I came here around the time the rif app shut down, and the general vibe I get from this place is much more negative than when I joined. Is Lemmy growing more toxic or is it just my imagination?
well have you noticed (waves at everything) in the world?
Yes its more negative. Comes with more users who want to play keyboard warriors over things they feel strongly about.
The hostility has been here for quite a while, though. When the migrating happened from Reddit to Lemmy it was all nice and cozy but after a year or so the hostility was already there. Very often people did not want to acknowledge this (and started to heavily downvote the particular comment stating this). Plus with what is happening* in the world, the negativity from reality seeps into the digital world.
But anyway, the best thing to do is just block anyone who is hostile towards you for no actual reason. Has no point to put energy and/ or time in it.
Not really. But I purposely avoid any politics related community.
It makes no difference. The single minded fuckwits will inject politics into a thread about cheese sandwiches.
how?, please teach me your secret
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.
Yeah maga place looks like it’s up to 21 idiots sharing a brain cell now, whereas I think it was 12 a couple weeks ago. Wonder if there’s a critical mass for those fucks or if they’ll find lemmy too progressive to stick around. I guess they could just circlejerk on their own instance.
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 have been threatened and harassed in person multiple times the past few years. but left and right wingers. by trans and anti-trans folks, etc. i’ve had people shove and try to physically start fight with me while i was waiting for a takeout order or coffee.
angry people just want to beat up any one that is in front of them. and they will see what they want to see. the angry left assumes i’m a meathead trump supporter, the angry right assumes i’m a soyboy homo.
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).
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’ve recently noticed a lot of new accounts which post a whole series of news articles and then get deleted. Notot fake news or conspiracies but mostly reputable sites. No idea what’s going on there.
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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.
yeah i’ve noticed this. the people who harass me go to my comment history, start downvoting everything i say or replying to old comments and/or reporting them… just like people do on reddit.
one disagreement on one comment or issue becomes a personal vendetta
that kind of craziness never happened to me on reddit until the past few years. mostly in my local subreddit where insane people who report and harass you for something supporting or disagreeing with mayors policies.
over the weekend i had some guy scream in my face what homo i was for wearing suede boots. apparently suede makes you gay, i had no clue. such a helpful thing to be informed of.
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
“Why can’t everyone just be nice to each other all the time” is what lead us to where we are.
I’m not arguing for being an asshole but when you force everyone to be kind all the time online you get people that are empowered to and motivated to wrap up abhorrent shit in a pleasing package. Racist dog whistles, selfish political propaganda, etc.
I’m not saying that applies here but I DO think it’s important that people are allowed to be assholes online. The internet really started its descent when people started putting bubble wrap on everything.
You’re free to engage or not to.
People have become so used to echo chambers and safe spaces that they forget what things were like when they didn’t exist. And it was better.
You SHOULD be encountering assholes online and encountering opinions you disagree with regularly, because that is the real the world.
Nice to see another person who understands this. They want their social media experience to not make them feel anything negative, and loves their bubble where everyone agrees with them, despite it being a false, curated, forced experience.
When someone writes something they dont agree with, they go into keyboard warrior mode and either tries to put the person down with downvoting and insults, or mod reporting, which is similar to running to dad and crying about someone being bad.
Its like people refuse to grow up today. Argue for your opinion, stop censoring and pushing down opinions you dont agree with.
FWIW my entire life i’ve known people who do this shit IRL. My college campus was rife with people like this.
My daily life is also regularly full of people like this.
Exactly.
Being exposed to people that believe differently than you challenges your own beliefs, and theirs.
When women started opening about the bullshit they dealt with, a lot of people listened. Some didn’t, but a lot of people did. Some men said “hey, you know, now that you mention it, there’s some kind of fucked up shit about being a guy, too”.
Anyone that had ever engaged with any real feminist theory or any facet of gender studies said: you’re absolutely right. Everyone else completely drowned them out.
The internet around that time largely had the response of “shut up, the women are talking”. Not all of it, not everyone, but it was very common.
Some men kept patiently listening, others stopped listening and started talking, others stopped listening, got angry, and started yelling. Some were never listening at all.
Now we have hordes of young misogynistic racist shitheels who may have been receptive to other points of view once but are now so firmly entrenched in their shiftiness it may never change. And they’ve found nice cozy places to whip their impotent rage into a society-destroying frenzy. It festered in critical mass, quietly, until it built up a level where it could burst open like a cyst.
