why I ended up leaving Reddit today
I know you all who have been here longer than 3 days are probably sick of the whole "leaving reddit" post trend here, but I figured this would be a good thing to talk about because I didn't really see it mentioned too much. A lot of people have spoken on here about poor moderation, the whole API debacle, a sort of downward cycle in terms of content quality etc. Plus, when I did bring these things up on my now-deleted reddit account, people mostly resorted to the whole "You hate capitalism yet you exist in it" argument. I also wrote a sort of summary for this in my application, so whoever read my application doesn't really need to read this. I basically said the same shit just shorter.
But for me it was just because people got kinda mean? What I mean is that over the past 4 years (probably accentuated by the pandemic), it felt less and less like a place where you could just talk to somebody. With every post I made, it felt like I was in a competition not just in terms of karma but in terms of making something that pleased as many people as possible. Every title needed to be perfect for the grammar people, every fact needed to be perfect for the fact people, everything needed to be as apolitical as possible.
And even with all of these unwritten rules, I came to realize that there really are just two types of posts or comments on reddit. There's jokes, and then there's debates. Jokes ended up being a little more lenient in terms of unwritten rules so I think that's why there's so fucking many of them on reddit and it's almost unavoidable to escape the pit of sarcasm in reddit comment sections. But with debates, it felt like with every comment I made, people came in expecting me to either agree with them or refute a point they made. And if I didn't make "a point," I wasn't contributing. I couldn't just go "Yeah I like Metal Gear Solid V, too," I had to go "Yeah I like Metal Gear Solid V, too, and the guy you're responding to is a fucking moron for not doing so," or "No, you're a dumbass, MGS4 is way better." I remember one time I joined into a conversation and somebody actually replied bullying me for not "contributing" and for posting useless comments, as if I were somehow wasting their time by not trying to argue with them.
And what's even worse is people just don't seem to know how to be nice about it? Obviously with the internet, people are going to bully you at some point but on reddit it was just all. the. time. Every post I made, every comment I made there was somebody who didn't like it and felt the need to tell me about it by insulting me or my family or my cat. Everyone was mean. It felt truly impossible to disagree with a person on reddit without insulting them, because that was the culture that was accepted there.
While I don't use TikTok, I ended up stumbling upon this series of them by way of YouTube Shorts called "Average Redditor..." by The Slappable Jerk and I really think they perfectly encapsulate what it's like to browse reddit, and I hate that it took me so long to realize that's what my experience was like. I kept watching them and going "Nah, nobody's like that," but then the more I used reddit the more I realized "Yeah, it's kind of everybody including myself." As you can see in the video I linked, the guy is either joking or debating and he's not nice about either one, and frankly that's kind of how every single one of my reddit experiences has been so far. I can't really remember the last time anybody has been nice to me on reddit. Maybe that's my fault and my brain is suppressing me from realizing it, but I do think it's a problem inherent in the system if I'm seeing other people doing it to each other also.
I got banned from reddit as a whole a week ago for reporting a guy for calling me a "spastic loser" after getting angry when another guy got angry for me not reading some deeper meanings in his 1 sentence post. I think that whole really weird run-on sentence should tell you all you need to know about my reddit experience these past few years. Funnily enough despite it breaking the subreddit's rules against insults, it was "report abuse."
I ended up hearing about Lemmy while browsing today and I deleted my account just now. I saw probably a couple dozen posts at most. It seems kinda slow here. But you know what I didn't see at all? People fighting. Calling each other names. Insulting each other. I saw debates and arguments but I straight up didn't see the same kind of debates and arguments that I saw on reddit. On Reddit I could probably go 3 or 4 posts without that happening, but even posts of 12 comments will always have rude jerks on them. Now I'm still new here, and I have heard that there are toxic and xenophobic instances of Lemmy that are on massive blocklists, but Beehaw so far has been nothing short of just plain joyful. It's so wonderful to see people online just. talking. to each other. And while I see people swearing (I did it myself in this post), it really just haven't seen it directed at other users on here. On reddit it seems like there's such a big culture of if you're gonna insult somebody you go for the deepest-cut insult possible. On here I just haven't seen that.
TL;DR: People on reddit are mean. Beehaw (and some other instances of Lemmy I signed up for) are far from that.
