Today has been especially bad, and was inspired sadly by about 6 straight posts of only negativity here.
I want to say that being negative towards something is not a bad thing, it’s very valid to critique things. However, a community becomes toxic when the majority of it’s content is negative.
Gaming is an obvious one. It’s very obvious all around the internet that gaming communities are negative generally, and Lemmy certainly takes the cake. In the case of GTA 6 coming out this month we can (and have) had multiple stories about Rockstar’s unethical practices, the pricing, ownership, and to be clear I agree with all of it. However, there is also valid positive things that people want to discuss but are immediately downvoted to hell, or have comments brigaded on with responses like “Don’t you know about X, Y, or Z??”
I’ve been in comment threads where people have told me that they are afraid to post here because of the responses they might get. Now this is absolutely true everywhere, and we will often respond “You just have to tune them out” but the scales are shifting to the majority of responses are negative.
New users will not simply block/tune out the majority of commenters. New users will see that a community is toxic and turn around and go back to where they felt it was better.
This is the root of my frustration - that Lemmy is no longer a geeky place where people can talk about Star Trek and Linux - but that it’s becoming a toxic place where if you aren’t talking about why Star Trek and Linux are the only good things on the planet that it should be called out over and over.
Worse is that the scales a tipping to simply being “If it is popular, it is not good” which is a huge red flag for toxic community. To be clear it does not mean that if something is popular that it must be good, but instead we are falling for the same trap that is on corporate social media.
Anger and toxicity are fun, they are dopamine hits. So when there’s a huge post about <<popular thing>> and everyone dogpiles, everyone has that dopamine hit and it spreads, and it makes people want to dogpile more. Unfortunately I think this has left individual posts, and this is now driving a large part of our comment sections, that people feel included when they are all dogpiling on a popular thing. It’s addictive.
It’s incessant and exhausting being here some days.
Some examples to think on:
- Harry Potter fans (who have already said they will not buy anything from Rowling again and are aware) who still want to enjoy the books/movies they already own, but are shouted down and downvoted
- Sports fans posting about football, to have jokes about “sportsball” made to them.
- (Is that really any different from nerds being made fun of by jocks in highschool, only this is in reverse and worse yet, we’re supposedly more mature now?)
- Freaking pumpkin spice. The world is on fire and people get a tiny bit of joy out of cinnamon and allspice, can we let them just enjoy that?!
I think that sums it all up, I wish people could just enjoy things here without having the majority of comments be about why they shouldn’t enjoy it. I think this attitude has already lost of a good chunk of users who could be adding to the fediverse, instead now back on corporate social media.
It’s anecdotal but I’ve shown the fediverse to 3 other people who are trekkie nerds like me. They gave up in less than a week not because the fediverse was complicated, but because they felt like they weren’t wanted here.
Be the positive change, be encouraging. Don’t belittle for someone for liking a popular thing if you like something more obscure, instead post about obscure thing and why you like it and share it! Inform users of things like Rowlings insane shit-headery, but don’t demean them for still enjoying the books. If you don’t like sports that’s cool, but let them cheer on their team.
Thanks for listening. I’m going to have a pumpkin spice latte now.
Everything you are posting here is pure projection, and pure hypocrisy. Accuse other folks of doing what you are doing, so you can convince yourself their broad complaint means they are Nazi, because only Nazis complain.
You are the problem OP is talking about. You relentless inject stupid and negative thought into everything because you’re so insecure and desperately trying to police other people on the internet to prove to yourself you’re a good person, or something equally absurd.
If you had half the goodness you think you do, you’d realize you’re more of a Nazi than the imaginary nazis you think you are ferreting out by trolling people on this platform.
I showed up to a thread about people feeling harassed for their views, and I did two things:
Seems reasonable to me but I could be wrong. How should I adjust my approach?
When discussing harassment, to me the rational first step is to recreate the moment to understand why it occurred. No one seems interested in that, which is an oddity.
What would your first step be?
Nothing. I’m not here to harass people for their views, as you clearly are.
I’m not here to police other people’s opinions or thoughts. If I don’t like them, I can simple block them.
