I’ve been doing this for some time now. Even if it’s something that I consider important.
I just don’t see the value in participating in a discussion that I have seen countless times already where the same points and arguments happen over and over again. One that I know wilI turn ugly. It’s exhausting and I’ve decided to just opt-out.
Yes. Especially Lemmy. People here love turning a discussion into an argument on shit they don’t know much about. Subsequently some of the most brazen and obvious strawmanning, wild out of field assumptions, and gaslighting I’ve seen online—usually with a lot of not reading full comments or disregarding context or 90% of the comment in general. You can constantly call them out on it and try to direct discourse back onto topic instead, but it’s almost always futile. For them, it was only ever a competition of feeling superiority of some kind.
I’ve never seen anything quite like it online. Reddit was mild in comparison.
So glad to see that others are noticing this too… The hive mind effect also feels even stronger than it used to on Reddit, probably because the audience here is less diverse.
Without knowing the data, I’m pretty sure I’m politically and ideologically quite aligned with much of Lemmy’s overall user base. Still, often when I point out misinformation or misconceptions even if they “don’t fit the narrative” of what I broadly believe, I get downvoted without anyone even responding with a counter argument. It’s extra frustrating because I know I probably agree with the opinions of those people downvoting me, it’s just that I believe there’s more nuance to many topics that I would like to discuss, but unfortunately the Lemmy audience acts as if everything is a black & white situation.
This. I am a leftist, but not the kind who thinks Lenin’s self serving ideas translate very well into the modern world. Which in Lemmy terms, apparently makes me a fascist.
More recently I seem to just be a marked man anywhere on .ml, after questioning some seriously petty moderating decisions.
When you’re somewhere whose TLD is “Marxist-Lennism” (or some other conjugation thereof), then of course you’d be targetted for being an outsider unless you’re literally communist, lol
Lemmy is honestly a pretty awful intersection of censorship and extremism. Reddit is shit because of the monetization push, but Lemmy is honestly far worse when it comes to just normal discussion being randomly removed for stepping outside a very particular orthodoxy.
I disagree. The thing about Lemmy is that if you don’t like a specific instance, you can just block it. I spend most of my time in the danish instance feddit.dk and there we have plenty of debates and discussion. I think the beauty of Lemmy is that it no echochamber can reach beyond a specific instance. So yes, there may be extremist instances, but I just don’t go there. I stay where the debates are sound and in good faith.
As admitted by some, Lemmy is a haven for outcasts who are insecure and in need of some sort of validation. They’re clingy about the things that provide it and touchy about things that threatens it, thus projecting an intensity in their interactions.
I see it as coping with helplessly living within an unfair reality. We need more zen in our lives.