Did you ever have that feeling on reddit of “I better word my post just right, otherwise AutoMod will take it down”? Some subs had such strict auto moderating that it was a crap shoot to post something. Not so here. I know there’s value in moderation, and I’m sure Lemmy/kbin/etc. will add more of it with time. But, for now, it was just nice to not be nervous when I was submitting a post here.
I didn’t post a lot but I was definitely anxious about commenting because if it wasn’t worded just right, someone would take it out of context and be offended by it or downvote it to hell. I remember telling someone that I loved their poems - downvoted. I corrected someone about the difference between ESAs and service dogs - cue arguments when they can just literally read the ADA (law). I apologized for getting something wrong - insults and talked down to. I also remember being told that latinx is what trans Latinos want people to use, I used it and was greatly talked down to and told I’m not a real Latino. It felt like reddit was just really hostile no matter what I did. There were many times I wrote a comment but then discarded it.
The secret to commenting fearlessly is to not read your replies. Most reply-thread conversations are people aggressively talking to themselves to feel like winners. The alternative to engaging like that is to embrace the tendency to self-talk, turn a sensitive thread into an essay prompt for yourself, and don’t look back, unless you really feel like getting in an argument that day.
Sometimes you miss good faith engagement that way, but if it’s important to keep that, you can add another point of contact.
This is what ended up happening to me. I ended up going almost an entire year without checking my inbox, instead I would only read replies by revisiting a thread and manually checking comments, and only if I was super interested in a reply or discussion. It was tiresome, and I basically ended up treating reddit as a journal for myself to gather my thoughts on a variety of subjects, to find out how I really felt. In that context, reddit succeeded, but so far, my lemmy experience has been much more social, while also being a place to sort my shit out.
Or read it but if you feel it’s being too aggressive just (try to) ignore it. Don’t reply and feed into their arguments, no matter how right you may actually be.
Debate bro culture is real. It has permeated every form of social media we currently have, and in time it will be here as well, if it isn’t already. The best thing to do is to figure out when people are being disingenuous when engaging with you, and if they are, ignore them. Of course that’s easier said than done.
You’ve got a bunch of nerds whose sole positive trait they ascribe to themselves is being smart, so they’ll do anything to prove that - it’s the only thing keeping them going. That was reddit.
Always remember that people on any social media platform could be intoxicated and replying to stuff. You can walk on egg shells and just absolutely piss someone off whose drunk and they’ll tear into you. They’ll never admit they’re wrong from embarrassment
My favorite part is when people would argue with your comments for things you never said. They would take an illogical leap from my actual words and get angry about it.
I think this was worse in the bigger/more general subs. I mostly stayed in technical/science-y subs and people would correct each other without too much fuss. But then the intent was usually to actually learn things and being corrected (sometimes incorrectly, leading to a bigger discussion) was just more opportunities for everyone to learn more.
I didn’t care about down votes I just didn’t want to get involved into an argument because I used to spend a dumb amount of time and effort rebuking some replies including searching for sources and making sure I was clear and would use well thought out reasoning and arguments like in debate class… it’s a waste of time. A waste of time and it just puts you in a bad mood and makes you defensive. I shouldn’t have to be defensive about common sense.
This is so true. The mocking and hostile replies were enough for me to not even bother most of the time