Why does the culture surrounding Lemmy seem to be inherently negative and hateful?

LemmyQuest@lemm.ee to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 8 points –

I have accounts on various Reddit alternatives and have also had accounts on now-defunct sites. However, none have exhibited the same level of negativity as Lemmy.

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I've seen the same thing and I think it's a conversation we need to have.

I think it's because Lemmy is populated by people who did not like Reddits changes. We are malcontents by definition, and holy cow does it show. And of course all the people that have had their Reddit accounts banned too.

I think everyone needs to take their tone down quite a few notches.

I also feel it's something that should be examined before too much more time goes by, as it was not like it is now right after The Day the API Died.

Everyone was very polite in a way I haven't seen since before everyone had useful Internet on their phone.

But it didn't take long to change. There was a small but vocal group that hated in Beehaw constantly for wanting to keep their space polite. There was another bunch that seemed offended that nobody was swearing and started to encourage it.

Just more and more things like that have crept in over the months. I get why mods have wanted to avoid the criticism of harsh Reddit modding, but Lemmy seems to have accepted that only being 3/4 as rude as we put up with in Reddit is still good enough.

As someone dedicated to carving out a hospitable and relaxing community for everyone here, it concerns me that there does not seem to be much curation of how Lemmy is growing.

We are technically decentralized, but certain groups are essentially operating out of specific servers. Much like the growth of real world communities, people come to where the action is and those servers will be the de facto Lemmy community which will spread our reputation.

I think World, ML, and other significant servers should start to actively take a stance on who we want to be. We can still welcome strong and dissenting opinions , but there isn't a need to treat each other poorly. Anywhere you'd go in person has varying rules of decorum, and I wouldn't mind seeing that take effect here.

It needn't be rigid or all at once, but we can work toward something we feel comfortable with as a collective user base and decide when to stop or roll back.

I just don't want to see the group of us as a whole turn into what we just left is all. I feel that would be a shame to squander what we've spent the last year building up.

Hello,

Thank you very much for your comment, I wholeheartedly agree.

At first we wanted people to join, so we were more lenient. I guess it is now time to protect the space, and not be afraid to take sanctions for people who are straight up rude.

Exactly. I'm not out to crap on anyone's good time, but like being a decent person in real life, it ends when it starts to cause other people a bad time.

I don't feel we're gaining anything of value by allowing ourselves to behave poorly. I'd like to see things in News and Politics for example focus more in direct action and campaigns we can take part in than posting ragebait type articles that get everyone mad. There's no shortage of other places we can go for that.

Say, instead of saying the president is allowing oil drilling in a supposed protected place, let us know who is supporting or opposing it, what groups are doing what to fight it, etc. All we get now is "it's Republicans doing it again" or "this is how Democrats are getting nothing done again," the same comments we've heard a billion times that don't do anything but work us up, no matter who we support.

We don't need to pretend we're happy all the time or spend all day watching our every word, but we could put our energy to better use.

I don't think it helps that most of the content and communities on here are primarily doom scroll content. I don't even look at the all feed because it's just depressing and upsetting to go through.

I think it's this in large part. Lemmy's users are by and large migrants from Reddit for various reason.

But also, this place exists as an ideological alternative to Reddit more than a technical one. The API-pocalypse (API-calypse?) and enshitification and shameless money grabs to inflate stock prices were the final straws for a lot of people but it's no secret that there are a series of positions and interests that are (assumed to be) shared by all the current Lemmy users.

As Lemmy grows its instances will continually have to determine who, what, and what beliefs and practices are welcome there

But also some people are just jackasses and need to argue, and they come into contact with people who want the same thing.

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