Does Lemmy feel hostile and/or insular to you?
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. 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?
basically it's what i've been looking for. a place to horny-post but also discuss serious issues with actual understanding of reality. i'm thoroughly sick of the vibes-posting that dominates r*ddit and every other mainstream platform. i'm sick of the ads, of being distracted from important issues with video games, the newest gossip, etc.
i really just want a meaningful place in the universe. if that seems "stiff" to other people, well then i guess i gotta care less about what other people think of me. i gotta be used to it by now anyways, considering i've been very autistic my entire life.
I find it much more cynical than other places, probably just the nature of how everyone ended up here, jaded by the design of centralized social media.
I have to remind myself that everything isnt as 'sky is falling' as I see around these parts. Maybe I'm just blessed with a nice life, and I try not to take that for granted, but it does give me that feeling unfortunately.
I try my best to insert some humour into the headlines as some sort of way to make some light of it all, but that might just be playing into the fear and anger that I see around.
maybe sometimes. some great folk on here to. block if you need to.
Insular has such a negative connotation. I'd call it "neighborly": I like seeing the same usernames over again and getting to know their idiosyncrasies.
Hostile, I have to disagree with outright. I only have reddit and oldschool fora to compare it against, but lemmy is much friendlier than both.
Are we given to long comments? Sure. Are those comments worth reading? Usually! And that's what makes the difference.
Don’t disagree at all, I think a lot of what’s going on is the uptick in the “eternal September phenomenon”. A lot of us have been here for a while even if like myself we’ve switched instances, and those that have stuck around know the way things work and also like it, the new folks come here and think it’s Reddit, and when they get pushback because we’re all clearly here because we on one level or another had problems with Reddit or some other platform, they seem to think we’re the inclusive ones. When really they’re all up in the koolaid and don’t even know the flavor.
Some will stick around and some will bail, and then the cycle repeats, it’s just been happening with greater frequency
Edit: I’ll also freely admit that sometimes it is a bit serious here for my personality which leans flippant, but that’s fine, I still am here for a reason
you must not have spent much time on reddit in the olden days eh?
not really, to me it seems much friendlier than most online spaces these days
I mean, Lemmy is obviously a smaller, more tight-knit community than Reddit, but I wouldn't say that it's "insular" or rejecting of many viewpoints.
I was perma-banned on Reddit for criticizing Trump and the AI industry, as well as making a jab at the horrible and inhumane Yulin Dog Meat Festival in Guangxi, China (which by the way is a 100% real thing, should be stopped, and just happens to be running right now...). So I feel that Reddit is largely in the pocket of certain groups and are willing to stretch their moderation rules to stifle certain kinds of speech that challenges their shareholders.
On top of all that, I think that the Fediverse in general is a little bit friendlier and much more real than Reddit these days, which I like. Whenever I find myself browsing Reddit (without an account) recently, it's only a matter of minutes before I come across some post or comment that is obvious bullshit, be it something clearly AI generated or just a good old fashioned lie. Reddit has really become full of nonsense and slop these days, and I think even people who continue to use Reddit are able to see that it isn't what it used to be.
How is the dog meat festival any worse than factory farming? I've never understood this take.
Does two not apply to pigs and cows?
no, it sure does.
the real answer is that usamericans have an emotional relationship with dogs which makes it worse.
I agree with you that it's nonsensical and borderline racist at best
can confirm cows/chickens/pigs apply as well..
It's ironic that your reply is downvoted when the original comment claims lemmy doesn't shut out opposing viewpoints. I like lemmy way better that reddit, but there is definitely things I wouldn't post on here based on the way some others have seen get crusified.
It's not really any different other than people like dogs as pets so they think pets can't be food.
I think people want to share and be heard so they will speak a bit more than you'd want, but I feel on average it's neutral and we just put a negative spin on some responses because of our own perception.
