Actual Discussion

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Are you tired of going into controversial threads and having people not discuss things, circlejerking, or using emotional responses in place of logic? Us too.

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For more casual conversation instead of competitive ranked conversation, try: [email protected]

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(Open-Ended) What do you like and dislike about the Lemmy experience so far? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I've been here since the great Reddit Exodus and have seen some good and some bad.

What have you liked and disliked about being on Lemmy so far?

Do you see your usage going up or down?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, you seem as disappointed in the way things shook out the same as I did.

The intention for this community is to help to understand other views, not bury them. I feel that's what makes us different. Hell, sometimes I want to make sure I'm correct on something and would like people to pick apart my view to make sure I'm logically consistent.

Problem is, most people are not logically consistent themselves and tend to not be able to articulate their position when pushed. It used to be perfectly fine to not have a stance on something, but as the internet grew, you HAD to have a stance on everything, even if you were deeply uninformed. Now people create a stance first and just get mad and block anything contradicting it.

[–] thrawn 2 points 9 months ago

I am somewhat disappointed, but I hope these are growing pains and that the community will improve. I don’t think Internet toxicity like I see is sustainable— who would want to only have interactions like that? It’s exhausting to read, participating must feel like a chore of unbelievable pointlessness. I can see a better Lemmy on the horizon where they get it out of their system, so to speak.

Commenters learning how to argue would go a long way. I took years of debate and honestly feel like one semester should be a requirement. There are respectful and effective ways to argue, but Lemmy users are more prone to unconvincing attempts to bulldoze. On Reddit that led to being buried, with quality arguments on the same topic getting upvotes. Here, the quality arguments are rarer so you only see the bad faith ones.

Still, I’m not giving up on Lemmy. I truly believe it can improve. But I can also see it driving away new users, or turning into an extremist platform like Voat. Now Lemmy is nowhere near the cesspool that Voat was so I’m optimistic.