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?
Fuck off /s
Does anyone else notice an up tick in hostility on Lemmy lately?
Submitted 5 months ago by Jomega@lemmy.world to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Comments
Fedizen@lemmy.world 5 months ago
QuinnyCoded@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
I hope your dog gets bit by a skateboarding pug
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
From a neutral viewpoint, the world is more divided than ever, no matter what values you have, there’s someone who opposes them with few, if any exceptions. Those opposing viewpoints have only grown in strength and number on the Internet, for years.
Additionally, the “us vs them” mentality of everyone is blinding them to even understanding why someone would disagree with their viewpoint. Of course that’s not everyone, but it’s a growing and very loud group.
Political violence is also starting to run rampant. Escalation after escalation. It keeps building.
So in this time of having a global voice, that can reach hundreds of millions of people with a single tweet or comment or thread or post or whatever, and with so much growing hatred among different political groups, it’s unsurprising to me that conflict is rising.
Additionally, Lemmy is growing. Not everyone that joins Lemmy will be the same type of person that joined Lemmy after the Reddit API incident. That influx of people had a very similar value set, because they almost all came here from Reddit for the same reason. So there’s at least a good amount of overlap in everyone’s values.
Over time, more and more diverse people have been joining Lemmy, and it’s not surprising that they have differing opinions on a lot of things.
This outcome was pretty much inevitable.
As far as I’m concerned, as long as it’s done respectfully and civilly, then disagree. Debate. Try to understand the opposing viewpoint, even if you don’t agree with it.
HazardousXtract@eviltoast.org 5 months ago
Isn’t it just people? Why did Rome fall? They had better tech, more people etc. I think they fell because the glue that held the society together dissolved. They had enough success that the human impulses that tear things apart were no longer suppressed. Lets kill people for sport, someone else should deal with the invaders, etc. A big part of that glue is apparent need. That guy in my way is the blacksmith that I need or I don’t know that guy get the F out of my way. Our major challenge has shifted from trying to survive to competition with other people. I think this is where a lot of the hostility comes from. Now add in another force, marketing and business. It’s not like they are really worried about your well-being. They prey on these things like a con artist preys on trust. Feed the easy things that everyone wants. A kid is going to choose the candy bar over the brussels sprouts most times. You deserve a break today, you deserve everything. Feed this and you end up with a lot of believers. I deserve everything and those people are preventing it. Plug in a system (AI) that only purpose is to get more of your attention and what will it feed you? Trolling, anger, hate are all easy. The feelings from them are strong, addicting even. They feel powerful. Stir well and spread widely. Pretty simple recipe. For the final topping, the people who rule us. Yah rule us. Do good people chase power in this environment? Can a good person stop the mob of 50 people that are gonna do some damage? At what point to people start giving up resisting those impulses and joining the mob. I want to do some damage too. As we see our leaders and the things they do, our examples, the people we trusted to do the right thing, the people who get the make the rules, who are so removed from the people they rule as I am from that ant I just stepped on. As this snowball gets bigger and faster it’s harder and harder to stop. Rolls over most things except that cliff where it will go splat. Everyone feels it. It’s hard to miss if you look. Any attempt to stop it creates a conflict between the stoppers and those that are fine in that snow ball and the people that are actively pushing that snowball. It will eventually stop and most times it’s a very messy stop. Why hasn’t there been a successful civilization that has lasted, people and who are people… ?
1984@lemmy.today 5 months ago
Many paragraphs were left feeling unused in that comment.
HazardousXtract@eviltoast.org 5 months ago
huh… that’s odd they didn’t come through. Does shift-enter not work?
Harbinger01173430@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Sadly, this is the internet :(
horn_e4_beaver@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
Sir, this is a Wendys.
SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 5 months ago
As the space becomes more popular, the level of social cohesion goes down.
Also, every space on the internet where users talk is now infested with shit chatbots trying to keep poor people angry with each other.