But then again, there will be people who simply hate you for being you (e.g. tankies on .ml), just like any other social media (e.g. maga on X). The flavor of hate people are allowed to spew is based on moderation, and by that metric, I still prefer moderation on the fediverse over most corporate options.
I've felt that way since I switched to Lemmy after the Reddit API fiasco. It's kind of annoying and I'm not the biggest fan of it. But I don't feel like every interaction is this way, just way more than Reddit.
That being said, Lemmy is much better when it comes to engagement. I can post something and actually get comments, likes, and replies. On Reddit, it felt like a drop in the bucket. Half the time, you were too late to the post and it already had so many comments that yours would barely be seen by anyone.
Obviously, that didn't apply to the smaller subreddits but I like that on Lemmy I don't need to go to small niche communities just to feel like I'm part of the conversation.
The comments on this post actually made me think "Do I prefer the way Reddit was" and the answer is no. Thinking back, Reddit posts would consist of the same joke, one liner or low effort replies at the top. There was very little originality and tons of shitposting.
At the end of the day, everything has its pros and cons. Just choose the one that works best for you.
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.
Not overall hostile, but there are hostile people. Make liberal use of filters and block lists, and your timeline will become friendlier.
adults like to be taken seriously and have discussions with adults.
go post on shitposting or something, IDK. I'm not your dad.
Mostly not hostile, but, it’s the internet. If these were face to face conversations things would play out differently.
Granted, I’ve blocked every sub that’s consistently rabid.
Some people are hostile. Don’t give them air. Just ignore them. On any platform.
You're not the only one.
Naa its mostly fun to me! And the people i interact with seem like good people for the most part.
Agreed. And to dispell the impression of posts having to be PhD dissertations: Pee pee poo poo
I am, however, a judgmental prick, but I keep those opinions to myself. I will silently judge youbased on your posts and comments, and leave it at that.
I find myself generally well received in both serious posts and dumb jokes. I rarely actually run into anyone that hard headed.
Yes and yes, idk seems like more upvotes and downvotes than reddit. I think because it's more actual people. Also there's some pretty intense groups that kinda leak out across Lemmy.
I prefer it over the reddit way, tbh. Every comment section there is just filled with gifs and jokes, and you have to scroll miles to get a reasonable and sound answer to what OP was asking. It's especially frustrating when I've searched for an issue online and reddit pops up in the search results, and all responses are just bad repetitive jokes.
Also bots. There to sway public opinion.
Lemmy is rather small, you might be bumping into the same 3 users everywhere.
It got a lot better for me after blocking a number of communities and individual users.
Initially yes, the most active communities are filled with incredibly pedantic and holier-than-thou users that are more than happy to call you a drooling idiot for not agreeing with their logical opinions.
Once you start subscribing to communities you actually enjoy and block comms that allow users to muse about how 14 year olds have a "consenting nature" (looking at you ![email protected]), Lemmy becomes a lot more useful and inclusive. There's a lot of communities that are more active than it seems. I suggest going to the communities page and subscribing to just those comms that interest you.
Also be the change you want to see! Start posting and commenting without worrying about what the average Lemming thinks of you. We can build the type of communities we want instead of allowing this place to become another 4Chan.
Gotta agree with you here Velma. The beauty of Lemmy isn't that it attracts or allows different people, but that we aren't advertised to, and we are able to block instances or communities that don't work for us, and we are able to fully curate our home pages without being shown posts from completely unrelated pages just because they paid money to be boosted. Once that is done and we have found and settled into our spaces, that is where the good interactions come out.
Misogyny is just as rampant here as any online space, it's a systemic issue, it was not a reddit/4chan-exclusive issue. It existed before and will outlast reddit/4chan until we solve the actual fucking problem: men are both socialized and continually encouraged to fundamentally disrespect women. They need to do just as much brain-rewiring as we do when we combat our internalized misogyny.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. I just don't understand misogyny. I absolutely love everything about women.
Damn, I have the perfect gif for this but Lemmy doesn't support gifs in comments yet?