/rant
I think the lack of global/account karma will help this in a way. Reddit was practically full of performers, doing tricks for treats. Jokes were easy tricks. There's no real value in posting garbage posts/comments when there's no long-term benefit for the user. I think we'll see a lot less cruft here, especially as people deprogram themselves from that habit.
I don't think people debated primarily for karma, but maybe with the rest of the performative aspects gone, people will stop feeling pressured to show off to others - publicly dunking on someone is another way to perform for an audience and receive validation points.
I am going to miss seeing my total karma go up after a zinger of a meme I created, though.
updoots=chuckles
updoots < chuckles
There have been several times I’ve wanted to post on here and haven’t because I’m worried about how people are going to treat me for a single post. It’s hard to come out of that thinking on here and actually participate.
Well for what it's worth, you can't be downvoted on Beehaw. Plus there are way more people here who aren't dicks than there are on reddit, which helps too.
Cool - but I'm not on Beehaw (I'm on lemmy.world) to add to the confusion, and I see here both an up and down arrow...
Well there are just WAY less people here, and the barrier to entry is still pretty high - dicks (and millions of good people) are still filtered out by this.
Fun fact, when interacting with Beehaw, users from other instances can indeed click downvote, but it only updates on the client side, no downvote ever actually gets cast. if you're on Android, the newest version of Jerboa no longer shows the downvote button in (most of) the places where it's disabled.
I just installed Jerboa yesterday and still see the down vote button on Beehaw server content. When clicked it notes "down vote disabled".
This is what it looks like on 0.0.34:
If your're on 0.0.33 then you might want at consider adding the IzzyOnDroid repo to F-Droid as it gets updates faster.
Good idea. Looks like it is just a matter of close timing on my part.
I've only seen one instance of an argument where both people had 0 point comments all the way down. There's a lot of positivity and thoughtfulness here with the early crowd - I hope it keeps up
You remind of people playing Deep Rock Galactic for the first time. When you 'die' one of your teammates has to come and get you up and with a lot of new people they apologize profusely for getting downed as if they're scared that I'll yell at them or something. It's like they have PTSD from toxic experiences on other online games.
It really sucks to see that, but it's also really cool when they realize it's okay that they died and they can finally start just enjoying the game.
Rock and stone!
I was also scared of doing the same thing but I just really had to rationalize that this platform isn't reddit and therefore it wouldn't be as hostile as reddit. I was scared to comment anything on the previous platform because of the same sentiments. This place is very chill tho
You will be fine. If you do post and I see it then I will definitely comment :D
So far what I have seen will a post in worst case just be up voted with maybe 2 or 5 votes. I posted for the first time the other day hoping to start off the pev comms...but sadly all my pev ppl seems to be on reddit :(
You’re suffering from PRSD (Post-Reddit Stress Disorder). That’s a joke, but not really…
I’m a reddit refugee, too. Just the other day, I misinterpreted a response to a comment I had made here on Beehaw. I (wrongly) assumed it was negative, so I explained my reasoning. The person who had responded replied, kindly explained that it wasn’t a criticism at all, and even talked about how they hated the nastiness on reddit.
How often did the average reddit user have a positive exchange like that? I can count experiences like that on one hand, over a span of years. This time, it happened my first week.
It’s soooooo nice to just be able to talk to people. “Be(e) nice” isn’t just a slogan; it’s the actual vibe around here. At this point, I wouldn’t go back to reddit, even if the people in charge came to their senses. The tech and the rules are a lot less important than the community, and I like this community MUCH better!
I wouldn’t go back either. It’s just so much nicer here. I’ve also started following rss feeds and the information is just higher quality and more interesting than the stuff I saw on Reddit.
This is not terribly different from my experience. I was getting pretty worn down by the hive mind effect that some subs developed and how badly you could get downvoted or yelled at if you went against the grain. I think Reddit had become perhaps TOO big. There was just so many people on it that it felt like competing mobs.
I think that sites like Lemmy will start to take off, we just have to give them time. And I will need to figure out mobile with this site, cuz I’m on my phone right now and I can’t read any comments under a post 😂 I’ll get therr
The app called "Jerboa for Lemmy" works great for me on Android.
