All depends on which app / UI you’re using I guess but it should look pretty much like Reddit almost everywhere. The only difference here is that there’s no grand total at the top of your profile like a high score. But when I was signed up on world, in the app I’m using you could see separate up and down vote counts for everything.

They’re really not meaningless though. For one thing, they allow moderators and admins to more easily detect trolls and bad faith actors. And on platforms or with add-ons that allow better tracking of vote history, it allows the user to more efficiently moderate their own experience, should they so choose.

Also, I think you’ve got to be kind of an asshole to not recognise that a little bit of validation from communities that you participate in is a nice thing to have and that downvotes can hurt to an extent, even if it’s not the same as getting physically slapped. And to be clear, I’m not pointing at you or anyone, I’m just riffing here. I haven’t even seen downvotes for a while now.

So yeah, I’d say they’re meaningless in a video game sense. You’re not going to win any prizes with them. But there’s a reason they exist, plus no one is immune to the effects of positive or negative reinforcement.

The way I see it, the slippery slope that we’re currently on is tolerating nazis and bigots.

Firstly the obligatory disclaimer that I’m not American, just someone that has been watching this unfold on the same world wide web that we all use.

Maybe I’m too radical but I would say fully. Whether they want a white christian nationalist country or just wanted cheaper eggs. Because that first thing was never a hidden objective, it was clear from the start. We had people who find secret illuminati pizza messages on bathroom walls take one look at Project 2025, an actual real conspiracy and go “doesn’t look like anything to me”.

So whether they’re true right wingers, conspiracy theorists, or people that closed their eyes and ears and hearts while convincing themselves that this was all about cheaper groceries; I’d say they’re all equally to blame.

We don’t need to reach 1M MAU, but having 100k would already be a nice improvement

Definitely agreed with this. And less always (understandably) angry political posters, more escapists that want to chat about movies, games etc. It becomes like that snake eating itself because people that want a break from real life come here and see nothing but the same 24 news cycle as everywhere else. And then, speaking for myself, searching up certain niche communities and finding them either non-existent or with 3 posts from 1 and a half years ago.

I’ve been thinking of porting a couple of my old review posts over here from my banned but not yet closed Reddit account. Just so that, for example, the next time someone visits the Ghibli community there’ll be 4 posts instead of 3.

And the Sonic communities are pretty disappointing too, considering I’m always seeing it mentioned in the wild these days. Makes me think (or hope) that there’s a lot of people like me wishing there was more activity in these areas.

Reddit is sadly still unbeaten in searching up a TV show that you enjoy and finding an entire community built around it. And those communities never took a lot of members. So it shouldn’t be impossible here.

So glad that free speech has been restored.

I dunno but I always get the impression that these fucking people that are too cool for school and need to loudly tell everyone how little they care about downvotes every chance they get, are probably also the people that go around using downvotes in bad faith and making the platform a little less welcoming for everyone.

My advice would probably be to just stay away from instances that are populated with the kind of people that use downvotes as a ‘disagree’ button or panic button to make themselves feel better when reading something they don’t understand. Those were always the worst people on Reddit that dragged the experience down for everyone. And it sucks that they’re all here too. And in a smaller pond, they’re going to be making a bigger splash.

I’d find a nice instance and / or communities to spend 90% of my time in and only actually go to places like Ask Lemmy in world when you actually feel like dealing with smart alecs and neckbeards.

Edit: and downvoting people for talking about downvotes isn’t actually funny, it’s just proof that you use downvotes for the wrong reasons. For the meme and ‘disagree’ button.

Something I’ve seen pointed out about Lemmy and I’m starting to notice a little bit occasionally, is that people love ‘answering’ questions by not really answering and grandstanding a little bit. Someone asks “is there a gen z community?” and the responses they get are things like “who cares about these generation labels?” and no answers to the question.

Here you ask why there’s a large amount of downvotes on a particular instance, and not what people’s personal philosophy regarding downvotes is, and yet the top answer is someone that came here especially to tell you that they don’t care and no one cares.

And these guys are gonna complain about people going to places like Bluesky instead of joining the fediverse. AskReddit was basically the gateway to Reddit for new users.

To try and guess at an answer, even though I’m new here and haven’t even seen downvotes for the last few days. I think that people are trying to keep a certain political atmosphere and not let trolls / right wingers / people who are “just asking questions” take over. So votes go hard in that direction. And also I think there’s probably a lot more of the types around here that’ll have a ‘discussion’ while downvoting every response they get from you, more than on Reddit. Just going by the sneering that comes with how some harmless questions are answered.

Yeah but what about the price of eggs?

No need to apologize, I’ve been getting worse as of late.

Not gonna judge because I’ve probably been somewhere similar before. I am not exactly who I was yesterday either. I hope that you make it through the other side of whatever is hurting you and start to feel pain free again.

I hope I’m reading this wrong and I truly apologize if I am but I’m getting pretty strong ‘asshole’ vibes here, much stronger than I would from anyone using the word “normie”, personally.

