No. I encounter people I would consider "hostile" far less frequently compared to another site that I used to frequent.

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.

Not in the communities I frequent, but lurking in other communities I have come across hostility that I felt was unneeded. It's as if someone had a bad day and they take out the frustration by derailing the conversation or name-calling.

Yes. Lemmy is extremely negative. You just get bombarded with how shit the world is constantly. It's honestly a slog being here sometimes and it pushed many people away.

I gave Lemmy another go after being gone for 2 years but I'm honestly not really having a good time lol

It wasn't a year or so ago, has been lately, exhausting to comment, but I'm also probably more annoying too because life in general sucks

For me, that was much more of an issue on reddit.

I think this is a cool place. There are a lot of empathetic caring people that are plugged into what's going on in the world.

The downside of that is the world is a mess, to put it lightly, right now, so we're all kind of commiserating, and it is pretty serious business at the moment.

I personally haven't seen a ton of one-upping. I'm usually just happy to get a few up votes or a reply

That's just the unfortunate state of politics right now. So any political discussion is going to be combative. Avoid politics and you'll probably see less

It definitely is a pretty small and insular community.

I do think it feels insular/hostile, though my take is different than yours. Yes, I've had some folks nitpick posts and one up, though I imagine you get that in many similar social media sites -- there're reasons for the running joke that in order to get a correct answer online, you gotta post a question as a woman, and confidently answer it wrong on a male account, and then people will pile on with correct answers and judgey-ments.

Many of the sites that seem to get posted to lemmy are on VERY fringey locations, locations that often seem highly likely to be hosting malicious content. There's also far fewer people posting topics, with a very small group of users having like 10k+ posts per year. So it feels a lot more 'concentrated', especially on particular subjects, due to those posters' bias': if you're an aggressive poster, it's fairly easy to astroturf lemmy. Which feels insular / bubbly.

Adding to that, Lemmy has mods who are just as heavy-handed as on Reddit or any other heavily moderated setup -- though lemmy'll moderate things in a far more 'progressive' friendly way than most alternatives these days. Pejoratives are allowed for some groups, but not others. Even calling that sort of thing out in more explicit terms, though still in a neutral tone, can get you banned from many communities on Lemmy.

I had to block a lot of politics. It's not that I even disagree with what they're saying most of the time, but it's fifty extremely negative communities saying the same things over and over. It's too much.

It feels much more nicer than other social medias

No one yells at me to read the friendly manual like the arch forums. The only yelling I see is political stuff. I don't see the console flame wars. Comments don't look like youtube of the 2010s and before. Its not 4chan. It doesn't have much of the smuggery of hacker news. I can block the chapo trap house people. Fediverse and activitypub actually works and we have some admins who seem to care about informing others of bad actors either as individuals to entire instances.

Lemmy seems good to me!

Little bit, not gonna lie. And I'm not innocent here either certainly.

I find it much more cynical than other places, probably just the nature of how everyone ended up here, jaded by the design of centralized social media.

I have to remind myself that everything isnt as 'sky is falling' as I see around these parts. Maybe I'm just blessed with a nice life, and I try not to take that for granted, but it does give me that feeling unfortunately.

I try my best to insert some humour into the headlines as some sort of way to make some light of it all, but that might just be playing into the fear and anger that I see around.

No, I don't get that. Maybe you are just hanging out in serious communities?

I see plenty of silly stuff.

I disagree. This site is not hostile or insular at all. Also, it's not Lemmy, it's The Lemmy Club.

(/s please have a pleasant day)

basically it's what i've been looking for. a place to horny-post but also discuss serious issues with actual understanding of reality. i'm thoroughly sick of the vibes-posting that dominates r*ddit and every other mainstream platform. i'm sick of the ads, of being distracted from important issues with video games, the newest gossip, etc.

i really just want a meaningful place in the universe. if that seems "stiff" to other people, well then i guess i gotta care less about what other people think of me. i gotta be used to it by now anyways, considering i've been very autistic my entire life.

Insular has such a negative connotation. I'd call it "neighborly": I like seeing the same usernames over again and getting to know their idiosyncrasies.