I just wanted to bring up something I hated about reddit that no one mentioned, just to get it out of my system; ask a reasonable question? Prepare to be mass downvoted. Like why? Who is downvoting this? How did that offend you? I'd understand if they were framed weirdly or completely unrelated to the issue, but a reasonable on topic question shouldn't get that treatment.
I love the tendency to get down voted for actually giving a correct answer. I sometimes replied to people who got down voted about this both sad and amusing situation. Especially if I liked their answer.
This is very true.
Sometimes we learn bad habits, and when someone points out that the way most folks do it is actually wrong - they get voted down by most folks who want to justify that, because they're doing it wrong, then the suggestion is offensive.
Yeah i hear that
It is comments like these that makes me miss reaction buttons! I want you to know I laughed out irl when I saw your comment! And I can't show that with out commenting. But writing only "hahaha" or 😂 feels a bit weird haha. But now you know 😂
I liked the “You hate capitalism yet you exist in it” ... BS. Whoever said capitalism should decide policy, run the government, or our lives is nuts. It is up to us to define the rules under which capitalism runs not the other way around. Besides when essentially there is only 1 Reddit... we are talking about a monopoly not a competitive business anyway and a century ago this was decided to be bad. You do not have a true competitive market unless you have say 7 or so mostly identical players anyway... but of course we let everyone consolidate down to 3.
I agree but I wasn't referring to it literally, lol. It's just the type of thing people say to paint you as a hypocrite when they have no other valid arguments against what you're saying. Basically it was "you hate reddit so much then why do you use it?"
The kind of statements that might make sense if you just ignore all other nuance.
I've been commenting on here tons that I feel like reddit has morphed into every thread being an argument or a meme-off. I used to love just shooting the shit in the comments of a funny/cool post. It's been gone for years and so far it's what I like most about Lemmy. Way fewer comments sure, but like I'll go back and forth just talking with way more people.
I'm not at all concerned about the fewer comments. Most of the comments on reddit were just re-hashes (purposeful or not) of other comments. Like there's only so many things you can talk about on any one topic.
Been using Lemmy for a couple months total. So long as Lemmy continues to grow, these threads remain full of positivity as they mostly are, and as long as instance operators don't get tired of it, I say new users should keep posting about what they really like here kind of as an introduction.
I fart in your general direction, your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries!
Really though, I was part of two private subs that were invite only. The smaller community and how users were "recruited" made a huge difference. I could post things there that I wouldn't on public forums, mostly because of the increased anonymity, but also because there wouldn't be any nastiness.
In wise words of Commander Data: "I realized, it is the struggle itself that is most important. We must strive to be more than we are, Lal. It does not matter that we will never reach our ultimate goal. The effort "
You now understand the importance of free software just like you already knew the importance of free knowledge. You don't need to force yourself into shapes you don't fit, but you can help move us all into a better future for everybody.
Hmm some might be excited to see some new content coming up...
Not too hasty I hope.
I'm more of the school that believes we need to create our alternatives to evil empires.
You know - Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, Quora - whatever your addictive poison is.
Once similar communities (popular now on Reddit) are mirrored in the Fediverse, then users should find it easier to migrate.
So Fediverse jokes might start being better than r/jokes etc.
Only time will tell, really, whether the toxicity of Reddit will come with us. I'm guessing that people are people, and we'll just have to see how it pans out.
This is such an insightful and thoughtful post. It sums up exactly how I feel. I'm so over the negativity that I encountered daily on Reddit. Lemmy is a fresh start.
A few years ago, while searching for answers about how to live a better life, this simple and kinda sappy thought came to me. Maybe it seems obvious or sentimental, but I use it to guide my actions every day: Shape the world with love.
That's how I'm trying to contribute to Lemmy. And it seems like most other users are, too.
There is another aspect that you didn't get into; I am on a lot of subreddits where I attempt to help people with questions. r/zfs, r/ceph, r/homelab and r/datahoarder are ones I frequent among others where if people have questions I and others attempt to help them. This is neither a debate nor humour, and is one area where Lemmy still has a lot of catching up to do... not least of which because the specialized communities don't yet exist.
I haven't left Reddit yet... I'm still watching and waiting but it IS nice to have Lemmy and Tildes as alternatives (though I'm more digging Lemmy so far).
