

You down vote if you disagree or dislike a comment
I’ve always known that a lot of people used it this way, but I thought most people were on the same page that that’s a misuse of the feature. I’m sad to see that I was wrong.
The purpose of downvoting (or voting in general) on any platform that offers it is for you to indicate that a post doesn’t contribute to the discussion. It’s a soft knob for you to say others won’t find it worth reading. If you believe that use inherently aligns with indicating what you already believe then that’s what makes people see Lemmy (and Reddit) as elitist and hive-mindy, because that’s elitist and hive-mindy.

You put into words thoughts that I’ve been unable to for a while.
Like, I read this and I see how someone makes this argument, but I feel fucking terrible afterwards. Sure you haven’t said I’m a rapist, but you’ve said you’ll treat me as though I am. You can’t expect men as a demographic to agree to this argument if it requires society to assume they’re shitty people, at which point, why is it even being made?
The worst part I feel is that there’s a lot of incel types that conflate feminism with sexism, which we’d like to school them by pointing them at a dictionary. While incels are generally shitty, we can’t ignore the fact that this argument is telling them their behavior doesn’t actually matter because we’re going to act like they’re rapists based solely on their malehood anyways. (to be clear, this is an explanation, not a justification)