Submitted 6 months ago by Jomega@lemmy.world to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
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?
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.
angry people just want to beat up any one that is in front of them.
I’m resisting the urge to jump to conclusions, however I can’t help but observe that objectively there seems to be a common denominator in your situation. Either way, it sucks that that’s been your experience and I hope things change for the better for you.
So what are you really
So wait are you wearing both knee-highs and a maga cap?
Yup, it’s happened to me a couple of times this week alone. It’s getting silly.
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).
I’ve not noticed that in particular yet. but it might be because I block accounts that don’t add constructively to the comments, so maybe I’m not seeing a lot of the worst behaviour.
Can confirm. Lemmy became a lot friendlier after I blocked the worst of the permanently outraged communities and a bunch of people with extreme views.
I try to limit that to the worst cases, though, as I don’t want to drive “bubblification” too much…
I’ve gotten pretty zealous with the block button. When I see a comment thread with some dipshit who clearly isn’t being constructive I just block them immediately now.
It’s more along the lines of people making an elephant out of an anthill. Your average person is a draa-addict
There’s a setting that shows you how you voted on other people. I use that to block people… if you are -5 to me then I’ll never see you again 😘 Lemmings.world people are among the worst somehow… just saying
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 attack, 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
These people need to be flushed out of here. On the other hand I stand by almost everything I’ve said in my comment history, so…
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’.
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.
An example right in this thread
That person is complaining about political axe-grinding seeping into every corner of every community. Yes they used a mild caricature of anti-Trumpism but this isn’t what I’d call a “rightist.” Although I am on the left, politically, I frequently argue with people here who are even further to the left. I don’t think chanting about seizing the means of production is… productive, and I say so. This probably makes me a “rightist account” in some people’s eyes. I’m also a bootlicker because I don’t advocate for lining up all CEO in front of a firing squad.
This is actually usually the case
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.
Sockpuppet accounts selectively posting articles to sway a opinion about a country or person/s?
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. Excuse me, gotta run to the automated TM real quick.
I've seen it in both forms online and in chat, but I'm also old so it might be a depreciated form. I'm a walking internet archive.
Seems the same as it’s always been. Was it always negative? Do I not feel like it’s negative currently?
I’m not sure.
If I don’t see that, am I the problem? 🤔
No. Fuck you.
/s
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.
Toxic positivity is how you get the worse shit. If you can’t call someone else a fucker and move on then there’s too much protection for the truly deranged.
There’s a large gap between being rude and being Hitler but many places online seem to forget this and treat all forms of negativity as equally extreme and it just results in the worse psychopaths who understand how to mask to have the loudest platform.
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.
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.
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?
Maybe they’re not telling us that the screenshot was taken with a Nokia and sent to email over their sms to email bridge?
I would actually compare it to Slashdot 3.0, but your sentiment stands.
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.
No. Why? Are you accusing me of something? Are you threatening me??
/s
Yes 😔
I noticed it a few months ago. It feels like a sudden, inorganic shift. Either all the good people have trickled off to a better basin, or someone or something has influenced Lemmy users
I don’t think this place is big enough yet for my conspiracy theory to make any sense, but if I was the CEO of a company like Reddit and I wanted to prevent users moving to Lemmy I would make a bunch of accounts on here and spark as much drama and infighting as possible. And there’s been so much of it lately, whether it be callout posts on different instances or people concern trolling under posts, that it does feel so inorganic. When you come on here hoping for a better place and you see users writing mini manifestos calling out another user’s character flaws, it is extremely offputting.
Everyone should keep in mind: Besides the darkened tone of the world seeping into nearly everything, this place is probably crawling with shit-stirrers of a slightly subtler flavor than your typical obnoxious troll.
This effect might be from lemmy users in general hating everything about the world right now, or it might be the work of bots and/or illicitly paid humans fronting as the “general left.” The type that reflects your viewpoints pretty well but injects their comments with a little something extra, inflaming you or depressing more than what seems reasonable, maybe pushing you a little closer to the edge, whatever that edge may be.
