I came here around the time the rif app shut down, and the general vibe I get from this place is much more negative than when I joined. Is Lemmy growing more toxic or is it just my imagination?
Check your communities, and what instances they’re on. Not all are created equal. lemmy.ml tends to be pretty wacko unless you’re of their particular ideological alignment, lemmy.world is very very large and thus has a very very large number of obnoxious shitheads compared to other instances. On the other hand, beehaw.org is intentionally and pathologically positive. I also find lemmy.ca quite friendly, though I might be biased.
Can confirm some asshole on .ml is chasing around my comments wasting both our time, isn’t that right mistermodal, you incel loser.
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Lemmy users are much more entrenched ideologically than an average layman. We all have strong opinions and it can get pretty heated. I avoid posting inflammatory posturing if I’m self aware enough. But I’m just as human and fallible as the rest.
Well, many of us are on the spectrum whether that be ADD, ADHD, Asperger’s, or some other form of autism. Helps us to be highly technical and computer savvy, doesn’t help so much with attempting to reframe “right and wrong,” for most of us.
Unfortunately the very entrenchment, ideologically speaking, that these particular “character traits” cause most of us to have, are being celebrated as “immunity to propaganda” in the media. The reality is that we have an innate sense of right and wrong, and that shit can get skewed all over the place in your formative years. The only remedy I have seen for this is the person intentionally exposing themselves to other cultures.
Someone more self aware than me!? How dare you! /s
lemmy.world is very very large and thus has a very very large number of obnoxious shitheads
Yeah? Yeah, you think so? Obnoxious? Yeah? You sayin’ there’s obnoxious shitheads round these parts? That what you’re sayin’? Just wanna be clear! Well you’re wrong! Lemmy.World isn’t large at all. The whole fediverse combined isn’t very large! Not like my penis! Can’t believe you said Lemmy.World is full of obnoxious shitheads! Why would you think that? Can I have $20? Your mom gave me $20! Heyyyoooo!!!
Is lemmy.ml is the second largest instance? Or at least rapidly growing? That would explain why it feels this way.
.ml is the instance run by the developers of the Lemmy fediiverse software, and they themselves are tankies. Do with that information what you will.
Do with that information what you will
Hey, some of us made our accounts when this was the Lemmy instance.
o7
Some of us joined much later when the apicalypse happened.
Huh, TIL.
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I see a lot more assholes from .world and .shtjstwrks
.ML peeps are either chill or really cringe depending on how militant they are.
Hi 👋
The majority of shit stains I see are from .ml while .world is a close second.
It’s just .works, really.
.ml stands for Marxist\Lenin afaik. And the mods\admins take it very seriously.
Does it not?
Since they were the first they used to be the biggest, however they are declining.
Check your communities, and what instances they’re on. Not all are created equal. lemmy.ml tends to be pretty wacko
“Hey y’all, anyone feeling hostility on Lemmy”
“Yeah, let me tell you what, fuck those fuckers over there. They fucking suck and I hope they rot.”
Like, how do you not immediately block everyone on lemmy.ca after reading this hate?
I also find lemmy.ca quite friendly,
Sure, if you ignore the assholes who pop into other communities to take a colossal shit on them.
Bro they just said “tends to be pretty wacko”
That’s like, really mild. You might need to get some thicker skin.
I’m sorry if my post offended you.
Is that what you think happened here?
The irony of your stupidity and judgement in that post is hilarious.
I wouldn’t call beehaw pathologically positive. They just seem to bee some very nice people that caught to create a community of nice people. It’s not a pathology, it’s a common understanding.
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If you’re following them around, that’s not living rent free in someone’s head, that’s just being weird.
The whole idea of the phrase is the one living rent free is just enjoying their life while the OTHER person obsesses about them.
If you’re the one doing the stalking, it’s the stalkee that’s living rent free in your head.
You weren’t tagged and still showed up to prove OPs point. It’s not rent free when they’re being stalked by a fucking weirdo basement dweller.
I’m browsing all and you guys are telling your daily ghost stories. I have blocked all of the meme communities where you repost stuff from reddit, so most of what comes up is this or world news, and I don’t need to explain its political bent. You have to realize this comes off as very forced and melodramatic to people on some level. Your being completely unable to take a joke is just icing on the cake.
Daily ghost stories? Me posting memes from reddit? You told a joke? The fuck are you on about, lol?
