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?
Check your communities, and what instances they’re on. Not all are created equal. lemmy.ml tends to be pretty wacko unless you’re of their particular ideological alignment, lemmy.world is very very large and thus has a very very large number of obnoxious shitheads compared to other instances. On the other hand, beehaw.org is intentionally and pathologically positive. I also find lemmy.ca quite friendly, though I might be biased.
Lemmy users are much more entrenched ideologically than an average layman. We all have strong opinions and it can get pretty heated. I avoid posting inflammatory posturing if I’m self aware enough. But I’m just as human and fallible as the rest.
And they think the real world is reflective of what we talk about here. It’s truly bizarre. I’m terminally online, unemployed ATM, but I still get there’s an outside world.
Take all the Trump voter hate for example. Do they not truly understand how under and misinformed most Americans are? Watch Mamdami interview Trump voters in NYC. Not ONE was what we picture as MAGA.
Also, since Trump 1.0, people refuse to talk politics. We’re at a party last month and talking about my new, weird, .22 rifle. I started to bring up a thing in the Big Beautiful Bill that was on-topic and the only thing I find decent in it. “NO. We’re not talking politics.” “I’m NOT. I’m talking about one thing I think is cool and will help gun owners.” Jesus. Now we gotta dance on eggshells.
under and misinformed most Americans are
Which is weird, because we are all here. It’s almost like it’s not that hard to find the truth, you just have to be actually invested in finding out what the truth is.
Is malicious ignorance malicious?
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, despite it being a false, curated, forced experience.
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.
Exactly.
Being exposed to people that believe differently than you challenges your own beliefs, and theirs.
When women started opening about the bullshit they dealt with, a lot of people listened. Some didn’t, but a lot of people did. Some men said “hey, you know, now that you mention it, there’s some kind of fucked up shit about being a guy, too”.
Anyone that had ever engaged with any real feminist theory or any facet of gender studies said: you’re absolutely right. Everyone else completely drowned them out.
The internet around that time largely had the response of “shut up, the women are talking”. Not all of it, not everyone, but it was very common.
Some men kept patiently listening, others stopped listening and started talking, others stopped listening, got angry, and started yelling. Some were never listening at all.
Now we have hordes of young misogynistic racist shitheels who may have been receptive to other points of view once but are now so firmly entrenched in their shiftiness it may never change. And they’ve found nice cozy places to whip their impotent rage into a society-destroying frenzy. It festered in critical mass, quietly, until it built up a level where it could burst open like a cyst.
The lesson here has nothing to do with gender, but highlights the importance of LISTENING TO PEOPLE, and being exposed to their viewpoints while exposing them to yours. Even the most vocal, selfish, pigheaded, racist conservative has legitimate concerns driving some of their shittiness: fear of uncertainty over the future, economic uncertainty, poverty, lack of education, fear of death. None of these things validate the shittiness but they do explain and they’re the levers by which these views change.
I mean honestly filthy boomer to a screenshot is kind of hilarious.
