I’ve mostly left reddit and switched to beehaw, but I posted on somewhat of a niche tech-related subreddit today since there really isn’t a community for that here yet. And wow, I got instantly downvoted twice and the first comment response was rude and hostile. All I posted was a feature suggestion for software that I thought would be useful and that a good amount of people would like based on other feedback I’ve heard. This is not the sort of topic that should be controversial or aggravating, and it wasn’t like I made an ignorant post suggesting a feature that already existed or otherwise wasn’t well researched.
This type of instantly hostile response has happened numerous times on reddit for various different topics, but I just haven’t posted for a while, so I forgot just how shitty it can feel. It makes me really appreciate how friendly and respectful the community is here on Beehaw and on Mastodon. People seem to have good faith in one another similar to how the internet used to be in the old days.
Have you had similar experiences with Reddit and similarly opposite experiences here on Beehaw/Lemmy?
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This is the biggest reason I left reddit. It made me never want to post anything, and reading the comments section most of the time just made me angry. People are much nicer here!
I didn’t realize how afraid I was to comment or post until being on here. Almost low-key traumatized. Really has been making me question what social media can ‘bee’ and how many people resort to lurking when perhaps they’d rather engage
I totally get it. When you get that kind of reaction to just trying to contribute or you read a toxic comments section, it makes you wonder why you should contribute or be there at all!
Right? I’d see a couple of notifications pop up in my browser and my first thought would be “Oh, fuck, what did I say that pissed everyone off this time?”
It’s actually be kind of hard to turn off “reddit mode” when I comment here; I honestly didn’t notice how I’d started to enter every comment thread with defensiveness and verbal aggression/threat displays right off the bat, as an anticipatory maneuver. There’ve been a couple of times where I re-read something I commented here and said “Oh, that was an unnecessarily aggressive way to phrase that. I hope nobody sees it before this edit goes through.”
Also more willing to engage from what I’ve seen
Have you had similar experiences with Reddit…
Countless. It’s one of the reasons that I am devoted to Beehaw.
one of us
yeah, it’s a lot nicer here
The hostility was exhausting and constant, but equally so was knowing I would have to bake in a bunch of qualifiers into my post to try to head off common bad faith arguments at the pass. When you’re doing this for the very real problems you’re having just existing in society as a minority, it’s absolutely soul-sucking. Even if you know it’s by design, you’re still just one person dealing with a lot of weighty garbage in real life who then has to deal with redditor JAQing/name calling/strawmanning the minute you try to talk about it to try to offset even a fraction of the emotional burden.
I am pretty happy to watch reddit die. Less happy when I think about how this can further distill the abuse within a lot of current discourse.
Come to think of it, I too, notice the difference. How nicer people are on here.
Here’s another thing that I don’t miss about Reddit. I am glad there is no downvotes on Beehaw, there is not this constant passive aggressive downvoting which was really frustrating.
But yeah, I guess that what I don’t miss the most is it’s comment section. I don’t miss the constant hostility for no reason. I don’t miss the whole comments section being filled with masturbating monkeys every time there is a women in a picture. And I know, it sounds like I’m a fucking white knight or whatever, but that used to bother the hell out of me!
Every time, EVERY TIME you would see a photo with a woman as the subject of the photo, the common section would be unbearable to read…
Same thing, I also don’t miss seeing a video or a picture with a black person on it and seeing that the comments section has been locked. And I don’t even have to wonder why, I know why.
I don’t miss the frets that are political in nature, talking about things like racism or queerphobia, going on there, and just seeing a locked comment section, with giant, sprawling discussions, of just deleted comments after deleted comments, with entire threads being nuked.
…I guess I just don’t miss the bigotry and people being all around assholes.
You know, I’m writing this, and I’m just realizing how horrendous that place was, actually.
I guess, overtime, you end up getting used to it, or maybe, just getting numb to it. And you should never get number to seeing stuff like that, that’s not normal. Bigotry, people acting like assholes, it should be outrageous, it shouldn’t be just something that you’re so used to seeing that it makes your roll your eyes. But I know that here, when I see a bad take, when I see someone behaving like an ass, it sticks out, it jumps out of me. I see it immediately, and I get frustrated with it. Because I am not numbed to it, because it isn’t common here.
Maybe I am now in a bubble, in a safe space. Maybe. Screw everything else, I’m not leaving. I like it here. Real life is already stressful enough for me to be annoyed by people on Reddit.
I thought I would miss it. I don’t. I haven’t returned ever since I made an account here. The only times when I check read it, is if I’m looking for something, like, I have an issue with a game, something like that, I look it up on my search engine, and often, I would get linked to a Reddit thread about it. But that’s it. Other than this, I don’t go on it, I don’t interact with it, I don’t log into it. And I don’t miss it.
This was like leaving social media for me, when I left Twitter and all of that, good fucking riddance.
I agree with OP and the general consensus of the comments here.
This may sound corny, but all I really wanted to add to this thread is…thank you. Thank all of you for being so kind. So human.
I really hope the positivity of this platform continues on, as it’s truly been a bright spot slipping through the dark clouds of the internet.
Rock on, Beehaw. Rock. On.
Honestly, Reddit was really good at the start, but they took too long to react to communities like: FatPeopleHate TheDonald FemaleDatingStrategy The child porn reddits
These people stretched their tendrils or worked around the admins, and eventually, were deeply engrained in reddit.