If you’re suggesting that by saying “rent free” in response to someone outing you for stalking them is a joke, then we have very different definitions of what a joke is. It’s akin to a Republican making a dumbass comment and when confronted responding with, “it’s just a joke”.
You do not have a very strong case for stalking (who, the site itself?) by talking about something you federated with in a public forum. Remember, this is a website the owners willingly hooked up to another. This is like loudly complaining about a business while standing in front of it and acting like one of the customers is stalking you when they say something. It’s hard to believe you would say that sincerely. It’s more like an un-self-aware attempt at manipulation from a child. The internet moderation-attuned desperation to control conversations is palpable. I pity any coworkers you dare to express yourself to.
Do you have any other ways that you would like to describe my saying the words “rent free” as an unforgivable provocation? Let’s see what you come up with this time.
You’re deranged, man. Also wouldn’t he be the one living rent free in your head if you feel the need to check his comments daily? Get a hobby or something.
This is completely delusional. Again, I got here from the All feed. I clicked on this because I was curious what people were framing as “hostility” - clearly you don’t think you are being paranoid and hostile rn, which is extremely funny. You guys failed basic reading comprehension and totally freaked out.
Also, did you seriously not understand that “you” can be plural and nobody thinks you are posting every single meme on multiple different websites? Can you see straight right now?
There has been a noticeable uptick in new rightist accounts lately.
Instead of blocking people, I tag the bad actors in Voyager and have noticed that most of the toxicity comes from the same small group of specific people.
I’ve recently noticed a lot of new accounts which post a whole series of news articles and then get deleted. Notot fake news or conspiracies but mostly reputable sites. No idea what’s going on there.
Sockpuppet accounts selectively posting articles to sway a opinion about a country or person/s?
If they’d post links to hit pieces or sites such as RT maybe.
An example right in this thread
That person is complaining about political axe-grinding seeping into every corner of every community. Yes they used a mild caricature of anti-Trumpism but this isn’t what I’d call a “rightist.” Although I am on the left, politically, I frequently argue with people here who are even further to the left. I don’t think chanting about seizing the means of production is… productive, and I say so. This probably makes me a “rightist account” in some people’s eyes. I’m also a bootlicker because I don’t advocate for lining up all CEOs in front of a firing squad.
This is actually usually the case
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Exactly, it’s not just lemmy, and it’s not just the US either.
Essentially it’s late stage capitalism, the root of all our recent discontent in the past 30ish years. Enshittification of everything…
The Americans are getting hostile… And I can’t blame 'em.
I’d be really curios to see some sort of study done on this. I mean, it’s not just americans and most of the west is not insulated from america, either, at least not online. and you don’t know from talking to someone online where they’re from. At the same time, there’s rising fascism and neoliberalism bullshit in europe, too.
I’d love to know how much of it is people getting antsier in general because they’re in a shit situation and how much it’s ‘infectious’ from talking with people in shit situations elsewhere, spreading bad vibes. Is this also happening in the chinese web? How about other countries that are more politically/economically aligned with the west but culturally less part of the english speaking web?
There has to be some sociologist out there somewhere studying this, no? But i wouldn’t know where to look. if anyone knows of something along those lines, i’d love to hear it.
What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, kiddo.
Are you aware that there are people in this world that have a severe medical condition which causes them to be that way? My mother for instance is one of those people. She is a truck driver that has bad knees and a bad back from driving the truck but you probably do not care about that case either. Oh well I am not one of those people I am 6’4" 245lbs and I exercise every day. I would love to see you say something like to my mother in front of me. Probably never happen though you are probably just an internet tough guy. I doubt very seriously you would say that to someones face. Just my thought.What do you think. Oh I am sorry you probably do not have a brain. I on the other hand will be happy to buy you a plane ticket to come here and see if you have the nerve to say that to someone I know.
What the fuck did you just say about the God Emperor of Mankind, you little heretic? I´ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Space Marines, and I´ve been involved in numerous secret raids on Chaos, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in Plasma Warfare and I´m the top Inquistor in the entire Imperium. You are nothing to me, but just another Xeno scum. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of wich has never been seen before on Terra, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that heretic rambling to me? Think again, fucker. As we speak,I am contacting my secret network of Vindicare Assasins across the Emperium, and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You´re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that´s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in CQC, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the Imperium of Man, and I will use it to it´s full extent to wipe your miserable ass of the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have know what unholy retribuition you little ‘‘clever’’ heresy was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn ´t, you didn´t, and now you´re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you, and you will drown in it. You´re fucking dead, heretic. Extermanatus upon your hive world.
