Reddit slowly became filled with hatelocked
I have been on reddit for just about 12 years now. Something I've noticed over time is just how hateful the place has become. A complete outrage machine. Every single sub became filled with it. I've filtered so many subreddits over the last few years, it's insane. I don't know enough about this place to be sure, but I do hope it doesn't become the same type of echo chamber of anger.
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Anger is an extremely effective way to spread an idea.
Posts which incite emotion in you make you engage - upvote, comment and share. CGP Grey (a redditor himself) made a great video about this a while ago.
We can only hope Lemmy users are more self-aware, and choose to engage with things they enjoy more than things they hate. But given human psychology, it's unlikely...
If Lemmy stays just niche enough to keep the hoardes of angry internet users away, I think we might just have a goldmine.
Reddit didn't always use to be such a cesspool of hate. I think as things grow and attract the masses, they attract the type of people that are only on the internet to be driven by their emotions. The up/downvote system solidifies that too.
My thinking is that you can have a campfire with 20 people around it and still have meaningful conversations. Put 1000 around that same campfire and shit will go sideways.
I keep saying this even as former reddit users keep wanting the same damn karma system here :( this isn't reddit and I don't want it to be. I hope lemmy's friendlier culture survives the influx.
I think the old forums had it right and I hope we can see that persist here. Don't need karma or algorithms to surface content, just mid-size/smaller communities and good moderation.
I'm mainly lemmy.world right now and have a few federated subscriptions, but I imagine at some point I'll branch out and spend more time on the local feed of some other instance because I'll be chasing that mid-size population.
I wonder if the increase of porn will affect this. From past experiences I got the impression the people and/or the way they communicate changes when it becomes a platform to search for fapping material. Either because it attracts a different type of person or because it changes interaction between users.