I’ve noticed that there seems to be an emphasis on being extremely serious at all times, as if every single comment is a PhD dissertation being evaluated or something. There’s like this weird, subtle one upmanship about every little thing and a lot of people are very nitpicky and judgmental. It kind of takes the fun out of being on here, TBH. Or am I the only one experiencing this?
As someone who’s trying go find my place online… Having tried Mastodon, Lemmy, mBin, nostr, bsky, wafrn, etc. Lemmy is by far the most hostile and it’s not even close. Yes there may be more trolls on nostr. But it’s obvious trolling. Not serious hostility.
Honestly, Lemmy feels like an echo chamber. I only rarely see people disagreeing with the OP or being willing to accept different opinions without judging.
On other networks, I don’t sense as much anger or judging based on single statements. I once made an unfortunate and unclear statement on Bluesky and while the immediate reaction from some of the other people in there was definitely negative, it was more of a conversation and it actually ended up feeling like we all ended up moving on. Lemmy feels more like a place where you say something that’s borderline centrist and you’ll be slaughtered in bright daylight and hung out to dry.
But I may just have been browsing the wrong communities I guess.
I’m not saying I’m not an asshat at times. I am human, after all. It’s just that on other networks, I feel there’s more opportunity to have an actual debate instead of being lynched by a thousand anonymous community-beloved personalities.
Mastodon has some weird etiquette I don’t quite understand. Maybe it’s because I’ve never really used “microblogging” or much social media outside old forums. Most people seem to use it for self-promotion. If you respectfully disagree on some part of someone’s post or just try to be helpful and add more context, sometimes the OP gets upset (I’ve heard the term “reply-guy” mentioned on there before, and also seen “experts” pulling the “do you know who you are talking to” card when others try to add context). There is little discussion and interaction from what I’ve seen; mostly just posts without meaningful replies.
Politically, Lemmy seems to lean left-ish. Mastodon leans liberal, but there’s more variety than Lemmy (I guess since interaction is low). I haven’t used Bsky, but I saw when Stephen King announced he voted for Platner he got dogpiled (dunno if that means Bsky leans establishment Dem that would prefer zionist and corporate Janet Mills or what).
I hear you about Mastodon. I want to use it and find “my people” there, but it’s unfortunately just eery quiet, and I don’t see a lot of conversation happening. Most posts just have zero replies, even.
I did get a shockingly nice set of welcomes from people when I used the “first post” hashtags or something. That was cool. It has the potential to be cozy!
It’s weird, because we’re naturally social creatures, so what part of the “culture” drives such a specific lack of engagement, I wonder?
But also the etiquette can be a bit confusing. I’m on a gamedev oriented instance, so they’re like “Hey keep it on topic please.”
…So I guess it’s not a place for my cat pictures or random life musings? And yeah thanks to the modern nature of the Internet, most people take “community” to mean “Networking opportunity to promote (or recruit for) My Thing.”
Even weirder, I notice engagement falling off here on Lemmy but…damnit I got thousands of comments racked up. It’s practically a writing exercise space for me at this point lol. But it feels less personal.