Does anyone else get inbox fright?

It doesn't bother me at all. I made a comment, someone replied, there is no need at all to continue the discussion unless I want to.

It's important to remember that you don't owe it to anyone to engage in a comment fight. If someone decides to be grouchy and try to pull you into an argument, you can just ignore it and move on with your day.

I post a lot of memes across Lemmy, and you'd be surprised (or maybe not) how often someone goes out of their way to be upset and attempt to bait me or others into arguing with them. I think some people just enjoy being mad, but I'm not one of them, so I've decided that it's not worth the mental energy to engage with that.

Talking to people is why I'm here so I am the exact opposite

If you don't want to get sucked in, don't respond. You don't owe anyone anything on here.

Only when there are suddenly a lot of unread messages.

What did I say?

What's in your anonymous inbox can't hurt you irl. If they're right, or make an argument that convinces you, you can always say so. If they're personally hurtful you can block them. Meanwhile reflect that their nasty comments say more to the rest of us about them than you.

Imagine being able to walk into a bar and block anyone obnoxious from interacting with you, wouldn't that be peaceful....

Edit to add: you're probably going to get more posted comments from people who don't experience inbox fright than from those who do. So keep in mind there's a circle of silent friends supporting you!

This was a thing on reddit too. Don't think that Lemmy is immune to group think or even bots intentionally farming divisiveness. If anything, the inconsistent moderation by design makes it even more susceptible.

I try to tell myself to just roll my eyes at pointlessly negative comments, throw it a downvote if I think it's not contributing anything useful, and move on. Otherwise they'll drag you to their level and beat you with experience, as it were.

Learning to walk away and not waste your time engaging with people that fundamentally make your life worse is a valuable skill.

You are not obligated to engage with everyone that tries to goad you into a pointless argument.

Used to. I realized that the worst that happens is that you pissed off some dickhead who writes bad words to you. You don't get hurt or die or anything. It's just some words.

At first I didn't like the fact that my Lemmy client didn't support notifications, but it turned out to be the greatest thing about it. It basically helped me cut down on social media time.

sees 1 new notification oh cool someone responded to something let's see what it is

5 notifications hmm. Well something I commented on must have hit the front page / trending

22 notifications oh god what community decided to take issue with me now... (after blocking a few instances, the amount of gif and emoji spam on my inbox has drastically reduced)

I get this exact feeling, sometimes to the point where I'll block an entire community. I work a lot with people, and I speak regularly in front of large groups, but I've never experienced the kind of aggressive comments in real life that I do online. It gets exhausting. And I know that I can block people, but it's also hard to distinguish between people who are just having a bad day vs. someone who's an exhausting troll or debatebro. I usually can't tell the difference until after the struggle session, when I'm exhausted from arguing against ... usually against points I didn't even make lol

Edit: Just saw someone on a .world community who is repeatedly misgendering a trans person. I totally think "inbox fright" is valid, and the people who think it can just be ignored are not the ones who are in marginalized groups who are frequently targeted by hate. Even a good ally will get inbox fright, because these users will turn on you too, if you call them out for their bigotry.

I had this when I was younger, too. Today, I don't mind if someone posts or messages me nasty stuff, I either ignore it completely or just block this person and move on. There is no use getting frightened because of some internet stranger who decided that today is the day to type random bullshit to someone he doesn't even know.

What's a struggle session?

Inbox fright is an interesting term. I certainly know and can relate to what you are talking about.

It doesn't affect me too much I don't think, but I know the feeling you are talking about. And I wonder how related or intersecting to/with social anxiety it is.

I have this with checking emails at work. I hate when I have a new email and don't know what it's about to say.

If I've posted once in a day, and it's gone against the grain in a particularly emotive topic discussion - then yeah I can't say I've not said "oh here we fucking go" when I've seen the little badge with a number on it that's not 1, because that's usually when I've posted a YouTube link and the bot picks it up.

In fairness, 70% of it is a valid dissenting opinion to my own and I've got the opportunity to learn from someone else's view, even if I'm still not convinced.

29% of the negative comments are just fannies just picking up a point which isn't entirely clear and then interprets it in a way that's logically and factually disingenuous to prove some sort of point, and I can count on one hand in the last thirty years or so the number of times that I've rattled someone's cage to the point where they feel the need to PM me death threats or offer physical violence - by that point I've already figured out that they're either deeply hurting and it's manifesting itself in that way, or they're deeply unwell and it's well outside my skillset to help.

Lemmy overall is much more open to debate than Reddit, and the downvote button is used less of a "disagree" or "fuck you" button than it was on the latter site.

Man, I get excited when I get replies. Means someone thought something of my comments, be it positive or negative.

Yes. Mostly people on Lemmy are positive, but every so often some nutsack turns up.

On here, replies and reactions make me excited. Generally speaking we're all comrades of some degree here. On a cesspool like I often get dread over the chuds who could potentially harass me

Maybe on a messaging platform with IRL people, but never on somewhere like Lemmy. If anything, I really enjoy seeing that number go up! 59 unreads right now (I never check the box, the only way they go is replies).

I belive in standing on your square. I post something because I belive in it, and at the end of the day it's just text on a screen. Like other ppl posted you aren't obligated to response.

I kinda felt this way when I used reddit.

Less so on Lemmy, and pretty much never on Hexbear.

Yes. When I've just been shitposting, I look forward to responses. If I've made a few serious comments, I dread that I've angered the hivemind.

I know that it makes no sense. But I've been honest, and there's some part of me that's afraid of negative feedback.

I used to. Don’t give a flying shit anymore. Sometimes people agree with me, sometimes they disagree. Fuck it, whatever.

Only in my email inbox, and it's not so much "fright" as "anxiety".

Not on discussion fora like lemmy and reddit, the stakes are much lower.

Oh yeah. Big time. Stems from a broader social anxiety, in my case.

I used to on reddit back when it was a game of Reddit 50/50 if you were going to get a normal comment or gaslighting attempts from a nazi.

Yes- less from my lemmy inbox and more from my irl inboxes, though. Because no news is good news.

I stopped reading my inbox.

Yep, that's me. When I still actively used reddit, I felt this with every message, was always afraid I was off the mark, or didn't read the room, or said something wrong or ignorant.

I just turned off notifications and ignored my karma count to just post through it. Though, I usually said things that either never got any votes, or that people seemed to generally agree with. And I was relieved whenever I did notice the numbers going up instead of down, and occasionally worked up the courage to check responses and continue conversations, but usually nothing.

This has really not changed since moving to Lemmy, and really just persists through every website. It sucks, I mostly just don't comment.

I have the unfortunate distinction of being accustomed to people's resentment towards me at this point. I am no less timid, but it's routine now. However, putting myself in another's shoes, I make clear what you fear is unlike me. There are a million ways to debate the semantics of judgment, but only characterization can stand above the rest.

I've tried to counter this by cultivating a Russian roulette mindset when opening my replies. Fuck it, open it, we'll all find out

I used to have such fear, especially when I was younger. not just an inbox fright but also some sort of "reaction fright" meaning that I was scared a lot about people's reaction in a face-to-face conversation

Not me.

You can hide the notification icon, and check unread in https://lemmy.ml/inbox when you want to.

Ublock Origin Dashboard -> My filters, add: lemmy.ml##a[href="/inbox"].nav-link

Yes.

I think I have a mental disorder where if people online are angry at me I actually start introspecting a lot rather than blowing it off. Sometimes I have something I want to say anyway and emotionally prepare to eat it.

Maybe at work. Getting an email at work means... well, work.