It doesn't? Could have sworn I've seen them in tenforward
Maaaaybe? If the following gif works, we will know something
Edit: Damn, links the IMG but doesn't play the gif for me.
Well said. You're right - the root of the problem is that the users here are predominately male and that then influences the tone of the space. Without conscious effort it is easy to allow misogyny to flourish.
Especially since they are hard-wired to just not notice it - hence why we constantly get told we are overreacting - to them it comes out of left field because they do not see what we see.
The real piss off with that is that while I realize it isn't their fault they are socialized that way, if they really want to believe that they, individually, are one of the "good ones" (as in, the non-problematic men, the ones not contributing to the problem) they can't justify that belief unless they are actively listening when we tell them what we experience, or how something comes across from our perspective. So many of them want to push the problem down by saying "nuh uh" or arguing with us about our own damn experiences
Its fucking asinine.
My favorite is when they acknowledge we live in a patriarchal society, that women are treated worse than men, but we are overreacting or simply imagining men are treating us this way.
Fucking asinine indeed!
Sorry you girls/women have to fight so hard just to have a space. Probably makes it hard to want to try some days and it shouldn't be that way.
I've found Lemmy the most gender diverse friendly place yet. A lot less 4chany/reddit/spezpedo than anywhere else.
You’re ignoring how many women, femmes, trans, enbies, and POC are on Reddit.
Reddit’s population size is going to naturally make it way more diverse than Lemmy for a long time still.
Not ignoring. They have a larger audience, but I felt the general community was more welcomed, and openly themselves here edit: in non-specialized subs.
Ah, there were quite a few great subreddits I was involved in that were incredibly diverse and friendly. I miss those spaces, though I've found a couple of communities on Lemmy with similar feel.
I've found Lemmy quite harsh and exclusionary for women, so maybe my experience has just been different than yours.
Sorry to hear. I hope that changes fast. My experience on Reddit was vastly different.
Absolutely! I wish more male users of these comms would call out their fellow men’s misogyny and not rely on others to do it for them. It would make the spaces more welcoming to a lot more people and create a more positive atmosphere.
I also love seeing 2 of my fave lemmings in other spaces 🥰
Been missing seeing you as often after Blahaj went down last week! Good to see you again today :)
Definitely one of the users that make Lemmy a pleasure to be on!!
What the actual fuck? Are you finding people like that? Oh wtf man. I haven't seen that in there yet. I've seen some category 5 dumbasses but nothing heinous like that. That's fuckin gross
people take gay reddit too serious man
It is a link aggregating forum site, and has the problems that come with that. However I find it to be the least awful of social media.
There is plenty of stupid shit posting here, and just taking the piss. However I do think that people here are more likely to take certain things more seriously than most places. However all places sort of have their topics they take way too seriously
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.
go to the cats community. It's nice there.
Might be the community or instance your interacting with. I've not really noticed anything like that.
Then again, I just ban anything I'm not interested in seeing.
I can not confirm this. But depending on channel and topic, experiences can be wildly different and sometimes surprising in any direction.
Like any online space for public discourse, Lemmy can be very close minded and prone to group think. Makes it more fun to poke the bear when you see it going on though.
I’m just a turtle.
Negative, I am a meat popsicle.
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.
The man is future, old now!
Not really, it feels far more freeing to me than Reddit, despite the community being smaller.
That all seems wildly different based on the kind of posts you're commenting on. Make fun comments on fun posts, fun comments shall surely follow you.
Eye of the beholder.
While I'm sure we all have our own reasons for coming here, I believe that what we have in common - whether we are reddfugees or not - is that it either took us cognitive effort, an intersectional understanding of human behavior, culture, society and capitalism or living with trauma - or some combination thereof - in order to seek out the Fediverse. Such backgrounds organically come with maturity, which could be perceived as seriousness.
