it's a very messy stop.
Why hasn't there been a successful civilization that has lasted, people and who are people... ?
That's exactly the same time I migrated. Personally, no, I haven't noticed an uptick in that, it's just as hostile as ever. It just about scratches the itch enough to be a functional replacement for what Reddit used to be for me though so I hang around. There's solace in that it's not ALL nasty, it's just extremely likely to devolve in to that at a hair trigger and however benign or even how mundane the original topic of discussion, someone will try to clumsily make it related fascism or imperialism.
People are desperately combing through comments, looking for something to be outraged about. That’s what happens in echo chambers - when the outgroup isn’t around to be attacked, people start eating their own. It turns into this insane purity spiral where nobody is ever good enough.
It seems like some AI bots with contrarian comments in order to drive engagement or strong arm wild political platforms have started to leak into the fediverse as a whole. Still better than other options though.
Hmm... maybe. The state of the world has been pretty awful for the past year so I imagine that plays a part. Aside from trolls, lots of us are on edge as the whole world seems to tilt right with propaganda and AI.
That said, I like us.
I browse bluesky too and find I actually prefer Lemmy because it's a bit more self-policing... Like regarding AI slop, bluesky is fucking rampant with it, like Trump dressed as a clown or Newsom with abs, it's fucking awful. Lemmy has a couple communities for AI but on average, you try that shit and you'll get publicly shamed. That could be considered mean, but I appreciate it (especially if it's AI I can't even tell).
No, but I do actively block any community designed to rage bait like news, politics, and faith
Idk, world events got me raging nonstop and I'm sure I'm not the only one. But I'm trying to reset.
well have you noticed (waves at everything) in the world?