But either way, it’s actually good to know when words I previously felt were overall harmless can cause this kind of response. I may not be from the USA, or have come from a background where it’s such a charged word, but I’m on a platform that’s likely mostly American (based on the news and politics that come through ‘All’), so I will refrain from using it unless I find it absolutely necessary.

Which should be fairly easy to do, considering that I barely ever use it anyway and just thought that this would be an amusing conversation.

Yeah honestly it’s not that serious for me. Personally I’ve never even visited the front page of 4chan. It’s a word that’s been around since long before social media too, as far as I know. One other place I’ve seen it used is autism communities when someone is describing their feelings about fitting in, or not.

I feel like 4chan is a US-centric thing. And a niche one at that. So it’s a very niche US-centric thing to assume about random strangers on the world wide web. For a word that a lot of people probably use differently.

Doesn’t have the same vibes though. To me ‘normie’ has always been a little bit of an insult on top of just describing the ‘average person’. “Average person” is for when you’re describing statistics. “Normie” is for when you’re describing people that clutch their pearls and their bible when a goth walks past.

Yeah, I use “normie” occasionally and it kinda makes me feel like le edgy teen. But the problem is that I’m not sure if there’s another word that quite replaces it either. Sometimes it’s the only word that works in a particular context.

Apologies for the second reply. Just wanted to say that I checked out mbin and it’s probably more up my alley personally.

But, I still have a barely used Facebook account because a lot of people in my country are still on it. And I’m going to see if the rumours are true and try to spread the news about Friendica there, hopefully without my post getting removed or account being banned.

And if / when people from there give Friendica a shot, then I’ll give it a proper shot too with them. It’ll just be used for different things than what I use Lemmy for.

Basically I would be spending much more time in Lemmy communities, and I thought Friendica could be something extra on top to supplement it.

So I would like to be able to browse instances and communities and choose what I want to see and participate in. Either by subscribing or curating a feed or two. I don’t see an obvious way to do this from Friendica yet. It seems like here I need to scroll through a pre existing feed and curate it from there.

But please bear in mind, I haven’t explored extensively yet or read the link you shared earlier, although I have saved that post so that I can get back to it later in my day.

And another small thing for me (that can be easily fixed by styles and apps) is no apparent dark mode.

Made a quick account there to check things out and not sure if it’s entirely the right fit for the particular use case I had in mind. It’s very much inspired by Facebook obviously, which I was expecting but from what I can tell from a quick look, not the kind of Lemmy integration I was hoping for or imagining.

I’m going to keep an eye on this place though, so that I can start encouraging friends and family to join once it’s easy and attractive (in terms of content) for anyone to join.

Maybe I should ask here. The reason I’m here is because I’m looking for answers to this. As far as the integration with Lemmy goes, how does it work? Is there a ‘Friendica’ instance that anyone using that platform would be posting and interacting from? And in that case, does it play nicely with the other instances?

I’m pretty new here, probably moving to another instance at some point anyway. And I’ve been thinking of looking into these multi purpose platforms that play nicely with others. Because why not have more features and tools to play with, even if I don’t use half of them. It might also fill in nicely for features that are missing here like multicommunities and posting to your own profile.

Also heard of mbin, although an in app search for something like “mbin” seems pretty useless here.

I hear your point but also it might be a mostly first world thing. So kinda like comparing local country music artists to Michael Jackson. Maybe other 3rd world denizens can chip in but here (so this is purely anecdotal) but in my corner of the world, we watched movies and series and played games and shit like we would’ve pre social media.

Personally I’m not even sure what Tiger King is (and not that interested in finding out either, if I’m being honest) and if I go outside and ask around here, I’m not sure how many answers I would get. Possibly I’d get an answer once school is out and kids are around, I guess.

Edit: just to add, I hope this doesn’t go the same way as the time I was trying to explain to Americans that the NBA really isn’t this global phenomenon in every household and that John Cena is probably more famous here.

Is that really the same thing though? Just for a random example of the first actor that popped in my head, Chloe Grace Moretz probably doesn’t have as big a social media following as Skibidi Kid or whereas I could probably find random people in the streets in the 3rd world country that I live in if I just had to start bringing up her name without any further details. Whereas Skibidi Kid is only known by the other Skibidi kids on that particular platform and probably won’t even be a big deal next year, like Dab Kid.

I used to see people express the same sentiment towards YouTubers and it’s the same deal there IMO. SaltyPeeDrinker or whatever might cause a big ruckus in certain circles on the internet and have a bunch of incel fans but outside of the internet and in the real world, nobody actually gives a fuck. Not in remotely the same way as with movie stars, music stars, sports stars etc. These people aren’t that important or significant, they’re just another feature of online brainrot.

Edit: I feel like online ‘content’ creators are related to actors and musicians in the same way that AI art is related to human art or reality TV is related to Breaking Bad.