I think those communities will eventually arrive on the fediverse. If anything, building the community yourself and gently guiding people to the alternative could help fence sitters who don't understand the full implications of reddit's new policies for the 1% of power users who actually create most of the content.
90% are lurkers, 9% will comment and upvote, while 1% of users generate content for the others.
Wait, we were the 1% all along?
come check out https://lemmy.world/c/metalgearsolid if you want
I was constantly dragged into multi comment long debates on reddit where people would insult and attack me and my opinions. Like you said, Lemmy is much nicer.
hello and welcome :)
I agree with most everything you said. My personal take: all the Karma upvoting/downvoting stuff shaped community behavior to a sort of drastic degree - you either say something pleasing/sarcastic to the community and get upvoted or you got buried with downvotes for injecting an alternative viewpoint. After a while, I found myself going along with something just because a post had a massive number of upvotes… not realizing that the majority of readers very rarely go past the top 3-5 comments on a thread. So whatever was on top was usually the highest voted, and it was most often a sarcastic response to a legitimate question someone posted.
Yeah, if only HN was a lemmy node…
Re: The Average Redditor on YouTube--Wow, it must take quite a bit of energy to be that sarcastic all the time. Think what wonderful things could be accomplished if all that energy was redirected towards gardening or nuclear disarmament. Makes me think of the Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons.
I fortunately did not have any really bad experiences on reddit, but the one thing that really annoyed me about it was all the e-bling that seemed to adorn every page. Coins! Karma! New shoes for your avatar! Like a casino. I tried to use ublock to eliminate some of the distractions, but then I found that blocking some annoyances also would block stuff I actually needed to click on, like from drop down menus. Libreddit was a godsend, at least for browsing and searching reddit, because it removed all the junk. I can also remember having trouble doing really simple things like cutting and pasting or rewriting sentences in something i'd posted. I don't know how many employees reddit has--probably more than all lemmy admins combined--and yet for all that they have a site that just doesn't work all that well, for me at least.
agreed, the amount of awards available was kind of baffling and also a little strange considering most of them did basically nothing. The only "useful" awards were gold and platinum because they gave the other person premium. The others were pretty much a total waste of money.
And the avatars, bios, banners, etc. made it seem like it was gravitating a lot more towards facebook. I know most of the lemmy instances too, but at least it doesn't auto generate one for people who opt out.
i didn't notice the lack of swearing until you mentioned it, that's so bizarre lol. i didnt even think about it but it's pretty cool :p
Indeed - to be clear I don't have a problem with swearing, but it definitely adds to the overall better vibe over here.
Regardless of what happens with Reddit I intend to stay.
Constant swearing is like a replacement for cleverness. It wears thin very quickly.
When I see comments saturated with swears all I can think of are tweenagers who just realized they are out of earshot of their parents. I’m not offended by the swearing, just bored.
:( Me, who swears like a sailor.
I do like to think that is swear at things and not people.
I was also surprised by how rude and mean people can be on reddit. I guess it's mostly teenagers or people living in their moms basement.
I love Lemmy so much.
Lol that's an odd thing to say considering all the videos online of extremely rude racist and bigoted adults of all ages. Everyone has the capability of being horrible people. I am a 39 year old woman who spent too much time on reddit and became so defensive at all of the derogatory verbal assaults and depressingly ignorant replies that I stopped caring about being nice and helpful and became critical and harsh.
You should stop using that form of social media so you can remain a nice person.
I almost entirely posted on smaller niche communities and didn’t really pay attention to bigger ones. It was mostly relaxed. I remember once going onto r/entertainment and making a mild criticism of a show. I returned to find my comment like -70 and with essay length replies explaining how my opinion and lack of enjoyment were “objectively” wrong (Reddit comments did seem to love declaring certain opinions as objective). It was wild.
Jokes and debates ey? Sounds like Facebook 😵😵
If lemmy gets big enough, it will be just like that. Your problem is not a Reddit problem but an Internet forum with nested threads problem. It's much harder to hyperfocus on a comment in a flat comment structure.
Yeah, that's 100% it. On the Internet in 2023, everyone needs to be right or win with their comment. It's off-putting when you've been on the Internet longer than Gen Z has been alive.
Huge egos in some people today, despite no life experience whatsoever, and no accomplishments.
Yep, there was a reason long time redditors used RES for the browser and third party apps to attempt to better curate content.
