Before Lemmy I never really did social media. Lemmy is my first experience in getting ratioed. I notice a surprising amount of my posts get 50% or more downvotes. I never realized how divisive my opinions and communication style is.
Thankfully I’m in a good mental place in my life, so this doesn’t bother me… too much. But I can see how it would have a big impact on people testing their toes, and expressing their voice for the first time, that dopamine hit of validation is tempered by the lows of feeling unpopular social pressure.
I’ve notice other people getting downvotes, and they just delete their comment entirely. I leave mine up, since I believe in keeping the forum record open and transparent is more important then my posting history.
I keep posting to Lemmy in spite of it, because I know Lemmy is just at its starting point, and content is more important then my personal validation. (but it does eat at me some)
When you post something that gets negative feedback do you modify your post? does it change your opinion? does it impact your participation in the community?
I tend to get downvoted quite a while recently, you can look at my history.
I would say to try to keep it in perspective. Some random person on the internet pressed a button because they disagree with you. No big deal.
With comments it’s a different story, sometimes they make me change my mind.
Yeah, I think people don’t think about how downvotes aren’t meant to indicate disagreement but rather to mark trolls, unhelpful comments, and so on. I didn’t realize that either until someone said it in some comment section somewhere, something like this:
Maybe clicking downvote would require people to choose a reason for the downvote, and workflow would make it implictly clear that its not for disagreement
Trolling Spam Abuse Off-Topic etc
That’s what the report function is for IMO.
Often times a posting isn’t as clearly bad as those things but just a really bad take on something or very misleading. That’s not worthy of being removed but still should have a public note that there’s someone who thinks there’s “something wrong” with it.
Downvotes are more of a soft thing for me; situations where I think “eh, I don’t think that’s right”, “oof, that’s just not very nice”, “man, stop being so passive-aggressive” or “nah dude, you’re clearly talking out of your ass”. Those don’t warrant a removal. In fact, the comment staying there with lots of downvotes IMO has a much greater effect than censorship could.
While I’m aware you should be wary of using it that way and reducing it to just that is wrong, it’s also a form of presenting disagreement. Often times it’s also another factor but sometimes I just want to present my disagreement with something, sometimes without writing up a reply.
I just downvoted your reply for example, not because you’re being a jerk or I don’t like you, but because I disagree with the entire premise that downvoting is the correct course of action against Trolling, Spam, Abuse, Off-Topic and similarly bad actions.Reports OTOH are for things that you actually cannot post and should be removed, regardless of your opinion on the content.
The fact this has a downvote is hilarious, it’s a well written comment that raises valid arguments - someone really saw it and thought ‘no I disagree, I think downvotes are only for troll and spam posts’ then they downvoted lol
I think your mental place definitely could use a lot of improvement since this is a topic that’s clearly bothering you. Still, this is very normal and you’re not alone on that sadly. Just remember, upvotes/downvotes are not a decider of truth. You can be absolutely right and be downvoted to oblivion. It just determines how much you match the group think of that community. The approval of faceless nerds is irrelevant, espsecially on reddit-style forums like Lemmy where your votes are literally meaningless. It’s more of an actual issue on something like twitter/tik tok/youtube/etc where your interactions are part of your personal brand.
I remember about a comment saying that the author got upset for arguing with someone for a while, then checke their history and saw that that person was drinking their own pee.
No judgement, but never forget that on the Internet you can be talking to anybody.
It depends, really. Unless you have a niche presence and have actually made it, we’re all just John and Jane Does. I don’t see this as “popularity,” we just got really lucky with some posts or we’re articulate with our arguments.
Don’t take it too seriously, live your life more than the guy who’s spending his on social media.
