Ask Lemmy

Lemmy feels pretty welcoming to me, but maybe that's because I'm used to Reddit.

Just reflective of which spaces you are choosing to be in here. Go to shitposting communities when you need some silliness. Also feels like you are reacting to the general regression of the discission on reddit. I guess go back there if you need memes and movie quotes primarily, they'll have what you need. "Welcome to Costco, I love you!"

Lemmy is much more welcoming...! I just meed to become more familiar now that I have a new account.

I did make a post on my previous account that was sorta' designed to be hated, and that did happen to a good extent, so there's that. But actually, it only proved that most people on Lemmy are not toxic...!

you must not have spent much time on reddit in the olden days eh?

If everyone you interact with is an asshole, it might be you.

I haven't noticed what you're talking about. I generally find most people I interact with to be pretty welcoming. Even the people I get into arguments with are more open to hearing my side than say the average redditor.

This is in fact confirmation bias.

It wasn't a year or so ago, has been lately, exhausting to comment, but I'm also probably more annoying too because life in general sucks

I do think it feels insular/hostile, though my take is different than yours. Yes, I've had some folks nitpick posts and one up, though I imagine you get that in many similar social media sites -- there're reasons for the running joke that in order to get a correct answer online, you gotta post a question as a woman, and confidently answer it wrong on a male account, and then people will pile on with correct answers and judgey-ments.

Many of the sites that seem to get posted to lemmy are on VERY fringey locations, locations that often seem highly likely to be hosting malicious content. There's also far fewer people posting topics, with a very small group of users having like 10k+ posts per year. So it feels a lot more 'concentrated', especially on particular subjects, due to those posters' bias': if you're an aggressive poster, it's fairly easy to astroturf lemmy. Which feels insular / bubbly.

Adding to that, Lemmy has mods who are just as heavy-handed as on Reddit or any other heavily moderated setup -- though lemmy'll moderate things in a far more 'progressive' friendly way than most alternatives these days. Pejoratives are allowed for some groups, but not others. Even calling that sort of thing out in more explicit terms, though still in a neutral tone, can get you banned from many communities on Lemmy.