Sounds like Lemmy’s already shaping up to compete with Reddit!

OK I’m kidding - I think you’re kind of right, Lemmy can get that sometimes, but much like Reddit, it’s only really on the bigger communities that you always see on the front page, smaller ones are pretty chill in my experience.

I guess it depends on what you’re seeing hostility towards, but I will also say that with Lemmy’s status as an open source social media trying to compete against the likes of Reddit and Facebook, I find that the people here are naturally more protective of it from the sort of thing you’ll see on other sites. Also because of Lemmy’s status, it also attracts a LOT of political discussion, which has always been the most likely thing to descend into hostile crap flinging.

Oh, I should also mention, please just block the whole entire .ml instance. I can guarantee that it will improve your Lemmy experience and your mental health. I did it in my first few days here, and I sometimes forget just how bad it was before I did block it!

No it just feels like a young forum.

1. Default behavior is to allow emotions to drive thoughts, which immediately inform behavior. Times are very hard for people around the world, so it stands to reason most people online are going to be in a negative frame of mind to start with. Anger going sideways and getting projected or transferred where it shouldn’t, and solves nothing.

2. Bots have definitely made their way to the Fediverse and like anywhere else their whole point is to foment disagreement and fights, as well as pressure people with a flood of information implying the majority opinion is far right, pro-AI and that sort of thing. See above, but it behooves them to create a stressful atmosphere since stressed people are angry people and angry people don’t think clearly.

3. Every platform tends towards certain patterns of behavior and I am inclined to agree on the specific pattern here. It’s almost always about something personal, including political beliefs. I have seen some incredible comments and comment threads based upon someone reading whatever OP posted as if it were a personal attack or a political press conference. People also seem here, like on tumblr a decade or two ago, to think that fighting with random people online is equal to real political action. It’s not. It never will be. Worse, it seems a lot of people feel insecure about their intelligence because man do these arguments stink of someone trying to prove how smart they are against, again, some random person they don’t even know.

tl;dr, people are angry but don’t know how to handle it in a more mature manner, or they’re deliberately fomenting discord with bots because they were paid to do so, which honestly circles right back to the beginning because why do that?

I do think it’s still better here than on Reddit though. I hope that this remains the case for years to come. I had some bad shocks on Reddit which caused me to cease engaging there. Same to BlueSky, honestly. I follow some people who know what they’re talking about, but… the keyboard warriors are just too much.

Pee pee poo poop

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.

Its raw internet. You gotta put effort into customizing it to your taste.

Same as with Reddit, it probably depends what community you’re participating in. But i find most of Lemmy to be mostly reasonable like the communities I participated in Reddit. And mind you, I don’t have any particular Lemmy communities I frequent in.

Naa its mostly fun to me! And the people i interact with seem like good people for the most part.

Classic internet warriors, but if you don’t care about how much upvotes and downvotes you have, you are golden. Banned from a community? Probably not a place I would want to hang out then anyway, even if it is my topic, the community is simply toxic and it’s better not to be there. Just be yourself.

Not at all, actually.

Lemmy is rather small, you might be bumping into the same 3 users everywhere.

Absolutely. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve been burned at the stake for this three times over already.

I prefer it over the reddit way, tbh. Every comment section there is just filled with gifs and jokes, and you have to scroll miles to get a reasonable and sound answer to what OP was asking. It’s especially frustrating when I’ve searched for an issue online and reddit pops up in the search results, and all responses are just bad repetitive jokes.

Its simply the old internet: A highly autistic place filled with highly intelligent (or at least, that is what they think of themselves) people with tons of StarTrek, inside jokes and oh so much petty grudges.

As someone who was around at the time of the Usenet and the end if the BBS era I love it, but it is a bit of an acquired taste…

Initially yes, the most active communities are filled with incredibly pedantic and holier-than-thou users that are more than happy to call you a drooling idiot for not agreeing with their logical opinions.

Once you start subscribing to communities you actually enjoy and block comms that allow users to muse about how 14 year olds have a “consenting nature” (looking at you !shitposting@lemmy.world), Lemmy becomes a lot more useful and inclusive. There’s a lot of communities that are more active than it seems. I suggest going to the communities page and subscribing to just those comms that interest you.

Also be the change you want to see! Start posting and commenting without worrying about what the average Lemming thinks of you. We can build the type of communities we want instead of allowing this place to become another 4Chan.