Haha baby killer
No, but I do actively block any community designed to rage bait like news, politics, and faith
This is the key. You are not required to engage with the rage. Block people, block communities, block instances! Curate your mood and don’t give space in it to things that will poison it.
For sure. I posted content on selfhosted for the first time and got called a “filthy boomer” because it was a screenshot, then people basically told me to grow thicker skin went I complained. Why be better than reddit huh? Guess people just want reddit 2.0
I would actually compare it to Slashdot 3.0, but your sentiment stands.
Look, unless you have functional code included in your comment, or are Richard Stallman, it’s just not worth reading!
I mean honestly filthy boomer to a screenshot is kind of hilarious.
Maybe they’re not telling us that the screenshot was taken with a Nokia and sent to email over their sms to email bridge?
Was a simple screenshot of a Discord announcement since they didnt have any links
Yeah, I’m gonna stop taking screenshots and use an analogue camera to capture my screen, then run to the photo printing shop, stop by the hobby store for some tracking paper, and track the photo. Scan that bad boy, and Bob’s your uncle!
Now what would I then be called by these keyboard warriors?
Probably a hipster.
Shit. You’re on to me…
“Why can’t everyone just be nice to each other all the time” is what lead us to where we are.
I’m not arguing for being an asshole but when you force everyone to be kind all the time online you get people that are empowered to and motivated to wrap up abhorrent shit in a pleasing package. Racist dog whistles, selfish political propaganda, etc.
I’m not saying that applies here but I DO think it’s important that people are allowed to be assholes online. The internet really started its descent when people started putting bubble wrap on everything.
You’re free to engage or not to.
People have become so used to echo chambers and safe spaces that they forget what things were like when they didn’t exist. And it was better.
You SHOULD be encountering assholes online and encountering opinions you disagree with regularly, because that is the real the world.
Toxic positivity is how you get the worse shit. If you can’t call someone else a fucker and move on then there’s too much protection for the truly deranged.
There’s a large gap between being rude and being Hitler but many places online seem to forget this and treat all forms of negativity as equally extreme and it just results in the worse psychopaths who understand how to mask to have the loudest platform.
I think part of it at least is reaching a critical mass.
Lemmy was definitely a collection of relatively like-minded geeks at the start. Even when we disagreed on issues, we all agreed that we needed to work together to make the community grow.
Now that it’s grown to a respectable size, there are more dissenting opinions as well as less tolerance for dissent; and more to the point, there is space for absolutely vile content that used to get choked out. Now to stop this sort of thing, the ‘old-timers’ are more likely to say "shut the fuck up, sit the fuck down, and behave!!!’ before they can get a solid foot hold.
Meanwhile, the worst of those people are feeling both entitled and persecuted, and shouting their garbage louder than ever.
This happens everywhere that gets to a certain size. I remember when reddit stopped feeling like a secret community and more like a warehouse.
Of course, there are other reasons that people have mentioned below: The world is tired, worn out, and PISSED OFF at the half that disagree with them. The president of the United States has broken every rule of diplomacy, grace, and civility that people tended to follow in social life. Social Media has made it far easier (too easy) to dehumanize people and turn them into a one-dimensional pastiche of their posted opinions.
And we’re facing the destruction of the planet, genocide, and the global resurrection of fascism.
The world is getting worse, I’m afraid. I really wish it wasn’t true and I spent a lot of time emphasizing the good to my mom before she died; but honestly, it’s getting worse.
Well said, thank you.
i.e.: Eternal September amplified by the host of knock-on effects stemming from overshoot and the resultant insecurity
I haven’t noticed much, but I do have a lot of people blocked…
The most important thing for me is that the amount of truly thoughtful comments I’ve seen is higher than on any other platform I use.
And discourse is generally more respectful. Disagreements are handled in a constructive manner at a much higher rate than on any other platform I have used.
Yeah, it’s nice to be able to have actually constructive discussions with people I don’t agree with. That’s rare on the internet.
I’ve blocked a few, makes a huge difference.
