I agree with OP and the general consensus of the comments here.

This may sound corny, but all I really wanted to add to this thread is…thank you. Thank all of you for being so kind. So human.

I really hope the positivity of this platform continues on, as it’s truly been a bright spot slipping through the dark clouds of the internet.

Rock on, Beehaw. Rock. On.

The hostility was exhausting and constant, but equally so was knowing I would have to bake in a bunch of qualifiers into my post to try to head off common bad faith arguments at the pass. When you’re doing this for the very real problems you’re having just existing in society as a minority, it’s absolutely soul-sucking. Even if you know it’s by design, you’re still just one person dealing with a lot of weighty garbage in real life who then has to deal with redditor JAQing/name calling/strawmanning the minute you try to talk about it to try to offset even a fraction of the emotional burden.

I am pretty happy to watch reddit die. Less happy when I think about how this can further distill the abuse within a lot of current discourse.

i have quit reddit multiple times over such behavior. everyone is looking to become the most upvoted dunk on there

I can relate to that a lot. I usually also comment on niche subs with a help question. Not sure what it is about reddit that makes the common redditor act like a hostile person with a superiority complex. It’s very irritating, like they do the opposite of touching grass 24/7 and hate you for posting.

Beehaw and Lemmy are much smaller so that’s also why the quality of the people here is just overall better. the moderation style in beehaw also helps. It also helps me feel like I can freely comment the way I want to.

Come to think of it, I too, notice the difference. How nicer people are on here.

Here’s another thing that I don’t miss about Reddit. I am glad there is no downvotes on Beehaw, there is not this constant passive aggressive downvoting which was really frustrating.

But yeah, I guess that what I don’t miss the most is it’s comment section. I don’t miss the constant hostility for no reason. I don’t miss the whole comments section being filled with masturbating monkeys every time there is a women in a picture. And I know, it sounds like I’m a fucking white knight or whatever, but that used to bother the hell out of me!

Every time, EVERY TIME you would see a photo with a woman as the subject of the photo, the common section would be unbearable to read…

Same thing, I also don’t miss seeing a video or a picture with a black person on it and seeing that the comments section has been locked. And I don’t even have to wonder why, I know why.

I don’t miss the frets that are political in nature, talking about things like racism or queerphobia, going on there, and just seeing a locked comment section, with giant, sprawling discussions, of just deleted comments after deleted comments, with entire threads being nuked.

…I guess I just don’t miss the bigotry and people being all around assholes.

You know, I’m writing this, and I’m just realizing how horrendous that place was, actually.

I guess, overtime, you end up getting used to it, or maybe, just getting numb to it. And you should never get number to seeing stuff like that, that’s not normal. Bigotry, people acting like assholes, it should be outrageous, it shouldn’t be just something that you’re so used to seeing that it makes your roll your eyes. But I know that here, when I see a bad take, when I see someone behaving like an ass, it sticks out, it jumps out of me. I see it immediately, and I get frustrated with it. Because I am not numbed to it, because it isn’t common here.

Maybe I am now in a bubble, in a safe space. Maybe. Screw everything else, I’m not leaving. I like it here. Real life is already stressful enough for me to be annoyed by people on Reddit.

I thought I would miss it. I don’t. I haven’t returned ever since I made an account here. The only times when I check read it, is if I’m looking for something, like, I have an issue with a game, something like that, I look it up on my search engine, and often, I would get linked to a Reddit thread about it. But that’s it. Other than this, I don’t go on it, I don’t interact with it, I don’t log into it. And I don’t miss it.

This was like leaving social media for me, when I left Twitter and all of that, good fucking riddance.

It’s Twitter, but in longer form.

Everyone’s just there to be outraged at something. The whole internet is outrage-bait.

Everyone tries to be overly snarky there out of trying to be “funny” and get upvotes. That’s one of the things I dislike the most about that community; it feels as if people try to hurt others to benefit themselves, all for the sake of internet points.

