I have had a tendency since my earliest days on social media where I will get halfway or more through a response, and end up just cancelling it. Sometimes I feel like I’m just being to over the top with snark or otherwise don’t want to be that kind of person, but a lot of the time I’ll decide I just really don’t care enough to finish it. Sometimes I just know it’ll be an argument and I know what the person is going to say, and just have no interest in continuing the discussion. I did it on Reddit, I did it on bulletin boards, I even did it in my teens and twenties on Usenet - and I’ll probably go on doing it for as long as I continue using this medium. I probably do it a bit more than half the time. I know that lemmy benefits from more content and I have had some great discussions, but sometimes it’s just not worth it for me.
How about you? Do you hit publish or cancel more often?
The irony is that there might have been a fair amount of replies to this, but people bailed on them. I guess we’ll never know.
Shout out to those guys
All the
small things
Truth care
Truth brings
I’ll take
one lift
Your ride
When do we want it?
I cancel more often. Because who cares what I have to say? And sometimes I realize it’s been more therapeutic to just type a comment out than it is to hit post and deal with people’s potential responses.
I care what you say ❤️
You, yes you reading this, have a valid perspective and a unique insight and the world is enriched by you sharing your thoughts with other strangers.
I needed to hear this, thank you 🥹 You have a good heart Sparky
That’s so kind, thank you
As @[email protected] already so nicely said, I too would love to hear what you have to say. Whether it’s something profound, something nice, or just that you like or enjoy someone else’s comment/post.
It is always so nice to hear from someone else, so don’t put yourself down. Let yourself be heard and join the fun :)Thank you :)
I realize it’s been more therapeutic to just type a comment out than it is to hit post and deal with people’s potential responses.
Yeah, but on Lemmy if you get sick of the replies you can delete yours and take theirs down with it.
Goated
Here I am writing my opinion, only to realise that many of you have already posted most of the valid points I was going to make. So now my comment is pretty much worthless and adds nothing to the discussion.
I cancel most of the time, but today I’ll open an exception to prove my point.
Have you somehow become more enlightened by my post? Yeah, should have cancelled it.
When you think about it, you sort of proving the point that…
This took to long to formulate, so I gave up. But at least I posted it 🙃.
I think that this answer really is great. It’s truly provided me with…
Congratulations on finishing this post!
Constantly cancel. It’s rarely worth arguing with people here.
Entirely this. Social media debates are usually public grandstanding. It takes a tonne of time to research and compose a response that few people will see.
You’ve summed up the problem nicely.
Or I realize I’m over sharing with strangers.
I beg to differ.
It’s a good 70% of the time that I’ll cancel instead of post. As I’ve gotten older my desire to be right has greatly diminished when it comes to random people on the internet.
This is how I feel, but it’s closer to 95% of the time for me. I’ve been on the Internet since its inception and I don’t have it in me to deal with people’s bullshit anymore.
I don’t need to be heard. I don’t need to be right. I only post for help I can’t get elsewhere or to help others. On the rare occasion I deviate from that rule, I usually get a reply that makes me regret engaging.
Agreed. Plus, these days, most people just want to rile you into wasting your time compiling an argument and sources to back it up so they can go “fake lul!”
You’ll be getting less answers from people who cancel more often. 😉
I think I cancel my posts about 1 to 5 percent of the time. Usually when it gets longer and I notice that my brain is too stupid to continue. Sometimes also when I catch myself being a little bit too sarcastic.
As a data scientist, this is my favorite answer.
Like 95%. Almost cancelled this one before I erased most of it.
Absolutely. Sometimes you know your post isn’t going to do anything worthwhile. Sometimes you’re just being a dick. Sometimes the other person is clearly not going to listen to you. Sometimes your post adds nothing of value. That kind of self reflection is a good thing IMO. I wish more people did it
There’s a high barrier for me to even start typing a comment, but I try to contribute more on lemmy. Haven’t really participated on social media in years. I guess about 20% of the time when I think I should comment I actually do it.
I know how you feel, I’ve had that same problem when I joined lemmy and really had to force myself to comment. But you know, I’ve told myself that in the end it’s more about just saying what comes to mind than worry if you’re really contributing to the conversation.
Even if it’s just agreeing with someone or just saying you like something, I prefer to write it out in a comment instead of clicking on some arrow. I like to think that whoever wrote the comment/post I replied to appreciates a personal response instead of an upvote. I know I do :)
Quite often.
I start organizing my thoughts by writing them down. Then I’ll realize it’s going to be impossible for me to succinctly yet accurately convey my point.
If what I’ve written is too long or too convoluted, I don’t bother posting it, as the intended audience is usually the least likely to actually read it. If what I’ve written has too many caveats or too many points of contention, I don’t bother posting it because I generally don’t have much interest in connecting with pedants or those being intentionally obtuse/ignorant/etc.
Honestly, my experience has been that this place is mostly just a slightly different iteration of the same shit as the alternative it is modeled after when it comes to discourse. And I have minimal interest engaging in much of that. So, definitely more likely to lurk and/or to bail on a response than to actually post here.
I can relate to this so much. I’m active in tech support communities and sometimes there’s so many scenarios involved that being concise, accurate and still trying to sound human is quite difficult.
I’ve been trying to shift my perspective in treating replies as the start of a conversation, where a shorter post with less information or caveats makes more sense to start from so you can narrow down the direction of the comment thread later.
I realize my feelings might be highly specific to support/question threads, but your words really resonated with me regardless.
I’ve been trying to shift my perspective in treating replies as the start of a conversation, where a shorter post with less information or caveats makes more sense to start from so you can narrow down the direction of the comment thread later.
This is how you do it, put the most important details and fill in the rest if it comes up. The more words in a row the less anyone is going to read them.
I wrote out a comment to answer you but halfway through I decided that my opinion wasn’t worthy of sharing on Lemmy so I deleted it and wrote this instead.
im so glad you asked this question. i cant tell you how many times i-
actually never mind
My comments tend to be short enough that I’ve already written them and by that point I might as well submit.
