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.
Negative post. Downlemmied, nerd.
it is natural development of any digital community platform. one of my communities is littered with folks who post snide comments on abstract art they dont like and its kinda funny when they get defensive about it.
I’ve had six grande soy pumpkin spice lattes this season, and I feel neither wanted nor unwanted here. I also watch my NFL teams each week, but I’m not a big talk about it to everyone kind of guy. I’ve noticed that Lemmy is heavy on doom and gloom, but when it starts to get to me, I stay off the threads for a bit.
Enjoy your pumpkin spice latte, and go Bills.
Cant have any fun joking about those things, arent you kinda bringing the same negativity to the table of shit posters right now?
People blaming Reddit in this topic… I sometimes feel the worst of Reddit just migrated to Lemmy.
You’re absolutely right
This isn’t a place where normal, healthy members of society hang out
It’s not something that the average person is even aware of
I am a Luddite, I don’t know what “federation” is. I have zero idea of how any of this shit works, I just stumbled upon it and do dumb shit here
It’s full of gatekeepers, people who have zero life off their computers or phones, and people who I would probably actively avoid in the real world
But, they think they’re superior. They’re no different to any group who think they know more than everyone else
The only advantage over reddit is fewer RWNJs
I’ve tried many times to switch to Lemmy but I bounce off every time because I get so much hate. I’ve never received as many death threats as I have on Lemmy. I’m a Dane who sits somewhere in the middle of our political spectrum, so I’m left on some stuff and right on some stuff. If I even dare state a fairly moderate-right opinion on Lemmy, the vitriol is unreal. This place is worse than some of the worst political subreddits on Reddit, and I cannot escape it by finding moderate communities. They’re all somewhere on the far left. The only thing I can decide is if I prefer libertarian style left wing or authoritarian style left wing. Even the “libertarian” style left wing people hate free speech, so I’m not even sure that’s a real choice anymore.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the users who remain like it this way, so there’s not much point arguing over it. They repel normal people and if they’re honest with themselves, they don’t want normal people here. They want validation for their extreme views.
You know how reddit was always kind of a shitty place if all you followed are the major subs and all the good stuff was in smaller communities? This is just like that, the Fediverse and Lemmy are a big place, you “just” need to find (or create) the corners of it you enjoy being in, just like anywhere else on the internet.
I dunno. I find this better than being in an echo chamber of positivity
This is not even remotely as toxic as reddit.
It’s not anyones fault here, reddit over the last decade or so trained us to be this way, that mixed with facebook/ig, tiktok, and twitter’s controversy engagement bait based algorithms have made us all argumentative and defencive.
I’m nice
Wait till you hear about reddit
I just found your post because I’m debating deleting my app and bookmark. It’s so fucking negative all the time. The gamers, as you point out, are especially toilet water.
I know there are smaller communities but there aren’t many for me and the larger ones are at a point I no longer want to continue.
I genuinely never read my replies. I just say my peace and keep scrolling.