Aeao@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Woah woah woah. None of us said flaying ALIVE! It’ll ruin the flavor of the meat!
zaphod@sopuli.xyz 5 months ago
Does it actually get more popular? I see Lemmy, Piefed and Mbin together at around 40k monthly active users. It hasn’t really gained a lot of new active users, the peak was 50k monthly active users a while ago, so it seems to get less popular.
SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 5 months ago
It’s been slowly but steadily increasing
betanumerus@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
[deleted]leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
good moderator
When it comes to social media, that’s an oxymoron.
DerisionConsulting@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
That’s just not true.
A good moderator on a platform like lemmy removes content that breaks the rules, and ban users who are unwilling to learn or improve.
InvalidName2@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
I first joined and started using Lemmy probably a couple months before you.
Back then, when anyone was being uncivil, needlessly hostile, rude, or aggressive, there was a very high likelihood that other users would call it out quickly. Many, many wonderful folks did it on my behalf multiple times and that’s one of the big reasons I stuck around, because that’s cool as hell if you ask me. I’m here to enjoy myself and have a little fun, not to be verbally abused because some problematic person lacks reading comprehension or prefers to make wild assumptions based on very limited information.
I won’t say there’s been a recent uptick in hostility, unless your definition of lately is a lot more lenient than my own. However, I will say that with each new outrage from Reddit comes an influx of new users and with each new influx, it’s only a short period of time before I notice things are suddenly a bit less nice, friendly, and casual.
Sadly, things are at the point now where I rarely bother to read any responses, replies, or messages in my inbox. I usually just go in there to click “mark as read” to clear the notifications without reading them and move on. There’s just too much negativity directed my way, often super randomly to the most innocuous stuff, or random users I can’t recall ever interacting with who somehow seem to have a chip on their shoulder. It’s actually kind of bizarre at times. Regardless, for my style of participation, which is mostly parodying old people facebook and sharing random anecdotes, feeling like I need to ignore replies is still okay, I guess.
Anyway, glad I’m not the only one who has noticed the shift. Wish there were an easy button to get things back to the welcoming place Lemmy used to be.
1984@lemmy.today 5 months ago
It was more welcoming but also almost no keyboard warriors. First few months were quite nice here.
Axolotl_cpp@feddit.it 5 months ago
I am here frok only some weeks bit i noruced that in the last days i got waay morw hate than nornal and i noticed that in many concos people are starting to ““abuse”” upvotes and downvotes by downvoting everthing a dude say even if they are asking sorry, stating something right or is unrelated like how it was on reddit
Adderbox76@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
The world is kind of a shitty place right now. And to be honest, I’d be surprised if it wasn’t, at least to some degree, affecting everyone’s calm.
1984@lemmy.today 5 months ago
Its always been shitty. Ask your grandparents how they felt growing up during wars and poverty.
Every new generation is surprised the world is kind of shitty.
SleeplessCityLights@programming.dev 5 months ago
Facism is making the people that would normally be reasonable get really emotional and people love to lash out anonymously.
x4740N@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I’ve had a private message from a user who’s a starting with ‘v and ending with n’ and that’s all I say because if I say the full word I know some angry Internet people are going to show up
They responded with that passive aggressive question tone
I’ve also run into some lemmy users that spread misinformation about Japan to discredit it which reads like foreign actors intentionally spreading disinformation to discredit a country and its people, the sake kind of misinformation about Japan is much worser on reddit but its not a good thing that it has started to show up here
1984@lemmy.today 5 months ago
There is a lot of psy-ops going on, with bots trying to promote certain ideas as popular, to influence perception.
buttnugget@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I find it quite bizarre that people came here after a single reddit app stopped working. My favorite reddit apps still work lol
HazardousXtract@eviltoast.org 5 months ago
Never used the app. I’m here cause after an effort gain enough karma to post in the group I joined reddit for, I found I had been shadowbanned (had to look up what it was) and had been from the creation of the account. Never spammed, no trash, no fights. In fact I still have 1 karma. Found out days ago I was shadowbanned (cause some mod finally took pity on my posts trying to understand how to get karma, which I couldn’t cause no one saw anything I posted, ever) and realized that all that effort was worthless because of some AI or other that flagged me for some unknown reason and they didn’t have the (insert word here) to indicate there was any issue. Not interested in the ban hammer that drops off the shelf and happens to hit you. Sad thing really as I tracked the group through another means and it’s been great. reddit can eat my karma. and their shadowban hammer.
tiramichu@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
It wasn’t because of the apps.
