Ask Lemmy

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.

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

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

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.

Every single one of my comments is deadly serious and important.

Except the ones about making tents for the homeless out of landlord skins, those are just jokes.

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).

This has pretty much already been answered, but I'll weigh in. It's all about where you are. A political discussion? Yeah, it's normally serious. A meme thread? Usually it isn't. Unlike Reddit though, there's a mix of both Reddit was all jokes all the time usually. Even seemingly serious topics, the top comments would be jokes.

Yeah. In my opinion it’s slowly getting worse. I don’t feel like posting any more because it’s usually an instant downvote.

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.

Compared to Reddit it's a paradise

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

Im not smart enough to be serious, so I mostly make stupid jokes. I do like it here better than reddit though

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

I've had a few self important people try to berate me, but far more people just being genuine and vibing. I think it's a touch better than Reddit so far.

I would say it’s less hostile than the rest of the internet unless you disagree with people in a /c on the subject it’s named after or the instance hivemind. IOW saying Windows has lots of good points in /linux or saying Ukraine is right to take the war to Russia in a .ml /c is likely not going to go well for you.

I appreciate the seriousness here though, I was wholly sick and tired of Reddit’s handing karma to flippant comments even on serious subjects so that the actual discussion was buried or ignored under the same old retreaded humor.

As far as the rest, it’s no different here than other social media. People always trying to exploit technicalities or engage in pedantry to get the last say in a discussion, engage in other argument fallacies like hypocrisy, etc. I do find that’s a little worse here thanks to how much politics is discussed and all the shit that’s happening in the world right now.

I feel for certain instances this is true. I’m not sure if it’s people treating this place like Reddit in some ways, or if it’s people/bots trying to bully others out for not sharing their specific views, whatever the topic

I think there could be some bad actors at play trying to drive people out of the Fediverse; making it more Reddit-like with the bot bullying style would be an effective way for them to drive people away that don’t share their opinions. Mass downvoting your comments or posts can be part of the dog piling.

I see the behavior a lot more on Lemmy.world, hexbear, .ml, and .grad instances.

I pretty much exclusively post stupid bullshit.

Not in my experience, nope. I've seen and made serious comments, I've seen and made joke comments, and haven't had any issue with either. I haven't witnessed any one upmanship either, and overall I feel like people here are less judgemental than on other sites. Users here seem more likely to recognize that we're all people behind screens, trying to contribute to a community, rather than targets for misplaced anger. Owning up to mistakes or being wrong seems to be met with understanding, provided that we do so in a civilized way. Overall, this place seems pretty chill compared to anywhere else online.

At least, that's been my experience.

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

I don't think you're alone. I'm serious and occasionally judgemental on Lemmy, and if I am discussing something I care deeply to ensure the accuracy of my facts whenever I make a claim.

In contrast, on meme and shitpost communities, I'm a lot less serious and more of a jokester. My suggestion is it might be best for you to avoid the politics communities. Make some posts sharing your pics, arts and crafts, there is much less judgement (and for people that think it's their job to judge your craft beyond helpful and constructive criticism, you should block).

Oh, also if you see a comment that is nested more than 6 times down, and it's not the AskOuija community, it's probably best to skip over reading all that, becuase it's often two annoying users going at each other. They might be having fun, but there's no need to get yourself involved.

I like it. I've blocked a couple of folk, and I filter by keywords so I don't accidentally wander into a community where they hate me because I'm not fully aligned with people who identify as a LINUX distro or whatever. It's nice.

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.

Say anything bad about vegan even jokingly and you're guaranteed to be downvoted.

Lemmy is basically the top 5 percent and bottom 20 percent of reddit mostly insulting and talking past each other, or uncritically repeating Russian propaganda. And yes, I say this knowing full well I do it too. The first part mostly at least, usually in response to the last part.

There are definite echo chambers, mostly centered around hating things, and even listing those things in this context would be taken as defending them and being the enemy.

Don't worry, you can still see "Pepperidge Farm remembers" every single day!

There are a lot of informed posters, true, it's a smaller community and you will see familiar names and themes. I prefer it, really, to hundreds of one liners.

You'll certainly learn a lot about tankies. Regardless, I prefer it to Reddit. Judgmental? YES. But they're still wrong :)

depends on the instance.

i really miss lemm.ee... it was just, y'know, nice. a nice place. with nice people. friendly, cheerful, open, welcoming.

then you have some instances that are rather uh ... combative >.> i shan't name names lest i accidentally summon their unwanted attention.

i'm new to my current instance and it's a very cozy place so far. i worry i might be too edgy for the time being, but i'm hoping to sand those edges down, because goodness knows this cursed decade's roughness has left me rough too. the Screaming Twenties have no brakes...

The opposite. Everyone here is nice to me and I wish the real world was more like this

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.

Eh, not really. Sometimes, sure, but to be honest it doesn't feel significantly different from reddit in that regard. There's always going to be some pedantic assholes on the Internet.

I enjoy people speaking truthfully, willing to listen to arguments and offering some witty humor in between. Not a fan of social media that are completely oblivious to the decline in eloquence and the sharing of knowledge.

The internet should function as a forum. Not a monkeypit

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.