Marked spoiler for potential vibe harshing

I apologize if these include me.

As we in the US loom towards the election I am getting more and more raw and worried about it. And with that my fear brings out screechy obscene me. That is one of my fear responses that I lose the handle on a lot.

So please forgive me. I will try to avoid political threads as we ramp up to either the end of American democracy or the continuing gerontocratic oligarchic republic.

I think there are more bummer world events happening like the Israel Hamas war and bummer late stage capitalism in general which leads to more inflammatory and charged discourse, compared to just after the Reddit exodus when we were united against Reddit.

Lemmy in general isn’t different from other social media in that it isn’t great for political discourse. Without the human connection there is less incentive to consider the experience and viewpoints of others when you can just downvote and read a hundred that agree with you

Yes! I've been seeing a lot of toxic comments and posts lately. It's kinda turning into a niche hyper toxic reddit.

I feel like a very high percentage of posts and comments here are just "Americans bad." And as an American, even though the things they are complaining about don't apply to me specifically, it makes me feel very unwelcome.

Comming from Reddit, I find it really peaceful, but IDK how it was before. Except for the people at Hexbear who bullied me for liking South Park. The socalled "dirtbag left" is basically the proudboys pretending to be far-left.

I honestly don't feel much has changed. There was perhaps a bit of a "new" feeling in the start and some excitement about the project, but I don't think people have gotten more aggressive or anything.

But I think all this probably depends what circles you hang out in. Probably also depends on what instances you federate with.

I haven't noticed, but some people say they are feeling political tensions, and...

The year 2024 is notable for the large number of elections, with 7 of world's 10 most populous nations (Bangladesh, India, United States, Indonesia, Pakistan, Russia, Mexico) voting; countries that are home to nearly half of the world's people will hold elections in 2024.

From the Wikipedia complete list.

I guess everyone is just a little worried about national and international elections.

A lot of people are having a hard time right now. Try to be the change you want to see and react kindly and rationally would be my advice.

I just started a few days ago and already had to deal with a transphobic troll. Online is so toxic that I'm afraid eventually all social media platforms end up on trolls radar and they seek to destroy them. It's a shame because they ruin social media for everyone including themselves.

So many people lack a basic sense decency that they actually think it's ok to cause harm to other people simply for their own amusement. It's usually straight white american males too.

I FART IN YOUR GENERAL DIRECTION!

It's definitely gotten worse, especially the political circlejerk, jeez.

100%. Seems like people are just itching to fight now and taking comments out of context constantly. They're just throwing out insults instead of engaging or asking for clarification. Dunno what happened.

People used to talk each other like they would talk to a neighbor.

Careful. I'll correct my neighbour's spelling, too . :-)

Yeah, definitely the vibe has changed. It's kind of sad.

Vibe has changed but it's because of more users. The original users picked Lemmy because they were tired of reddit, so they were naturally nice people that didn't vibe with the shit that was going on at reddit. They wanted something else. We wanted something else.

That's why we shouldn't wish for exponential growth. This place will lose its charm quickly if we end up arguing with the trolls.

Sorry guys, I got mad

It has gotten worse and it will only continue to do so. There are people who are respectful and hold back their darkest impulses, but there are others who choose to hold those same features in high regard, as literal virtues in their eyes. Blocking hexbear and lemmygrad has helped my own peace of mind immensely, but you would not want to block lemmy.ml or lemmy.world or such so... here we are.

I do not really see any permanent solution to this problem, short of eternal vigilance. That's just nature though, e.g. viruses constantly evolve and seek new hosts, hence hosts that do not keep up die, there's no way around needing to keep up defenses against such a tireless onslaught. Similarly for information vs. misinformation too, it seems:-(.

It has also gotten much harder to have any discussion with even the tiniest hint of subtlety on the Fediverse - is Biden/Linux/socialism/religion good or bad? "Yes." For some of us, knowing what will happen - the flood of toxic responses I mean - if we dare to speak up is enough to cause us to cringe enough that we would simply rather stay silent instead. If only the opposing side were like that too! But no, they elect not to hold their own tongues, even while expecting YOU to hold yours. That too seems just the nature of the universe.

Idk why, but I feel like I'm starting to associate this kind of behavior with people who used to be on Reddit and moved over here when all the third party apps got Thanos snapped.

I first got here around July 2023, and it was pretty cool. Nowadays it's probably a little less cool.

I don't mind disagreeing and even bickering a bit, but when somebody gets extra or pointedly disengenuous I just block em. IDGAF. 🤷

You mean comments like this one?

https://feddit.nl/comment/6215624

Yeah, it's getting worse.