This is one of the reasons why mastodon doesnt have re-boosts, only boosts and replies.
Another "I know this isn't the point of your post" comment, but that specific "Average Redditor" video rubbed me very much the wrong way.
I was partially raised by a physically and emotionally abusive grandmother, and that level of sarcasm the Redditor character shows is honestly far better than what that woman deserved. I hate how any backtalk to a grandparent is just framed as flagrant disrespect and ungratefulness, without any sort of contextualization. Calling Grandma a simple woman is fair play for Grandma calling you a worthless criminal waste of space, threatening you with knives, and breaking multiple kitchen utensils over your head at the age of six. Money can't buy off past abuse, and lord knows my grandma tried that shit too once I was too old for her to physically abuse.
Sure, Redditors are mean, but that example is extremely mean to survivors of familial abuse as well. The YT comments are even more of a triggering hellscape, it's sad because it's turned me off of checking out the rest of the series, which by raw description I probably would've enjoyed.
On a more topical note, I'm grateful for the welcoming nature of this community, and I'm hoping that keeps going as it keeps growing.
I honestly just picked whatever his newest video was. Didn't realize it was mean to the abused. Sorry.
You're fine, I don't want to come off as if I think it's your fault or anything. Hell, it's not even the creator's fault either, it's a dynamic that's common in media and real interpersonal relationships alike.
It's just kind of amusing that it illustrates both the hurt people hurting people thing and how from the outside, it's easy to write aggression off as unjustified entitlement when context is missing.
Man, your comment almost made me cry at work. Thank you for sharing, I never realized the connection between toxic communities and verbal abuse. You've made me realize I've been letting my own bad history influence my perspective. I've been hard on myself for having the same feelings as Bermuda towards reddit. I couldn't tell if the community really is as bitter and short fused as it felt, or if I was being too sensitive. I thought feeling bad about what strangers said on the internet was weak of me. I realize now I'm probably just being hard on myself. People can be major assholes, and it doesn't make you weak to notice their bad behavior.
I find myself less guarded on beehaw in some ways, and more guarded in others.
Firstly, I feel I can be more authentic. Discussions always seem to be in good faith, and I often come away learning something, reconsidering something, or just being more aware of other viewpoints. Whether I participate in the discussion or just read it.
It's just more enjoyable overall.
Which leads me onto how I am being more guarded. I am really trying to consider other viewpoints before even engaging with posts or discussions.
And I dislike that this is an effort for me.
But I like that I have realised it, and I now get to make an effort to be better.
I think with the lower userbase, it's much less easier to say something others would find abhorrent or rude and then sulk away into the shadows of millions of other users. People can see you and go "that's that person who said some fucked shit." So for me at least I've found myself being a bit more guarded, but I think that's a good thing.
Good point. But perhaps I'm wrong- I think most people don't pay much attention to usernames here (or on Reddit for that matter). Lemmy makes it easier to change the display username iirc? So even if such was the case, I could quickly change mine. It would end up just like reddit, in which unless you bother checking a user's profile you probably won't know who they are or what they've said last month.
I guess that makes sense. Still, the smaller community still has me watching my words.
You wrote about this in your application? What application? Do some instances require an essay to join?
Beehaw requires an application to join. No, it wasn't an essay in the sense that this post is kind of an essay. They just asked me three questions, and I wrote about a paragraph (5 sentences or so) for each question. This is basically what I wrote for the first two questions, just with a lot more words.
In the FAQ for beehaw they said if you don't write enough of a response then you won't be let in, but I was let in within about 10 minutes of making it, so I guess 5 sentences was what they were looking for.
That’s really interesting and wasn’t my experience at all. I wonder what other requirements are out there for different instances?
Lemmy.world just has a single question, asking why you wanted to join. I think the purpose is primarily to prevent automated account creation for bots. I gave a 3 sentence answer and was admitted within a few minutes.
Lemmy.World has one too now? That was pretty quick I saw the other day a post asking if we shouldn't have that because of bots. Lemmy.world is growing really fast!
Oh it had a question when I joined 5 days ago, but I guess they got rid of it since then. I’m guessing manual approval became unsustainable when 8k people joined in like 4 days haha
Yea, I joined 3 days ago so that could be it haha