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Downvoting on Social Media is Toxic
(aussie.zone)
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this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2026
-37 points (18.6% liked)
Unpopular Opinion
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I feel you OP, but as soon as you give someone control over your emotions, you’ve already lost.
On the web I don’t see vote weights at all. I saw you addressed this and have your own opinions on that, and that’s fine. Positive or negative, I’m not affected by votes.
Comments sometimes get my goat, but that’s my fault if I give in. Most times I just scroll past. I might downvote rudeness. I’ll block the person if they’re persistent with rudeness, just because I don’t care to see it.
Mastering my own emotions isn’t a done deal just yet and it’s taken a lot of work, but I’m getting there.
Yeah I'm really getting thrown into the deep end on this service lol. I'm usually pretty chill and don't care too much, but I'm getting like 4Chan tier mistreatment here sometimes.
I guess you could look at it as training, but I'm not sure I want to be the kind of person who doesn't care about others feelings at all. Otherwise I wouldn't be giving people advice and trying to help them. But if you care a little, it's easy to accidentally care a bit more than you expected.
You don't have to be uncaring to defend your own mental health.
You touched on a point, that downvoting someone is a quick, dirty, and cheap way to disagree with something without having to actually engage with it. Okay, so consider the value of that interaction: not much.
To put it another way, say you and I meet for the first time, and I say your mother is a whore. You might get offended for a variety of reasons, but what I'm telling you is that I do not know your mother, so you can place a value of zero on that opinion and let it pass right by you. In fact, while I've said one thing that was quite offensive, I've told you something else entirely. I've told you that I'm a toxic person who doesn't care about your feelings (and probably don't respect my own mother, or women in general). Use that information and handle me accordingly, which is to say, ignore the comment (as though it never existed, because it shouldn't have) and completely disregard me as my opinions are beneath you. That doesn't make you uncaring, it makes you emotionally mature and intelligent, and more civilised.
(Please know that I would not call your mother a whore, and that I do not disrespect women. But people are put off when you use them as an example (e.g. "say you did X, Y, and Z"), it puts them on defence immediately, so I used myself instead. It's all a bit of emotional manipulation, but once you've seen how the game is played, you can use it to protect yours.)
The same people who use Reddit and 4chan also use Lemmy. The people you meet online will mostly be irrelevant. Some will be hostile. Some will be scammers. A few people might be worth knowing, but you'll have to sort through the rest to find the best. And if you can't keep your emotions in check, you'll ward off the best as well. And you don't want that.
I still give advice and try to help others. I just don't care when people are rude. That's their problem, not mine. I gain nothing from making it mine.
Others can explain this better than I can. I am but a student. I'm happy to share what I know, but I don't know everything.