Hostile, not that I have seen. Insular, possibly. Lemmy is much smaller than Reddit (which I personally enjoy) so it can seem like somewhat of an island. It's kind of inevitable to find know-it-all's in a thread based platform like this, unfortunately. I would imagine most people on here are very tech savvy and we tend to have a more nitpicky way of socializing/viewing the world. In the few years I've been here Lemmy has grown tremendously though.
Lemmy feels pretty welcoming to me, but maybe that's because I'm used to Reddit.
You can be whatever you want to be. Karma isn't really a thing here. If people don't like what you have to say, then it's tough tiddies. They can block you. If you get banned from a community, you probably didn't want to be a part of it, anyway. Just be you and don't worry what others think. People generally like genuine.
I do feel like there's a lot of needless drama and a lot of people could stand to be nicer to one another. I would include myself in this category honestly.
I have experienced that in a relatively small number of user, communities, or instances. I tend to block them if they are jerks or the community encourages dog piling on people who "don't get it" or the mods are power tripping.
They do tend to be active because they are so contentious, but it is very repetitive as they cycle through the same few topics.
If you say so.
I did notice something like that, until I decided to take care on what I commented on, if it's not that important to me I usually don't, such as on the majority of news because what can you really say anyways. There is a lot of political grandstanding and but if you stay away from politics it's mostly good
I don't experience that in the comms I frequent. Do you have an example thread?
https://sh.itjust.works/post/62283101/26027884?sort=New
This type of attitude is incredibly common on Lemmy. I think a lot of AMAB people don't see it very often though.
The nature of Lemmy is that users can go sign up on another instance and continue their tirade. With that said, surely if the comment was reported they would be banned from the community?
All public online communities are not exempt from trolls. Lemmy admins are pretty good at coordinating between instances, tracking and removing troll users, but it's endless work and often no one has even reported the problematic content.
Again, it's not just one user here and there. It's constant. So yes, the admins work hard on banning them, but there's so many here on Lemmy that are unwilling to respect women.
I am honestly not surprised. But I'd guess this is a problem in public women spaces on other platforms too. The internet in general has kinda always been notorious for not being friendly to women.
Not really sure what the solution is. Realistically IRL isn't that women-friendly either 🤷
This is why I said in my comment that I wish more guys would call out their fellow men’s misogyny more instead of relying on others to correct them. It would be a step in the right direction.
Not saying this is you at all, but it would nice to not have guys arguing and crying misandry/sexism when they are politely asked to leave a space specifically made for women and femme adjacent folks. Maybe if more guys pushed back, women would feel more welcome.
You mean in general, not in c/WomenStuff? I don't think I'd feel comfortable posting there even if it was to push back on misogyny.
The sigh that emanates from me when I see this reply over and over again is both deep and tired.
I have so many misogynist cries misandry tags out there that it’s pretty crazy. I just tag folks instead of blocking since this is still such a small space, that way I can read their comments/posts but otherwise not engage with them.
The worst of the worst I’ve seen here hasn’t been active in over two weeks thank goodness. Hopefully he got told he’s an ass by enough people other than me that he left.
I know the solution isn't giving up and allowing men to say these things out loud with absolutely no push back, so I'm rather prepared to be unpopular on Lemmy hahah
Fair!
I run into my share of disagreeable people. I just block and move on. I rarely waste my time giving them any engagement at all. For me at least, there aren't actually that many I needed to block, just a loud few.
Ah but that doesn't work when it's not just a couple of users. The mods in womensstuff have to deal with men forcing themselves in those posts constantly. And I run into these types of misogynistic beliefs much more frequently on Lemmy than I would on Reddit for example. This is the culture that's been allowed to proliferate here.
I've been here for a little while and can observe a few things.
Your default feed depends entirely on what the people in your instance are subscribed to.
There are some instances that seem particularly obnoxious and repeatedly trigger pile-ons and other unkind behaviour.
There's a bunch of undeclared bots.
Some communities have a particular aversion to people randomly participating.