It was because closing down the APIs - despite the widespread protests and subreddit blackouts - was the final nail in the coffin for many. It proved reddit was no longer a place where community opinion mattered at all, or had any sway in how the site might operate.
It was proof that things were firmly entering the enshittification phase of milking the reddit userbase and their content for profit, pushing a first-party app full of ads, and fattening up the balance sheet for investors.
I left at that time because I didn’t want to subject myself to that, and no number of “still working” apps would change my opinion.
buttnugget@lemmy.world 5 months ago
If not because of the apps, then why do they mention the app shutting down specifically instead of the API changes?
OctopusNemeses@lemmy.world 5 months ago
There’s a facet of internet culture that revolves around ridicule. I’m not sure but I think it stems from the streamer world. It’s like a modern form of celebrity gossip (read: harassment) that got commoditized into social media. So it’s not just gossiping about celebrities like in the past era of media.
Harassment used to be driven by publishers. In this era of social media anyone and everyone is a content publisher. People trawl the internet for things they think can be made spectacle. Right down to a random internet comment 100 replies deep in a thread. If for whatever reason they think this person is to be made a fool of then they proceed to reply with such belligerence.
They engage as if they are an outside observer. As if they’ve an audience like it’s Jerry Springer or something. As if they are the only human being. They don’t see others as human. Everyone else are caged animals for them taunt. To throw objects at through the cage bars or to tap on the glass. They think they are the main character.
I think there’s some psychological effect where their parasocial relationship with their favorite streamers and the herd of loyal viewers gives them a false sense of power based on the crowd effect or something. They can’t see it from the perspective that they are a lone poster being deranged.
I think the vote/like/share model gives them a false sense of power. When they see the uplikes number go up, they think they have a herd of supporters behind them. A simple little number on a screen emboldens them.
Nobody seems to see anything out of the ordinary with this. Such is the nature of this era of internet and the hostility. It’s normalized. They don’t know of any way of being.
You’re not a streamer with a herd of followers. You’re just a sole internet user. You have no crowd behind you. It’s like you think you do. It’s bizarre. From observers outside your perspective, you’re like an unstable person wandering the city streets. Pedestrians avoid you. They don’t want to aggravate you. You’re seen as someone possibly having a mental break. Or is it drugs or some kind of substance abuse.
On the internet now it’s unavoidable. These crazies are out here. They’re aggravated. They jump down anyones throat. On much of social media it’s the only way they know how to be. Just belligerence against belligerence all the time. Nobody talks like a normal human being. It’s like they’re derealized. Dissociated.
A basic fact that internet has no moderators anymore. They’re moderators in name only. The definition of the word is lost. To “moderate”. To preside over a discussion. Nobody does this anymore. The crazies are allowed to run amok. There’s some hints of actual moderation on Lemmy instances. The extremists have been grinding away at wearing this down though. In general this kind of thing is completely absent on social media anymore.
1984@lemmy.today 5 months ago
Good post and you see exactly what ive seen as well. Something is very wrong with online people today. They dont realize they are wrong. I guess its hard to see when they get upvoted for being wrong.
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 5 months ago
A lot of it came from early 4chan and the online culture war of creationism. It’s like the right test drove its tactics using creationism, and also took what they saw was popular with the cool internet kids.
trashgirlfriend@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Get a load of this guy
TheObviousSolution@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
It’s growing everywhere. The problem is subjective, which is why the current model fails. I’ve tried to suggest ones in the past where users have more control about general moderation in their communities or can at least choose their curators, with communities themselves are more decentralized from their instances, but there is no interest, at least not in losing that power of control.
