100% there's a hivemind. That's why I joined lemmy.one, downvotes are disabled to try and stop hivemind downvotings and encourage discussion. On local communities it works well, if only more of the bigger federations disabled them too.

I don't see the point of voting on online content, and just ignore the feature entirely. My brain automatically edits out the voting buttons and results. I don't even see them!

Without offense intended... I didn't come here for your (or anyone's) approval. Other people's opinions have universally baffled me as a general rule (yours probably will too).

I came here to document my radical opinions about assembly language programming, post photos of stuff I build, occasionally help other people build stuff, and (of least concern) occasionally participate in conversation. I imagine very few people (other than myself) care about anything I have to say -- it's still a neat exercise to put it into words so I better define what I think.

So maybe people are downvoting you because they don't like you, or don't like what you write. Maybe they do it for no reason, or for fun. Maybe I don't like you, for an arbitrary or a good reason, or both. At some point I guess we just have to be comfortable with these things I guess and coexist here somehow. At least you can't pay money to a platform, to force me to read your opinions, I guess! That would be torture.

Anyway, no one actually needs to worry about me not liking them or username-stalking them. The depths of my indifference are fathomless, and eternal. To make me care about what you think is like bridging the void between the stars.

I can't believe that you'd make this post then be dumb enough to admit to being a /r/PCM user. Thanks fascist, I'm glad you aren't comfortable here.

I was just talking with chatGPT about this. I know I say controversial things and all but I still try to always be respectful and I don't say things I don't believe just to get a reaction. I genuinely try to bring some nuance in the discussions I read but sometimes it truly feels like pissing in the wind. Here you get downvoted for saying you use twitter in a thread about what social media platforms you use and sometimes just stating facts that anyone can google still gets you downvoted.