To have a better experience, I use a bunch of filter words to stop crap I have no interest in. I also filter URLs for the same reason.
I use "block" when there's a post with worldviews being expressed that are incompatible with my own views.
There's a bunch of communities that have content I don't care for and I again use block.
When I see spam, I report the post and block the poster.
I have account age turned on which alerts me if an account is "new here" and already obnoxious.
Since karma doesn't work here, I display the aggregate vote, which helps you determine for yourself if you might want to interact with the post.
I tend to use the "All" feed, which is what allows me to see posts like yours without subscribing to the community.
I dip into communities and contribute when I feel compelled, which has me posting all over the fediverse.
It's a different experience from Mastodon or BlueSky, but there's plenty to like about it and not better or worse than the other platforms.
When I used Reddit, there was a particular humour that had an interesting vibe about it, but the blackout and mod bans had me leave for the fediverse and while I miss that brand of humour, I don't regret leaving and from time to time I see the seeds of it here.
You also have to remember, this is by comparison a pretty small community and it's going through growing pains, triggered by regular influx from other platforms.
On the whole, I'm glad I'm here.
I fully agree with you, I enjoy Lemmy more than Reddit for a few reasons. And now that I've been here long enough to tailor my subscription feed, it's great. There's quite a few thoughtful and interesting users here that I very much enjoy running into from time to time.
There is a feeling that this place is not dissimilar to early Reddit or 4chan and those places had their issues with being predominately male as well. I'm not going anywhere and I'm hoping to help shape this place to be even more welcoming for a larger range of different people.
Jesus...
You don't realize you're the problem in that thread?
They said they were don't responding to them, and you accused them of harassing them for replying?
Why reply again to prolong it?
Even if you didn't block them, you could have just not responded. But you did, and then just keep insulting them with someone else.
Just, I've never seen a bigger example of a problem blaming everything else for a problem existing.
Wait, you're blaming someone for telling the obviously sexist dude to leave the women's only community, when the guy keeps responding with more sexist bullshit?
You didn't read further up in that thread, did you?
He had been asked politely several times to read the rules of the community and he threw a fit and name-called instead.
That community is women only.
No, I don't think I need to shut up in the face of men forcing themselves into spaces where they are not wanted.
Hahahaha considering how many communities you have been banned from, I really really don't need to give your opinion weight here.
Most of time hostility is toward morslly bankrupt people defending genocides, warcrimes, racists etc
Or terrorists and authoritarians.
Or women pointing out rampant misogyny.
Yep lemmy hates women and minorities nearly as much as other sites but they cover their eyes and deny it when brought up even though its all over.
I haven't been noticing it that much lately, but I've felt the same when I first joined. A lot of people just don't get jokes and they will downvote what they don't understand.
I downvote jokes that punch down on marginalized groups for sure.
There's ways to shitpost that don't exclude everyone that isn't cis male and white.
Well since people are tired of the clown circus that is Reddit, they came here, people are afraid that Lemmy/PieFed will go in a downspiral
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.
You probably just hang out in the wrong /c/ 🤷 take /c/ich_[email protected] for example, most comments are jokes. One place I like a lot is https://lemmy.world/c/superbowl, maybe they hit your nerve, too?
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.
wait do you have any examples of the weird cryptic passive aggressive nonsense about not talking to them?
i haven't seen anything like that and I've been here a while, I'm intrigued.
I just want to have a serious conversation about stuff that matters and you just can't do that in real life without somebody shitting their pants. I fucking love it here. I don't need a million comments saying some dumb inside joke bullshit like on Reddit. This place seems just a lot more real. I get my comedy from the memes and I can actually talk to people about real issues and be challenged, it's nice.
When I insist another Lemmy user "suck my sweaty ballsack", they must know I mean it solely as a romantic gesture, and not oppositional. This is the culture fostered.
No, but I've seen a lot of pessimism in a few communities, even on positive posts.
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!"