Same experience on Reddit. Any comment saying “I’m having this problem” would usually get hostile responses. A post about a laptop hinge on my machine that failed in an absurdly short amount of time had people saying, “You don’t know how to open your laptop.” The worst IME were the cell carrier and manufacturer subs. People on those were consistently just vicious.

For reasons I already pointed out several times (and which I don’t mind pointing out again), I had severe anxiety and rejection sensitiveness when I wrote comments on Reddit, fearing their responses. Sometimes those fears were correct, and sometimes don’t, but the fact that I suffered those things was enough to feel myself in danger. Twitter, Reddit, all was the same shit regarding interaction with other people.

Since I joined the fediverse and became more active, those fears were lowering. That, and the fact that I’m taking medication for my ADHD. But a good environment and friendly human interaction help too.

It’s not a matter of being overly respectful really - it’s the culture of being shit scared to say anything which someone might find offensive. Sometimes you want to be comfortable enough to just be friendly with strangers, and hope that they will take things in the spirit they were intended…

Reddit is one of two sites (the other being a private tracker, the ‘cappers’ of which are a very very touchy breed - if you even suggest that it wouldn’t be difficult for them to name their files in a logical manner they throw hissy fits and threaten to quit… so that everyone simply SIMPS over them and worships the ground they walk on.

The difference being that if you upset someone on Reddit you get cut off for a few days. It’s a painful addiction - it’s like a 20 per day smoker being forced to go cold turkey for 3 days, and then being allowed to smoke again until the next cold turkey.

I guess I’m waiting to see if I actually encounter the toxic behaviour I heard people have seen in the Fediverse - I’m sure it’s out there, but really I’m mostly happy that it isn’t any longer part of the second most evil organization on earth…

Google being the first, and Reddit being the second… I’m hoping to see alternative search engines catch up ASAP (I used SearXNG to get a ‘blend’ for a year already) but there are many other issues which need sorting out.

Fediverse is a nice start.

In general I will say that I find federated services to be more reasonable and willing to discuss topics without going down the path of pure hostility when compared to corporate social media. It also helps when you have active moderation teams that actively believe in the service their using and police bad behavior!

Honestly, that’s what generally happens the more public an online space becomes. The loudest most obnoxious people ruin it. Once Reddit wasn’t a bastion of niche hobbyists and power users, and open to everyone, the chances of Dunning Krueger showing up grows exponentially. Also just assholes in general.

It’s also sort of built into the system anyway. The mods are cronies to the despot. Many are good, but its not the good ones that do the damage and piss people off. They run their subs like petty little tyrants, and it rubs off on people.

I’ve been struck by the same thoughts lately as well, coming from Reddit where I expect hostile attitudes and at times even contributed to it, Lemmy (and to a greater extent, beehaw) is still pretty quiet as far as trolls/haters go, there’s active moderation keeping them at bay when they do show up, and the bulk majority of contributors are friendly and enthusiastic about their topics (rather than the toxic circlejerks of Reddit past.)

I still use Reddit occasionally. A little bit to scratch my news/social topic itch and for the few communities that haven’t migrated here yet.

Indeed I do. Reddit is specifically crafted to drive continuous engagement. Beehaw, Lemmy, Tildes, etc. are not. My understanding is that the engagement is driven through emotional manipulation. That just doesn’t seem to be here and I think it makes people not be so mean.

It’s improved my outlook on the world and on people.

I live in a poorish country and I’m not flush with cash either currently not being employed except some volunteering. I wanted to build a network server for a charity who were struggling with their internal services.

Over a period of six months I cobble together enough to buy a second hand mini PC. I couldn’t get a network card similarly because of shortages, so someone buys one from ebay US and brings it after a few months.

For some mystery reason, the card refuses to work with the PC. It’s detected but as soon as I push some traffic it results in a kernel panic. I spend a month looking at similar problems online and trying out different solutions. With no dice, I post on Reddit.

On the my first two tires, I get no replies and no one notices it because it doesn’t get any upvotes. Then I try another two subreddits and people just say that CPU/NIC sucks, just get another one.

This whole thing pretty much put me off from posting on Reddit after that.