I became so exhausted from the toxicity on Lemmy that I began searching for alternatives, and I stopped trying to argue in the comments. This leads me to wonder: am I the only one who is feeling this way?
That relentless focus on news, politics and doom posting really seems to be working great. Angry leftism, angry tech news, angry anticapitalism (but not so angrily anticapitalist that they stop posting links to Twatter, Reddit, commercial news media...), and a lot of people being people and the internet being the internet. Lemmy has broadly turned into a palette swap of Reddit way past its prime, fully including the admin/mod drama. Except obviously a lot smaller. (Edit: and of course with almost none of the niche communities that made up the bearable part of Reddit at that time)
It'd be nice if we could have an instance or limited fed "cluster" that just has "remove political bullshit with extreme prejudice" as a fundamental rule. Seeing as people keep relentlessly bringing it into every fucking community ever, inevitably turning everything to shit. We can't handle politics on the internet - apparently it literally fucking can't be done.
I block many users and that seems to solve most of my problems with negative people. Like psyop type trolling of any kind I block or if someone is just an ass. I don’t even reply. If they really piss me off I reply and immediately block so they can’t even respond. I’ve had a few go through every post I’ve made in a month trying to down vote everything. That, now that, I get a kick out of myself. I never start the BS though, or at least I do not think I do or intend on it.
Also, use Alexandrite the ‘a.lemmy’ version of the interface. It basically ignores the downvote trolls by design so you won’t even see their stupidity. This interface makes this place much more enjoyable overall.
Back a few months ago I was about ready to leave over negativity, but using a.lemmy.world completely shifted me in the other direction.
Usually it's the same users who always come into discussions in bad faith and simply argue against whatever is being said. There are a few people I have had blocked for months now and my experience as improved a lot.
My only gripe is, that I can still see them in my threads in the unread messages of kbin, and that kinda sucks.
But since the community at large is fairly small, it's not super difficult to eliminate the constant gripers and argumentative folks from your experience.
I’m an Admin for a Lemmy instance, so see a lot if reports related to users’ comments and, from my perspective, it seems like the vast majority of people on Lemmy are having reasonably respectful discussions.
However, your personal experience may vary depending on where you post and what you post.
Really? Because most of the antisemitic terrorist supporters I see are coming from lemmy instances. News topics are absolutely flooded with them. This is the big issue with fediverse.
Jk. I know what you mean, but I genuinely would argue that. Calling not supporting nationalism and an ethnostate antisemitic is the actual antisemitism. Oh and terrorism is only terrorism when brown people do it, so can't argue with that part. /s
That aside... Your problem is there isn't enough bots and propaganda on here compared to say reddit. I'd say that's a good thing. Go back there if all you want is to circlejerk.
Nah, there are people who want to defend the Israeli baby killers, and maybe people that want to defend Hummus.
I have yet to see one of these posts but I do see a ton of “Yay Israel, kill all the Palestinians, Israel is doing nothing wrong.” people post about these posts that I never see like they are every third post.
Fuck Israel, fuck hummus, and may every single person who killed a child stand for the gallows and then dance for us.
Only ver recently has it felt this way BUT the amount of comments has also skyrocketed so it’s only natural to have more arguing and pedantry (god I hate the nitpicking).
So you basically slowly build your own reddit-like bubble by removing what you don’t want to see (or disagree with)… Doesn’t it go intuitively against the idea of “federating” with other communities?
Of course, the difference with lemmy is that you become your own censor, while on reddit the admins have control over everything; on paper this definitely sounds the more “freedom option” but I am afraid it’s just going to lead to compartmentization in bubbles that don’t talk to each others at all. And I’m not talking about spam or outright offensive idiots, I am talking about opinions you don’t like.
A lot of users here have a lot of wrong opinions about a lot of things, but it’s not our job to fix them.
and I stopped trying to argue in the comments.
This is allowed. Maybe if you let someone get their last reply, they’ll think they won the debate and keep on being wrong. But if you keep arguing, they’ll think you’re an asshole, and still keep on being wrong. Myself, I rarely share my thoughts on a topic more than once per thread, even if someone disagrees with it.
You have to ask yourself what you hope to get out of with your comment.
If someone is asking for opinions, then it’s maybe ok to post your opinion.
If you want to point out something wrong, do it without personal attacks.
If you want to disagree with someone, do it without challenging that person, and in a factual way with evidence that adds to the conversation, instead of trying to convince someone.
If you want to call someone out, you have to realize someone will want to do the same to you, and do it with a short and factual comment and keep emotions out.
If you want to change someone’s mind, just log off. You cannot change anyone’s mind on the internet.
No, I honestly haven’t. Even the contentious arguments I’ve had are generally pretty civil. Sure, there are exceptions, but that’s always true with human beings unless it’s a highly constrained or moderate forum.
There was just a post by someone recently who said they could talk about being a woman here without getting an inbox full of gross personal messages, very unlike Reddit. It seems like it’s generally good here, with exceptions.
If you run into someone and they’re an asshole, it’s likely that they are the asshole. If you run into people all day that are assholes then it’s likely you need to do some soul-searching.
I grew up with a quote that was “If everything around you looks like shit, you may need to pull you head out of your ass.” Not saying anything about op, don’t know them
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