Ask Lemmy

I've noticed that there seems to be an emphasis on being extremely serious at all times, as if every single comment is a PhD dissertation being evaluated or something.

adults like to be taken seriously and have discussions with adults.

There's like this weird, subtle one upmanship about every little thing and a lot of people are very nitpicky and judgmental.

It kind of takes the fun out of being on here, TBH. Or am I the only one experiencing this?

go post on shitposting or something, IDK. I'm not your dad.

I don't think it pervades all of Lemmy, but I do think rage bait does well here. Seems like the most popular comments are expletive laden diatribes about how x, y, or z is evil and bad, and the most popular posts are headlines about megacorps or evil politicians doing it wrong.

It's not even that the outrage is usually misplaced. Reddit and Windows and Gen AI and Facebook are indeed all bad things in various ways and degrees. But there's room for nuance, and no need to jump down people's throats about stuff.

Certainly there's a selection bias - enough of the people here left Reddit in principled stands. That or they're just into open source enough to try niche projects.

To be fair, the taste for negativity isn't just here. Online culture seems to have that slant at large these days. But it does seem more here in some ways.

Not at all.

Little bit, not gonna lie. And I'm not innocent here either certainly.

Yup!

I think it's less filtered and can definitely be more abrasive. Partly because like another user said, many ended up here because they are jaded from years of enshittifying platforms. So you have a lot more cynicism, and a lot less filtering.

There is good and bad to that. If you take anything too seriously you can definitely get your feelings hurt by it. And if you want genuine thoughtful and amicable discussion, that's much easier to find here than some other places.

Some sub communities and some instances have more provocateurs or agenda shills or (the ones that confuse me the most) people who expect you to not interact with them and their comments because you don't align with their world view (They won't block you, they just send some weird cryptic passive aggressive nonsense about not talking to them. I don't really get why they think that's a good solution.)

There are a lot of VERY informed and intelligent people on here though. I've had some great explanations from people on things I didn't understand and wanted to ask questions to. Along with those great discussions I'd sometimes get some insulting mouth breather chiming in. Ask .ml users an honest question regarding their thoughts or opinions on something and it's 50/50 on whether they hold a discussion or turn into a dipshit shrieker. I've had both lol.

Which communities and instances you are around will have major impacts on your experiences with Lemmy though. You'll see many users around multiple places and will get a feel for how they are and who they are. Community hop through the lemmyverse and I'm sure you'll start finding things that work better for you.

Sorry that was waaaay more than I intended on saying when I hit reply. It's a good place, just has some weird lumps and rough edges.

I see a bit of it. I also see humour and positive responses. I think there's an OK balance, I tend to just ignore the worst examples and move on.

Nope!

It feels much more nicer than other social medias

Yes, Lemmy is like reddit where it's a lot of young people with thoughts which are bigger than their lived experience. That's not a criticism, it's just a fairly standard part of growing up. Or it used to be. It's not clear if social media has stunted this, or I'm just too old and don't know that many young adults outside the Internet.