My experience of reddit wasn't toxic until '22 or so. The first ten years I used it was mostly chill and fun, with the occasionally dramatic event that I had no personal stake in. I mostly was in my local city subreddit and hobby subreddits and a few reading ones.

But around '22 or so, for me at least, i started getting reported and banned regularly for sexism, racism, and violence. i think because I am not 'woke' and the overton window shifted to the point where my views were considered evil or something.

But since I'm an economic progressive and not a social engineering erase gender progressive, I'm a bad person now or something. I also committed the sin of having an outdoor cat and pointing out racial/sexist attacks on my local mayor.

And FWIW this type of crazy has bled over into the real world for me. Extremist rhetoric invaded several activity groups I enjoy IRL. Like, I don't want to go to a book club and get lectured how I am evil for not buying/ the 'right' books, esp when I take most of my books from the library and most of the stuff I read is 100+ years old.

I was there almost 15 years and it is mind-meltingly toxic compared to lemmy.

And yet it's fristratingly addictive at the same time.

Sometimes I have to go back to ask a question on r/skyrim mods and I always make the mistake of doing a bit of scrolling. Thankfully I always catch myself 20-30 minutes in, but that's still time out of my day that I don't consoder well spent.

Lemmy has no algorithm to feed that addiction, and I really appreciate it