I’m not even sure why they didn’t react immediately. But, I feel like allowing these communities to fester for years had real life consequences too.
I don’t like that we can’t make communities in Beehaw ourselves, but maybe, it is neccessary until later to prevent communities from showing up
I’ve read that Aaron Swartz was tolerant of free speech in any way shape form, thus the acceptance of anything under the sun.
Off topic. But is your username an FFVIII reference?
It absolutely is. 🙂
Between that and my Griever tattoo, I guess I’m a bit of a fanboy.
Oh man. I love that game. At this point I play through it a couple times a year. I don’t have any tattoos. But I have a plan to get the Jumbo Cactuar Triple Triad card tattooed eventually.
Have you shared your tattoo on the Final Fantasy community? I’d love to see it.
I haven’t, but perhaps I should head over there…
Honestly, that’s what generally happens the more public an online space becomes. The loudest most obnoxious people ruin it. Once Reddit wasn’t a bastion of niche hobbyists and power users, and open to everyone, the chances of Dunning Krueger showing up grows exponentially. Also just assholes in general.
It’s also sort of built into the system anyway. The mods are cronies to the despot. Many are good, but its not the good ones that do the damage and piss people off. They run their subs like petty little tyrants, and it rubs off on people.
I agree with you, I gradually became more lurky because the interaction with others was terrible. I hated talking to people.
So far on beehaw it’s been overwhelmingly positive, and my dumb questions didn’t receive snarky remarks or vitriol. Sometimes, people just want to ask a question and create a discussion. That’s mostly me, I’m sure I can find a lot of answers myself, and usually do, but every so often I just want to talk about something with someone, so I’ll repeat a question which was asked 2 years ago.
Besides, asking the same question again could lead to a different discussion anyway. It’s terrible to tell people to “just Google it”. Yeah, they could do that, but its such a negative response. Could easily just say “Hey I found this link on Google, here you go. Try looking into x, y or z and include that in your future searches, let me know if you have any other questions”
Not to mention, the “just google it” comment is also terrible even if it was made in good faith considering how bad Google seems to have gotten at providing actual useful search results. Hence, why so many people add “Reddit” to the end of their search query, just making everything full circle. You’re providing the content people are googling by making your post.
I find it interesting that while I don’t yet have many posts/comments on beehaw yet, I find myself significantly more motivated to interact with the community than I ever did on reddit. I think it’s that the community tends to legitimately want to have a conversation rather than seeking validation or wanted to feel superior to others.
It’s terrible to tell people to “just Google it”. Yeah, they could do that, but its such a negative response. Could easily just say “Hey I found this link on Google, here you go. Try looking into x, y or z and include that in your future searches, let me know if you have any other questions”
I felt that to the core. I’m a mid-level software engineer (and by no means do I claim to be an expert on anything) and I sometimes find myself getting frustrated with some of the newer developers when they seem to continue asking the same question to me. That being said, I don’t think I’ve ever been deliberately mean to any of them, maybe just short with them if I’m under a lot of stress (which is something I’ve been working a lot the past year or two).
Telling someone to “just Google it” is very deliberately being mean or rude just to be mean or rude. I’d rather have an empty thread that no one replies to over being talked to like that. No matter how green or nieve someone may be, they still deserve some level of respect.
I ask forums AFTER I’ve Googled, I don’t want the first answer on your search results either, didn’t you read my post? I already tried that:-(
It got so bad on reddit that I would hope my posts wouldn’t hit the front page of a sub, and often when I’d comment I’d immediately disable inbox replies.
Someone in another community linked an archived reddit thread, and the unnecessary hostility and toxicity were readily apparent since I hadn’t been on reddit for a while.
What’s scary is how I started to feel numb to it and even feel like I started to become like that myself.
Oh man, that’s intense. I know what you mean about that kind of hostility fostering more hostility even within yourself. It’s not a good environment for anyone.
i have quit reddit multiple times over such behavior. everyone is looking to become the most upvoted dunk on there
I can relate to that a lot. I usually also comment on niche subs with a help question. Not sure what it is about reddit that makes the common redditor act like a hostile person with a superiority complex. It’s very irritating, like they do the opposite of touching grass 24/7 and hate you for posting.
Beehaw and Lemmy are much smaller so that’s also why the quality of the people here is just overall better. the moderation style in beehaw also helps. It also helps me feel like I can freely comment the way I want to.
Everyone tries to be overly snarky there out of trying to be “funny” and get upvotes. That’s one of the things I dislike the most about that community; it feels as if people try to hurt others to benefit themselves, all for the sake of internet points.
Same experience on Reddit. Any comment saying “I’m having this problem” would usually get hostile responses. A post about a laptop hinge on my machine that failed in an absurdly short amount of time had people saying, “You don’t know how to open your laptop.” The worst IME were the cell carrier and manufacturer subs. People on those were consistently just vicious.
It depends on the instance in my experience. Beehaw is a good one though, I feel.
For reasons I already pointed out several times (and which I don’t mind pointing out again), I had severe anxiety and rejection sensitiveness when I wrote comments on Reddit, fearing their responses. Sometimes those fears were correct, and sometimes don’t, but the fact that I suffered those things was enough to feel myself in danger. Twitter, Reddit, all was the same shit regarding interaction with other people.
Since I joined the fediverse and became more active, those fears were lowering. That, and the fact that I’m taking medication for my ADHD. But a good environment and friendly human interaction help too.
