this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2024
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That sucks, I am always a bit confused why anyone would take time to post mean answers.
I've posted some mean answers in the past, so I may share some insights:
Generally: people post mean answers when their sense of empathy is either inexistent, or beaten into oblivion.
Once there are enough people in a place, the chance of encountering at least one person in one of those situations, quickly grows to 100%. If the place doesn't actively discourage that kind of behavior because "engagement"... then you get the likes of Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, and similar.
Hey, thanks for your very reflective answer! That all seems somehow valid. Guess I am just a very harmony-seeking person. Can't even choose the mean options in Video Games sooo...
Love to read some nuance on the topic. As much as we all repeat to ourselves to "remember the human", it still doesn't happen as often as it should.
Always good to remember that very few people are naturally and constantly toxic, most people are just normal folks and everyone has bad days.
Not even mean, borderline conspiratorial in terms of fake stuff. I guess people have been "burned" a lot by fake stuff in the past, but even when something's fake they bring out every pitchfork available. It's like they don't understand the concept of entertainment. Not everything has to be real to be entertaining.
I think I've seen more internet rioting over fake stuff than I have over genuinely bad things.
I just had someone here accuse me of being part of an astroturfing campaign because I disagreed with them about FOSS licensing. At that point I just stop responding because there's no use having an argument about whether my entire comment history is just a facade to cover for my secretly paid-for opinions about FOSS.
I think that the "post-truth" world that is blossoming in Right-wing political circles, where incorrect facts are hand-waved away as "differences of opinion", is causing people elsewhere to react defensively and be very guarded against any actual differences of opinion, and some are overreacting and treating any difference of opinion as immediately suspect or even malicious.
Lemmy has a specific tech slant problem where inevitably if you post anything which is even tangentially tech related (such as sharing a spreadsheet on google), you will inevitably get someone complaining or ranting about big tech, providing a FOSS alternative, and typically chastising you for not knowing/doing better. I would say a good third to half of all comments we remove for not being nice is something cussing out someone else over a tech disagreement, which is a pretty wild problem to have.
I guess it's pretty well established that a lot of people push others down in order to feel better about themselves. It's not surprising that many of these people will struggle to make friends in real life, and end up spending a disproportionate amount of time posting their garbage on the Internet.