It is objectively a lot more male than Reddit or other social media. Reddit has many issues, but lack of women is not one of them.
It is objectively a lot more male than Reddit or other social media. Reddit has many issues, but lack of women is not one of them.
So many people here are on a constant hunt for a reason to attack, dunk on, or insult someone. They don’t bother reading what’s actually being said or giving anyone the benefit of the doubt. Instead they jump straight to conclusions about who you are based on one thing you said, and any disagreement immediately turns into a mud-slinging contest where nobody’s even trying to change anyone’s mind.
Your options end up being: speak up anyway and take endless grief for it, or start self-censoring and tweaking your views to fit the majority opinion on the platform - which basically means joining the crowd sniffing each other’s farts and pretending they have something in common besides shared hatred of the outgroup.
I wonder if that’s ‘force of habit’ carried from other places, like Twitter, Reddit, etc., and will ultimately fade as those users start to realise Lemmy (etc) isn’t like those places?
I think it’s the exact opposite. Lemmy is worse than those other platforms in this regard. There you atleast have normies around to even things out where as on here the userbase is almost exclusively ex-redditors who are ideological/principled enough to switch platforms. It seems rather undeniable to me that this place was destined to become a massive echo chamber since the day one.
People do this IRL all the time. It’s how people are. They aren’t kind and thoughtful.
I have people jump down my throat and start lecturing me about myself on weekly basis IRL. I even have them harass me while I’m minding my business reading a book in a cafe… because it’s an ‘bad’ book.
I also regular have people try to start arguments with me while I’m walking my dog on the street.
Where do you live?
I’ve found what mitigates this is keeping an eye on where the post comes from. If it comes from something like MemesOfProduction, it’s probably not safe to say “oh, capitalism isn’t as bad as all that”. But if there’s a politically tinged post in Technology, you’ll find more normal people around who aren’t Chekists.