We (or at least I) have no idea how much astroturfing is happening in the comments. It’s probably best to take anything that seems peculiarly provocative with a grain of salad.
Grain of salad?
Pretty sure Lemmy got on the influence bot radar some few months ago. Comments are now deeply negative and constantly drumming the 2FA and guillotine remedies to every complaint. Interactions outside of this kind of content I still find Lemmy users to be magnitudes higher quality than Reddit.
Bots warning us about using better account security sounds pretty wholesome actually
Filter your content to get the vibe you want.
Blocking the porn and impotently hostile makes it quite the chill platform.
Not really besides maybe more conservative trolls upsetting people in their usual favourites like unpopular opinion communities. Negative communities are troll attracting nectar generally.
Such is life on the internet sometimes I guess
Reading the comments here brings up a question I’ve had. Does it really make any difference what instance I’m on? I thought the whole benefit of federation was that it does not matter where I’m coming from.
It 100% does. I’m on 3 to get different flavors of Lemmy. I was on 4, but left an instance because of tone.
Yeah it kinda does, WHEN YOUR INSTANCE IS ALWAYS DOWN AAAARGH
Somewhere on your instance page, usually at the bottom, you can click "instances" and see which are federated and not.
It does kinda matter.
If the instance you are on defederates from another instance, you wont see the defederated instance’s content.
IIRC, the only thing you would really miss on Lemmy.World would be Hexbear. Maybe Exploding Heads? I don’t recall the entire list. But they’re all dipshit trolls, so nothing of value is actually being lost.
I think it’s always been the same. I’ve received weird ass hostility before but it’s been consistently spaced.
Welcome back, I’ve been here the whole time and currently it seems a bit more toxic and hostile than when RIF shut down, I feel there are a couple more contrarians now than before but it hasn’t been a steady decline. There has always been the odd jerk and troll on this site. I would say the time Lemmy was most wholesome when !cat@lemmy.world flooded the front page with black cats, it was such a cute problem for us to have. Anyone else remember that?
Like others I’d say it’s cyclical month to month. This year there’s daily doom in the news with US politics. If you want to avoid that then block !news@lemmy.world, !politics@world, !usa@midwest.social, and other news and politics if it fills up with Trump posts. 2024 was a lot more hopeful and I think that reflected in the average user’s demeanor even if there was bothsidesism, Gaza stuff, Ukraine stuff and Trumpism stuff. You’ll be informed of important developments as Trump stuff leaks out on occasion but you don’t need to be constantly engaged.
Also: If you see a crapton of comments on a post with low votes then you know best to turn and run from the thread where most of the comments are.
Didn’t notice anything like this, not even slightly.
Lately? I find it comes and goes.
This place (old.lemmy.zip) is downright chill. Then again, I just came of Reddit and that is in full rage-bait algorithm-driven meltdown. Feels like Reddit in 2010 here. Just lovely…
They got tired of harassing people on Bluesky and changed things up a bit
daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
Not really. But I purposely avoid any politics related community.
Texas_Hangover@lemmy.radio 6 months ago
It makes no difference. The single minded fuckwits will inject politics into a thread about cheese sandwiches.
Feathercrown@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I would like to note that although correct this comment is itself a bit rude
TangledHyphae@lemmy.world 6 months ago
This is the issue I’ve seen everywhere. Military grade TDS. Even if you want to chat about your love for onions in an onion-based community, someone will probably talk about how orange man destroyed onion farmland and is a fascist. I don’t think there’s a way to avoid the constant repetitive rage seeping into everything.
balance8873@lemmy.myserv.one 6 months ago
Cheese sandwiches are a tool of capitalist oppression. They are a symbol of how the working class is unable to get the nutrition they need and is yet another attempt by the liberals to make you forget their support of genocide. Eating cheese sandwiches supports genocide.
Jhex@lemmy.world 6 months ago
how?, please teach me your secret