It doesn’t feel unique to Lemmy to me. I’m seeing higher levels of hostility in just about any environment broad enough to include left and right wingers
I don’t know that I’ve noticed a real uptick. But in the past couple weeks I have noticed a few ridiculous right wingers and I blocked most of them since seeing their bullshit is bad for my mental health.
Yeah maga place looks like it’s up to 21 idiots sharing a brain cell now, whereas I think it was 12 a couple weeks ago. Wonder if there’s a critical mass for those fucks or if they’ll find lemmy too progressive to stick around. I guess they could just circlejerk on their own instance.
I noticed it a few months ago. It feels like a sudden, inorganic shift. Either all the good people have trickled off to a better basin, or someone or something has influenced Lemmy users
Pretty sure Lemmy got on the influence bot radar some few months ago. Comments are now deeply negative and constantly drumming the 2FA and guillotine remedies to every complaint. Interactions outside of this kind of content I still find Lemmy users to be magnitudes higher quality than Reddit.
Bots warning us about using better account security sounds pretty wholesome actually
Everyone should keep in mind: Besides the darkened tone of the world seeping into nearly everything, this place is probably crawling with shit-stirrers of a slightly subtler flavor than your typical obnoxious troll.
This effect might be from lemmy users in general hating everything about the world right now, or it might be the work of bots and/or illicitly paid humans fronting as the “general left.” The type that reflects your viewpoints pretty well but injects their comments with a little something extra, inflaming you or depressing more than what seems reasonable, maybe pushing you a little closer to the edge, whatever that edge may be.
We (or at least I) have no idea how much astroturfing is happening in the comments. It’s probably best to take anything that seems peculiarly provocative with a grain of salad.
Grain of salad?
I don’t think this place is big enough yet for my conspiracy theory to make any sense, but if I was the CEO of a company like Reddit and I wanted to prevent users moving to Lemmy I would make a bunch of accounts on here and spark as much drama and infighting as possible. And there’s been so much of it lately, whether it be callout posts on different instances or people concern trolling under posts, that it does feel so inorganic. When you come on here hoping for a better place and you see users writing mini manifestos calling out another user’s character flaws, it is extremely offputting.
I have noticed more people inferring things from a small part of a reply and rather than read and try to understand it, they insted get upset about it and reply back about what they think the op said.
It’s what comes with more users. As people you don’t know start writing in styles you’ve only seen parroting arguments you disagree with, the urge to shut things down increases.
Plus, there ends up being more stuff to read in the same amount of time, which leads to shallower reading to cover it all.
try to understand it
Why do you think they can’t understand it? Are you saying their stupid? All lemmy users are stupid except you? Look at smarty mcsmartpants over here
/s
People are desperately combing through comments, looking for something to be outraged about. That’s what happens in echo chambers - when the outgroup isn’t around to be attacked, people start eating their own. It turns into this insane purity spiral where nobody is ever good enough.
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“Both sides are equally bad so voting is dumb. Don’t vote.”
The lack of perspective from leftist that say that. Sometimes I’m not sure if they are fed posting.

The lack of perspective from leftist that say that.
Those ain’t leftists. They’re enlightened centrists. I.e., poorly disguised fascists trolling and sowing dissent.
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Were you not here for that same year when anyone who said that democrats shouldn’t be supporting genocide was accused of being a russian chinese trumper republican tankie bot? Oh, and as you accused in your comment just now, a child.
democrats still have no business supporting genocide. It’s shameful and there needs to be accountability. None is forthcoming.
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I was just saying that there was also hostility and accusations against the anti-genocide left from the pro-genocide center.
Which continues to this day. Not gonna start accepting genocide just because you don’t like hearing that it’s wrong.
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Genocide is not a new thing.Genocide is not a new thing. It’s always been around. And no matter how much people cry about it, it’ll continue regardless. It’s always been around. And no matter how much people cry about it, it’ll continue regardless.
Gloat.
I think it’s still like that, actually.
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They still are but I’ve learned to love the block list and use it judiciously with people who go beyond good faith arguments of any sort.
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No, fuck you
/j
Jarcasm?
It was just a soke ;)
Jargasm
I hate that writing this comment made me think of jar jar binks from star wars
Can’t wait for the “Jarjargasm” category to pop up… in places.
Posting that question here, in a subreddit that says no stupid questions! How dense can a person be? OP is a cunt.

