The lesson here has nothing to do with gender, but highlights the importance of LISTENING TO PEOPLE, and being exposed to their viewpoints while exposing them to yours. Even the most vocal, selfish, pigheaded, racist conservative has legitimate concerns driving some of their shittiness: fear of uncertainty over the future, economic uncertainty, poverty, lack of education, fear of death. None of these things validate the shittiness but they do explain and they’re the levers by which these views change.
And I totally disagree with that narrative.
Because in my experience I listened, but then was guilty of the crime of pre-rape. And then i stopped listening to feminists. Being male and doing anything male-coded was a crime to them. Popular feminism decided men were evil. Full stop.
then 10 years later… many of those very same feminists are now preaching 1950s subordination to their husband and God and many are of them anti-trans advocates. Every feminist I went to grad school with became everything she claimed to hate in her 20s. And icing on the cake, they would inherent tons of money from their parents and start lecturing others to grow up and work hard like they did…
wtf is ‘real’ feminist theory, btw? feminist theory has 100s of flavors.
I would actually compare it to Slashdot 3.0, but your sentiment stands.
I mean honestly filthy boomer to a screenshot is kind of hilarious.
Yeah, I’m gonna stop taking screenshots and use an analogue camera to capture my screen, then run to the photo printing shop, stop by the hobby store for some tracking paper, and track the photo. Scan that bad boy, and Bob’s your uncle!
Now what would I then be called by these keyboard warriors?
Probably a hipster.
Maybe they’re not telling us that the screenshot was taken with a Nokia and sent to email over their sms to email bridge?
Was a simple screenshot of a Discord announcement since they didnt have any links
Yes, but sometimes I wonder if it is just the nature of what happens when a social media network grows large. I did observe how some subreddits instantly get more toxic as they grow bigger too
… On the other hand though, coincidentally I did see some very recent comments that are decidedly more right-wing than the general Lemmy userbase. I personally try not to judge ppl’s political orientation but I do wonder if there’s something weird going on
ever IRL hobby/group i ever did went from a cool chill group to being full of rabid assholes once it got ‘popular’. as in… people heard it was ‘cool’ and wanted to join because they want to be ‘cool’. as soon as people are doing something for status/image and not because they actually enjoy/love it… that’s when the toxicity starts. because the cool people are the insecure shallow types who need to crap on anyone who is ‘uncool’.
status chasing is the root of a lot of it, imo.
Places would change up and down in tone and attitude since the days of Usenet, BBSes, and FidoNet. It’s not the platform, it’s the people. How the world is in RL affects how people talk online, and the world changes over time.
The simpler answer may be that your feed has changed some since you started and you’re pulling in discussions that have a different vibe than when you started. Just as you can grow your feed by browsing around, you can cull certain places that tend to be darker by blocking people or instances.
in RL
This is a first for me. Be RB, gotta run to the automated TM real quick.
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.
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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.
And they think the real world is reflective of what we talk about here. It’s truly bizarre. I’m terminally online, unemployed ATM, but I still get there’s an outside world.
Take all the Trump voter hate for example. Do they not truly understand how under and misinformed most Americans are? Watch Mamdami interview Trump voters in NYC. Not ONE was what we picture as MAGA.
Also, since Trump 1.0, people refuse to talk politics. We’re at a party last month and talking about my new, weird, .22 rifle. I started to bring up a thing in the Big Beautiful Bill that was on-topic and the only thing I find decent in it. “NO. We’re not talking politics.” “I’m NOT. I’m talking about one thing I think is cool and will help gun owners.” Jesus. Now we gotta dance on eggshells.
Do they not truly understand how under and misinformed most Americans are?
Um, that’s exactly why we are pissed off at them. It’s easier than ever to be informed yet people act like it’s harder, somehow. Pretty fucking enraging.
In my experience, no one but trumpers refuse to talk politics. And it’s because they want to remain actively ignorant. Can’t have anyone revealing the giant holes in their fucked worldview. You might turn them trans, after all.
Yeah, the total destruction of community and third-places is I think the #1 cause of the division of political discourse, but second is that people refuse to engage with other human beings on the topic. They watch TV or browse online, and they get one extremely biased view of the world. They don’t share it with other people where they could get other points of view.
It used to be people would get the paper and talk about it with each other, but that’s taboo now. You take it to an online community who all agree with you. There’s a reason why the infamous Thanksgiving family gathering caused strife. It’s because people were actually having discussions and disagreements. Disagreement is healthy, but people seem allergic to it now.
