There’s like this weird, subtle one upmanship about every little thing and a lot of people are very nitpicky and judgmental

Like on any other social network, no?

The issue I see around here is that there are very few of us (we're not Twitter or Reddit or whatever) so the negativity is always more visible and more noticeable. Then, any user that leave is a real loss because there are already so few of us.

It kind of takes the fun out of being on here, TBH. Or am I the only one experiencing this?

I would not have stayed on Lemmy/piefed had I not learned to filter out what I call its constant 'noise' (by blocking users, blocking keywords and by only showing content I'm subscribed to in my feed), removing all the hatred, all the high moral ground political/moral/judgmental non-sense, and also removing the constant flow of low effort posts, and mere trolls. It's still not perfect but it's so much better like that!

I'm a patient dude, I'll see how Lemmy/Piefed (d)evolves in the long run. I wish it won't crumble under its own political non-sense, it's constant hatred of anything they disagree with, but if it does, so be it. I will know I'll have given it a fair chance, and did my part, to show it was not just that.