I went back to Reddit this morning. Yeah I know, but I just wanted to check the place out after all the blackouts. As I was scrolling through my typical stuff I was down voting dumb things as is pure habit and it struck me… after being here only 2 days and not having any down vote button, what was just a pure habit suddenly felt a little dirty.
Those people I just down voted didn’t do anything wrong I just didn’t agree with them. But by down voting them I’m basically doing one little part in actually silencing them. It felt bad. In fact all of Reddit felt bad… like, it was just such a habit and I was ready to go back, but once I did it wasn’t as good as I remembered it.
All it took was 2 days away using a different platform that gives me essentially the same stuff I want to read and this no down vote thing somehow has resonated with me more than I would have thought. I actually went back and removed the down votes. Those people have the right to feel how they do whether I agree or not. I don’t need to silence and invalidate people over things that are so incredibly minor.
I’ve decided I will use Reddit only via Google search if it has the content I’m looking for, just like any other webpage, but I think Lemmy, and Beehaw specifically, are my new home. It no longer feels like “the alternative.” It feels like a place I actually chose to be. I wrote in my application that I wanted less toxicity in my life and I think that’s already happening. I’m really grateful to have discovered this place.
I really think it’s just a toxic culture thing. I’ve seen similar instances in people coming from places like League of Legends of World of Warcraft to other games or communities.
When you hang around in a toxic environment and the powers that be do nothing to curb that behavior, you begin to feel like you have to also be toxic in self-defense. It becomes your only recourse.
Then you go somewhere that’s not toxic and it’s like a culture shock: people actually get banned for bad behavior, other people aren’t nasty to you all the time, and you suddenly realize that you don’t have to be defensive.
I have a lot of hope for Lemmy. I hope it keeps growing and I hope people don’t just join the platform, but join the culture and contribute in positive ways. Reddit is dying and people need to let it and make something better.
This is exactly what I’ve experienced! I’m not looking to make any excuses for my time on Reddit but seeing the cause just laid out like that makes me feel… maybe not better, but differently, about why that behavior didn’t seem wrong at the time. I’m sure at some point early on I was downvoted and mocked and thus started the cycle of retaliation downvotes until it became normalized.
Then I come here to Beehaw and I can’t even downvote you. If I disagree, I have to actually engage with you. And in this instance at least, if I just treat you like garbage the mods are going to notice. That means if I want to engage, then it needs some thought behind it. All of this leans in the direction of starting conversations instead of silencing them.
It makes me very glad to hear that Lemmy has this effect on people! It gives me a lot of hope for the platform. I also came from Reddit. I joined yesterday, actually. Immediately, I didn’t miss it. I still don’t. I miss the resources I had there, but I’m not gonna wait around while they slowly bleed out.
But I did notice what you said here. The disliking something just because people didn’t like it. Reddit is infected by pervasive, toxic elitism and sophistry. I hope Lemmy does better in those regards, and your post here reassures me it will. Or that at least Beehaw will.
I remember playing Fallout 76 and being sooo untrustworthy of people out of pure habit after a lifetime of “toxic” games. People on there ended up being very wholesome. I didn’t meet any “lifetime” friends like some others did, but most people just wanted to give me stuff and give me good advice since I was new. They didn’t even have to, they just wanted to because I was new to the game.
That honestly makes me very happy to hear! I really hope that catches on in more games. A kind and helpful community is important for the survival of the gaming community as a whole, but doubly so for individual games.