The people who downvote after every reply don’t really help, they either just want the last word or aren’t really interested in an honest conversation. The anonymous downvotes don’t really help either (specially when they coincide with thread upvotes coming from accounts with no comment or post history that just seem interested in nudging the conversation to an alt).
joker125@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Yea the shitposting has steadily increased. That is probably to be expected on a platform that is also steadily increasing.
However please don’t let the trolls think they turn this into the failure that is now Reddit.
Instead just call out the bullshit for what it is and carry on.
fritobugger2017@lemmy.world 5 months ago
While Lemmy might be getting a larger variety of personalities, some of them being jerks, I still find it a far more pleasant place to be than reddit.
SethTaylor@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Excuse me?! Are you saying I’m negative?! Are you trying to start a fight with me, bro?! I am THE, I mean THE most positive, fun and likeable person on THE internet, bro. THE.
Sprocketfree@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Idk, world events got me raging nonstop and I’m sure I’m not the only one. But I’m trying to reset.
P00ptart@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Reset by like… Burning everything?
kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 months ago
Not only is it not more hostile I would argue its less hostile. During the election season you couldn’t say Kamala was anything other than perfect without being called a tankie. Hell you couldn’t even talk about any of the issues that mattered without being called a “single issue voter”. Granted today you have the people saying “well acturally the toxicity is because of those other people”, still not as bad.
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 5 months ago
It seems hostility is the norm across most social media.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 5 months ago
I feel like it’s steadily increased over the last 6 months or so, but it’s hard to really say. And it’s still pretty tame.
swordgeek@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
I think part of it at least is reaching a critical mass.
Lemmy was definitely a collection of relatively like-minded geeks at the start. Even when we disagreed on issues, we all agreed that we needed to work together to make the community grow.
Now that it’s grown to a respectable size, there are more dissenting opinions as well as less tolerance for dissent; and more to the point, there is space for absolutely vile content that used to get choked out. Now to stop this sort of thing, the ‘old-timers’ are more likely to say "shut the fuck up, sit the fuck down, and behave!!!’ before they can get a solid foot hold.
Meanwhile, the worst of those people are feeling both entitled and persecuted, and shouting their garbage louder than ever.
This happens everywhere that gets to a certain size. I remember when reddit stopped feeling like a secret community and more like a warehouse.
Of course, there are other reasons that people have mentioned below: The world is tired, worn out, and PISSED OFF at the half that disagree with them. The president of the United States has broken every rule of diplomacy, grace, and civility that people tended to follow in social life. Social Media has made it far easier (too easy) to dehumanize people and turn them into a one-dimensional pastiche of their posted opinions.
And we’re facing the destruction of the planet, genocide, and the global resurrection of fascism.
The world is getting worse, I’m afraid. I really wish it wasn’t true and I spent a lot of time emphasizing the good to my mom before she died; but honestly, it’s getting worse.
thax@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
i.e.: Eternal September amplified by the host of knock-on effects stemming from overshoot and the resultant insecurity
HakunaHafada@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
Well said, thank you.
HubertManne@piefed.social 5 months ago
Well im up to 30 user blocks and not long ago someone asked people how many they blocked and it was at about a dozen and 6 of those are alts of one user (same name with different instances). So its closer to go from like 7 to 24. So like in just a few weeks. Maybe over a month or so but not many months I have tripled my blocking of people (I block communities mostly do to it being something I am just not interested at all as opposed to the community is horrible). So take that info as you like.
yogaxpto@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Nothing outside the usual to me.
But that’s another good perk of Lemmy: if you don’t like this instance, join another or create your own.
lietuva@lemmy.world 5 months ago
just general vibe here, even positive news about something happening outside of US and you get a lot of negativity.
