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?
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
Also more willing to engage from what I’ve seen
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.”