Well, many of us are on the spectrum whether that be ADD, ADHD, Asperger’s, or some other form of autism. Helps us to be highly technical and computer savvy, doesn’t help so much with attempting to reframe “right and wrong,” for most of us.
Unfortunately the very entrenchment, ideologically speaking, that these particular “character traits” cause most of us to have, are being celebrated as “immunity to propaganda” in the media. The reality is that we have an innate sense of right and wrong, and that shit can get skewed all over the place in your formative years. The only remedy I have seen for this is the person intentionally exposing themselves to other cultures.
I wouldn’t call beehaw pathologically positive. They just seem to bee some very nice people that caught to create a community of nice people. It’s not a pathology, it’s a common understanding.
lemmy.world is very very large and thus has a very very large number of obnoxious shitheads
Yeah? Yeah, you think so? Obnoxious? Yeah? You sayin’ there’s obnoxious shitheads round these parts? That what you’re sayin’? Just wanna be clear! Well you’re wrong! Lemmy.World isn’t large at all. The whole fediverse combined isn’t very large! Not like my penis! Can’t believe you said Lemmy.World is full of obnoxious shitheads! Why would you think that? Can I have $20? Your mom gave me $20! Heyyyoooo!!!
Is lemmy.ml is the second largest instance? Or at least rapidly growing? That would explain why it feels this way.
Since they were the first they used to be the biggest, however they are declining.
.ml is the instance run by the developers of the Lemmy fediiverse software, and they themselves are tankies. Do with that information what you will.
Do with that information what you will
Hey, some of us made our accounts when this was the Lemmy instance.
o7
Some of us joined much later when the apicalypse happened.
Huh, TIL.
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I see a lot more assholes from .world and .shtjstwrks
.ML peeps are either chill or really cringe depending on how militant they are.
Hi 👋
It’s just .works, really.
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If you’re following them around, that’s not living rent free in someone’s head, that’s just being weird.
The whole idea of the phrase is the one living rent free is just enjoying their life while the OTHER person obsesses about them.
If you’re the one doing the stalking, it’s the stalkee that’s living rent free in your head.
You weren’t tagged and still showed up to prove OPs point. It’s not rent free when they’re being stalked by a fucking weirdo basement dweller.
I’m browsing all and you guys are telling your daily ghost stories. I have blocked all of the meme communities where you repost stuff from reddit, so most of what comes up is this or world news, and I don’t need to explain its political bent. You have to realize this comes off as very forced and melodramatic to people on some level. Your being completely unable to take a joke is just icing on the cake.
Daily ghost stories? Me posting memes from reddit? You told a joke? The fuck are you on about, lol?
If you’re suggesting that by saying “rent free” in response to someone outing you for stalking them is a joke, then we have very different definitions of what a joke is. It’s akin to a Republican making a dumbass comment and when confronted responding with, “it’s just a joke”.
Also, did you seriously not understand that “you” can be plural and nobody thinks you are posting every single meme on multiple different websites? Can you see straight right now?
You do not have a very strong case for stalking (who, the site itself?) by talking about something you federated with in a public forum. Remember, this is a website the owners willingly hooked up to another. This is like loudly complaining about a business while standing in front of it and acting like one of the customers is stalking you when they say something. It’s hard to believe you would say that sincerely. It’s more like an un-self-aware attempt at manipulation from a child. The internet moderation-attuned desperation to control conversations is palpable. I pity any coworkers you dare to express yourself to.
Do you have any other ways that you would like to describe my saying the words “rent free” as an unforgivable provocation? Let’s see what you come up with this time.
Check your communities, and what instances they’re on. Not all are created equal. lemmy.ml tends to be pretty wacko
“Hey y’all, anyone feeling hostility on Lemmy”
“Yeah, let me tell you what, fuck those fuckers over there. They fucking suck and I hope they rot.”
Like, how do you not immediately block everyone on lemmy.ca after reading this hate?
I also find lemmy.ca quite friendly,
Sure, if you ignore the assholes who pop into other communities to take a colossal shit on them.
The irony of your stupidity and judgement in that post is hilarious.
Yeah the news are triggering the worst instincts of some users who tend to lash out alot, and some trolls might be taking advantage of that
Ugh. I understand being a bit on edge in these dark times, but lashing out at people on your side doesn’t help anything.