Scubus@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
It’s not that hard to be a good person. I don’t care if you’ve banned me from your community, if your community exists to spread hate i’m going to do everything in my power to disrupt and derail your community. We’re at the stage in humanity where theres no longer any excuse to justify anything less than being a good person.
If you are not going out of your way to improve everyones lives, you are the problem and should just die. Theres way too many people just like you who think the world is just going to improve so we dont need to out the nazis and racists and sexists. Nah fuck that, i see a nazi and im going to harrass them until they die, hopefully by their own hand.
SabinStargem@lemmy.today 5 months ago
I don’t like the moderator logs, because they keep the moderators who censor content anonymous. You can’t tell people which moderator is being abusive, so ALL moderators have to be painted as a jackass. That isn’t good, because good moderators have to be a human shield…and the community can’t establish trust.
Scubus@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Lmfao just took a look at my page and a mod removed my comment. Literally could not get more ironic, all i said was that hate communities will not be tolerated.
kadaverin0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
It’s not a Lemmy thing. People (at least here in the States) are feeling anxious and defeated about the state of the world. That shit makes people irritable. Irritable people are prone to lashing out at anything that trips over their last nerve.
My wife works for a nonprofit that focuses on providing services to families with children who have emotional or intellectual needs. She told me she’s witnessed more meltdowns from parents these last 6 months or so than she’s seen in her 15+ years in the field.
JustTesting@lemmy.hogru.ch 5 months ago
I’d be really curios to see some sort of study done on this. I mean, it’s not just americans and most of the west is not insulated from america, either, at least not online. and you don’t know from talking to someone online where they’re from. At the same time, there’s rising fascism and neoliberalism bullshit in europe, too.
I’d love to know how much of it is people getting antsier in general because they’re in a shit situation and how much it’s ‘infectious’ from talking with people in shit situations elsewhere, spreading bad vibes. Is this also happening in the chinese web? How about other countries that are more politically/economically aligned with the west but culturally less part of the english speaking web?
There has to be some sociologist out there somewhere studying this, no? But i wouldn’t know where to look. if anyone knows of something along those lines, i’d love to hear it.
Ougie@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Exactly, it’s not just lemmy, and it’s not just the US either.
Essentially it’s late stage capitalism, the root of all our recent discontent in the past 30ish years. Enshittification of everything…
toothpaste_sand@lemy.nl 5 months ago
The Americans are getting hostile… And I can’t blame 'em.
AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I do feel like unseriousness/unsophisticatedness is generally frowned upon here. Usually things are more debate than conversation
Idk, people just seem a lot more relaxed on like nerdy public discords for example
LavaPlanet@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
I imagine it can be hard to scroll past someone saying something very off the wall. When you read someone’s comment it’s hard not to feel like they’re talking directly to you, and if you don’t align with what they’re saying, especially if you’re far from it, it can be hard to resist correcting them or giving them your opinion, when I catch myself doing this, I try to reframe it to ask a question, rather than dump opposing facts.
But there’s another perspective I try really hard to keep in mind, if I were sitting at a table with a group of people and someone was loudly saying those things to me in person, I wouldn’t engage. I’d move to a quieter spot and ask the people I do like at the table to come for a chat there, or I’d acknowledge their feelings (but not the topic) and move to a different conversation topic.
But I feel like I need more practice at doing this when it’s in a text form of socializing, as this is.
I notice some amazing people on here, whom I aspire to learn from, that handle conflicting opinions with grace, and inclusion.
And I understand the dehumanisation that text conversations, present, it can be easy to imagine a hostility that may not be behind the comment. We’re all filling in the blanks of the personality behind the commenter. I worked a checkout for a good decade, so I’m very familiar with positions that can become dehumanised. Especially seeing as that seemed to be throughout a time when a huge bulk of people felt like they were only going to get righted the situation they believed had wronged them, by yelling or getting massively agro at the poor checkout chick who was gunna set that right wrong, because fk corporations, I enjoyed giving as much free stuff away as possible, any excuse, within the rules I could muster.