Hostile, I have to disagree with outright. I only have reddit and oldschool fora to compare it against, but lemmy is much friendlier than both.

Are we given to long comments? Sure. Are those comments worth reading? Usually! And that's what makes the difference.

I think it's less filtered and can definitely be more abrasive. Partly because like another user said, many ended up here because they are jaded from years of enshittifying platforms. So you have a lot more cynicism, and a lot less filtering.

There is good and bad to that. If you take anything too seriously you can definitely get your feelings hurt by it. And if you want genuine thoughtful and amicable discussion, that's much easier to find here than some other places.

Some sub communities and some instances have more provocateurs or agenda shills or (the ones that confuse me the most) people who expect you to not interact with them and their comments because you don't align with their world view (They won't block you, they just send some weird cryptic passive aggressive nonsense about not talking to them. I don't really get why they think that's a good solution.)

There are a lot of VERY informed and intelligent people on here though. I've had some great explanations from people on things I didn't understand and wanted to ask questions to. Along with those great discussions I'd sometimes get some insulting mouth breather chiming in. Ask .ml users an honest question regarding their thoughts or opinions on something and it's 50/50 on whether they hold a discussion or turn into a dipshit shrieker. I've had both lol.

Which communities and instances you are around will have major impacts on your experiences with Lemmy though. You'll see many users around multiple places and will get a feel for how they are and who they are. Community hop through the lemmyverse and I'm sure you'll start finding things that work better for you.

Sorry that was waaaay more than I intended on saying when I hit reply. It's a good place, just has some weird lumps and rough edges.

No, but I've seen a lot of pessimism in a few communities, even on positive posts.

I mean, Lemmy is obviously a smaller, more tight-knit community than Reddit, but I wouldn't say that it's "insular" or rejecting of many viewpoints.

I was perma-banned on Reddit for criticizing Trump and the AI industry, as well as making a jab at the horrible and inhumane Yulin Dog Meat Festival in Guangxi, China (which by the way is a 100% real thing, should be stopped, and just happens to be running right now...). So I feel that Reddit is largely in the pocket of certain groups and are willing to stretch their moderation rules to stifle certain kinds of speech that challenges their shareholders.

On top of all that, I think that the Fediverse in general is a little bit friendlier and much more real than Reddit these days, which I like. Whenever I find myself browsing Reddit (without an account) recently, it's only a matter of minutes before I come across some post or comment that is obvious bullshit, be it something clearly AI generated or just a good old fashioned lie. Reddit has really become full of nonsense and slop these days, and I think even people who continue to use Reddit are able to see that it isn't what it used to be.

I've felt that way since I switched to Lemmy after the Reddit API fiasco. It's kind of annoying and I'm not the biggest fan of it. But I don't feel like every interaction is this way, just way more than Reddit.

That being said, Lemmy is much better when it comes to engagement. I can post something and actually get comments, likes, and replies. On Reddit, it felt like a drop in the bucket. Half the time, you were too late to the post and it already had so many comments that yours would barely be seen by anyone.

Obviously, that didn't apply to the smaller subreddits but I like that on Lemmy I don't need to go to small niche communities just to feel like I'm part of the conversation.

The comments on this post actually made me think "Do I prefer the way Reddit was" and the answer is no. Thinking back, Reddit posts would consist of the same joke, one liner or low effort replies at the top. There was very little originality and tons of shitposting.

At the end of the day, everything has its pros and cons. Just choose the one that works best for you.

Naa its mostly fun to me! And the people i interact with seem like good people for the most part.

I've noticed that there seems to be an emphasis on being extremely serious at all times, as if every single comment is a PhD dissertation being evaluated or something.

adults like to be taken seriously and have discussions with adults.

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

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

go post on shitposting or something, IDK. I'm not your dad.

Lemmy is rather small, you might be bumping into the same 3 users everywhere.

I prefer it over the reddit way, tbh. Every comment section there is just filled with gifs and jokes, and you have to scroll miles to get a reasonable and sound answer to what OP was asking. It's especially frustrating when I've searched for an issue online and reddit pops up in the search results, and all responses are just bad repetitive jokes.