The problem with you is you feel views you dislike means you have the right to harass and insult them, because in your own mind you like good things, and dislike bad things, so therefore anything you dislike is bad and anyone who says thinks you dislike is a bad person who deserves to be punished.
If “What are your views?” is registered as harassment, I think you should sit in a quiet room with your thoughts and think through why that is.
Regarding harassment, I encourage anyone to open my profile and read my comment history. Share with me any harassing comments so I can learn to do better.
Good luck, I have a feeling you’re angry at something, but I don’t think it’s me. I hope you can identify what it is though.
No snark here, I hope you have a nice day, week, and more. Sorry if I caused you any distress.
Right, anyone pointing out your hypocrisy is angry with you, it’s not that you’re acting hypocritically…
The way you frame everything in this comment change is ‘I’m so innocent and pure, how can I do better’. You basically refuse to talk accountability for the simple fact your POV is only your own, you regard my comments as ‘angry’, and yet I feel no anger at all towards you. What I feel is annoyed, because you are working off a stereotypical playbook that so many people here pull, where they hide their shitty behaviors behind the ‘paradox of tolerance’ or the ‘nazi bar problem’ etc. Without realizing that if you go around assuming everyone is bad, you are going to automatically justify your own discriminatory biases yourself. The classic ‘when you do it, it’s bad, but when I do it, it’s good!’
You also weaponize everything in terms of shame or guilt and using emotional markers. Anyone who disputes you is childish, immature, and should be condescended too, right? because if someone doesn’t share your beliefs or experiences, they can’t possibly an adult worthy of acknowledgement or respect at all, let alone have an equal voice to your own.
The point is you can’t see your own ignorance and arrogance and in your view it’s entirely justified because you view the world in such emotional terms. Maybe you see words on a computer screen as ‘angry’ or ‘shameful’ or distressing, but not everyone else is you and you need to stop projecting your emotions and your values onto absolute strangers online and demanding they behave in a way you don’t like.
It’s fine, you’re in good company here on lemmy. Lots of folks here are performative hypocrites who think they know best and everyone else is wrong and they are very smart, and they are very happy to ban, harass, and even dox folks they don’t like in the name of ‘justice’. And anyone who doesn’t agree with them, they beliefs, or their methods is a ‘nazi’. Like anyone who might moderate a subreddit about the upcoming HP HBO show, which folks like you will automatically assume means they must be a transphobic RK rowling loving person and therefore they deserve punishment until they change their ways.
Oh, so tone policing is the tactic, that’s common in religious circles.
“I don’t have to answer or engage, because I define you as rude. Which makes you wrong.” (Spoiler: It does not.)
It’s clever, but only works if the other person loses their composure or addresses the new topics, which I won’t do.
I press the original point, which remains open from the first query a few days ago.
At this point it’s just amusing.
When I said, “Hey, check my post history and show me examples of what you are saying.” No response.
When I ask for clarification. No response.
When I ask the second time. No response.
When I ask the third time. No response.
Our entire conversation has been:
Me, “Hey, I’d like to understand, can you tell me…?”
You, “Omg you are being so outrageous.”
Me, “Okay, that’s fine, can you tell me…?”
You, “Omg you are being so outrageous.”
Me, “Alright, I will try to do better, back to the point, can you tell me…?”
You, “Omg you are being so outrageous.”
You should print out our dialog, or save it to your phone and take it around and show it to people for feedback. Or heck, feed it into an LLM… I think I’ll do that and ask for a meta-analysis of the conversation because who knows, maybe I am wrong. I’ll go feed it into a machine and see what it yields, I’ll share the results whether it goes positive or negatively for me.
This is a lot of effort and I have to give you credit for holding my interest, your perspective has been fun to explore.
You’re the one doing the tone policing. Every accusation is confession here.
Not to mention your active mischaracterization of everything I said into crude simplistic childish points, again, accusation as a confession.
I am blocking you because you are the problem OP is talking about. Negative, bad faith, ‘prove me’ wrong’. You refuse to talk accountability for yourself and shift the blame onto everyone else. Nothing you do is your fault, and if anyone disagrees with you it’s because they must be their fault and they are bad ignorant people.