I absolutely understand tensions being high, currently, with world events being what they are. And there’s so much propaganda trying to brain wash us into being an army for their cause, and it’s all rage baity. So there’s even more rage and tension built up. I get it.
I really feel for people who can’t, and haven’t been helped to learn how to help and sooth their emotions, and then those emotions fester into all consuming things. And they find a cause to funnel that emotion into. Without really addressing that emotion, therefore not actual helping, processing or soothing that emotion.
See, we feel a feeling first, and then we ascribe a meaning, after. Except those two parts of the brain don’t actually communicate. The emotional brain is essentially non verbal, and the thinking brain, is verbal, but obviously it doesn’t do emotions. So you have this thinking guy in your head trying to tell you what emotions mean, except that guy is not an expert and knows nothing about them.
Your emotional brain is essentially a, very detailed messenger system for checking the temperature of the room. If shit feels off, it sends an alarm. Your emotions are a message to you that the shower temperature is too hot. It’s not really about that argument you had with your sibling last fortnight.
And to top it off, your emotional brain is non verbal, so all that ranting that you do, thinking that you solve the anger (or whatever emotion) you feel isn’t! It’s actually making it worse.
Your emotional brain is super primal, and very simplistic. All it wants is to know you took your hand out of the broiling hot shower water, and now your safe, and it’s message worked. It feels the environment and let’s you know if that’s vibing good stuff or danger. Sometime all you gotta do is change environment, or do a couple of jumping jacks, to help that emotional brain know, dangers gone. If you sit in the same spot and stress, your brain can even learn, that’s a stressful spot to sit, every time we sit here, bam, gotta be bad, and spits up those same feelings, even if it’s about nothing, just habit.
It also believes anything you tell it, because it’s listening to vibes. So even if shits fkd, right now, you have to keep telling yourself, everything is OK, you are safe and a capable bad ass, who has handled all the shit life threw so far, so you absolutely got this. Time to shine.
Your emotions are a message for you, and you alone. And if you expect others to sooth your emotions, all the time, you tell yourself that you don’t trust yourself to be capable of helping yourself process emotions. Obviously, we also need connection, so at the same time, it’s not at all about doing it alone. But it’s more about feeling safe to sit in emotions, rather than, fixing them. The way forward is sometimes the way back, sit in the emotion. Don’t try and put it out like it’s a fire, or distract it with shiny things. Just be, and listen, feel. Sometimes you need to sit with someone and not feel like you have to create a false front. Just sit and feel, for a bit.
If you’re getting stuck in emotions for elongated periods of time, there’s people who spend multiple years at school learning how to try and show you all the tips and tricks we’ve learned so far. Have a chat with one (or two if you don’t vibe with numerous uno) of them.
It’s literally all about emotional regulation. The mean people, haven’t been able to process their emotions, have never been taught how, their parents didn’t know, themselves, to tell them. And they’re being bombarded with proverbial tornadoes from all sides. And there’s so much rage baity propaganda, all designed to fuel and feed off that.
Lemminary@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Yup, just got piled on and ackshually’d once again because god forbid someone has a different opinion.
1984@lemmy.today 5 months ago
How about “spreading misinformation” when making a personal comment on the internet. People cant see the difference between official publication and personal opinion… :)
Maybe we should just disallow personal comments and let the ministry of truth speak for the citizens.
Lemminary@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I don’t follow.
Jimmycrackcrack@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
That’s exactly the same time I migrated. Personally, no, I haven’t noticed an uptick in that, it’s just as hostile as ever. It just about scratches the itch enough to be a functional replacement for what Reddit used to be for me though so I hang around. There’s solace in that it’s not ALL nasty, it’s just extremely likely to devolve in to that at a hair trigger and however benign or even how mundane the original topic of discussion, someone will try to clumsily make it related fascism or imperialism.