After reading this and a lot of the comments in the thread, I genuinely think people need to get off the internet for a while for their own well being.

I’ve been here since the Reddit API bullshit, and while there are negative things that get popular, overall, it has been just the same as it was on Reddit, albeit a smaller community.

To me, it seems there are people on both sides who take Lemmy way too seriously. Those that want to hate on every little thing, and those that put way too much focus on those that hate every little thing. I just came here for the news, same thing I was using Reddit for, so maybe I don’t use Reddit/Lemmy the way a majority do here. I comment on things that interest me, try to reply to those that are trying to have a genial conversation with me, and then log off for the day and do the things I actually want to do.

Not having constant content to “doomscroll” on is a bonus in my eyes. The internet isn’t something you should just spend every waking hour of your life on. To get back to the point of the OP post, log off. Even for just a few hours! Don’t take yourself too seriously, and definitely don’t take every little thing too seriously. Don’t feed the trolls, and just move on with your life!

Here’s a key thing I think you’re missing about Lemmy: Lemmy is anti-corporate and anti-capitalist by nature. That is the single thing that pretty much all Lemmy users hold true. That’s why we’re here. It’s not all negative. It’s negative when you’re trying to push a product, especially when it’s made clear it hurts other people.

Try discussing an indie game, especially one with a good track record of treating employees well, or one owned by a cooperative. You will almost always see positive responses. Lemmy users are happy to support good things. They’re also skeptical of corporations (for good reason) and are quick to turn against them when it turns out they’re run by bad people.

I’ll give you an example: Anyone who sees this, what is your favorite indie game, and what about it is special to you? Mine is probably the incredibly standard response of The Outer Wilds. It has so much soul and understanding for the human experience, and it gives you the freedom to discover it for yourself.

I just joined here from Reddit mere weeks ago and many of the posts I have made have been hit with a hell of a lot of negativity. I seem myself as very intelligent. I have multiple degrees, I’m in my 40’s, I have a family, I make a lot of money and own a big house, I own and run a philosophy blog, I’ve been published - and I point this out to simply detail that I think some of the things I have to say are well thought out, utilizing logic, reason, facts, and philosophy, both formal and informal, yet many posts already that I have made have been met with such shallow, stupid comments calling me names or telling me my opinion is stupid.

It’s like walking into conversations with preteens who have no parents around.

I’m not sure that it’s full-on toxic

It’s definitely negative

I’m not really seeing it as a problem.

We’re generally moderately anti-corporate

We’re very pro LGBTQA+

If you have people that won’t come in because of that, They’re probably where they’ll be happiest.

If you wanted to solve that problem for yourself and friends, you could start a community for whatever you want and see if you can get people to join. You’d likely be more successful starting your own instance and putting the controversial stuff over there. The main instances won’t see it in their ALL and your instance will still get all the more progressive data in it’s all.

That’s not to say they they can just drop into other instances book clubs and start gushing over Rowling’s work.

You see, what happened is, she got real fucking rich and vocal and actively wants to hurt our friends, and honestly I think calling us Toxic over shitting on her content over here is selfish. It’s just consequences.

PSL, we’ll give you a hard time, but not really gonna care. it’s closer to candy corn wars.

NFL, honestly, unless you’re leaking into a more nerdy community or trying to put it in news, i couldn’t see you getting that much push-back. you could stand up any combinations of Teams/Divisions and for the most part people who don’t want to see it would leave it alone. Now could you get Football fans to sign up to lemmy, no idea.

I mean I agree with what you say at a high level, but personally I find lemmy so refreshingly straight-talking. I find most of these issues really stem from social media partly being a reflection of social and actual realities.

Like… things are not OK in the real world. I know you added that caveat in your post, but I also think it’s reasonable to expect people to be miserable when conditions are deteriorating for so many of us, and hope in the future is at an all-time low.

Good vent though. I think we’re just going to have these back and forth reactions and counter reactions forever and ever. Even if we solve all our existential problems, I’m sure we’d find something to whine about.

Who knows maybe in 500 years someone will be posting to a BBS about how people are too positive and how we used to be able to access real darkness.

Because they are Hipsters.

Most lemmites don’t have an actual personality, or likes even.

They never grew out of that teenage “this is popular and therefore I hate it” mentality. Even when they themselves deep down want it.

Look at those same gaming subs when the thought of an AI vibe codes slop emulator, that will bring those games they claim to hate (GTA6 and anything Nintendo specifically). And they practically trip over themselves to get it.

Let me perform a test. See replies.

I’m really happy about the Midterm results. And if anyone’s interested, I’d like to tell how this year I got into MUDs! I’ve been playing heaps of Starmourn, a MUD in space! I play as a nanoseer who controls nanites and the mystical power of the void!

Still no respect for Harry Potter adults, though. I want them to hide their love for the series and only enjoy it in secret.

I’m fine with bigots feeling unwelcome here. Not everyone is inherently deserving of respect.

I honestly feel like people who don’t accomplish much or aren’t trying to be good at something get negative and jealous very easily.

It’s like with your example, football. The strongest athlete, pound for pound, to ever play any sport was an American football player named Walter Payton. He was only 5’10" and weighed 204lbs. He was unstoppable. A killing machine. Faster and more powerful than anyone in human history.

Maybe someone will say, “he’s not from my country” or “my country isn’t great at that sport and we don’t play it” or even “he’s black” or “he’s just an American” or whatever Americans say about people from other places.

It all comes from insecurity of their own bodies and capabilities.

Pick any realm and apply this stuff. We live in a world of people who are weaker and more insecure than those who are great.

Who do you want to be?

I agree Lemmy has a negativity problem, disagree it’s driving off new users. If negativity drove people away Twitter and Reddit would be ghost towns. If anything people crave it.

The problem with negativity is it tends to drive positive people away. People stop bothering trying to have actual discussions because if you express anything resembling positivity someone is eager to respond with a memey “Oh you sweet summer child”.

Eventually every interaction is like that, nobody feels like talking to each other and just want to one-up one another in how cynical and world weary they are. Happens long enough and you get reddit, happens even longer and the cynicism turns to nihilism and it turns into an incel space.

It’ll have users, it just won’t be pleasant to use.

I don’t see it because I blocked the overly negative communities a long time ago. It takes a few days of effort and then you’re good.

First: thank you so much. I’m not a perfect fit here and have taken my fair share of lumps.

I too envision Lemmy a place where people tired of corporate surveillance and exploitation can come and share their enthusiasm for the work of Luigi Mangioni and other heroes.

I’m only partially kidding.

There are sadly a lot of people who do not rankle at corporatism and exploitation.

There are some people who will even stand in line to buy the shiny new thing just because corporations have told them it is shiny and new.

What keeps me from posting more is that often times I feel that I need to explain the entire post or otherwise someone will nitpick it in order to find something wrong with it. It happened a few times when I returned to lemmy on this account and it’s just been an experience that I expect from now on.

And I just don’t have energy for that.

That said I think a larger issue is that we lack active hobby communities. I’m sorry to say this but politics in general tends to be very depressing. Politics and news is what lemmy mostly consists of outside of the cats community of various meme communities. We could use more variety on all.

If the world is increasingly a negative place, so are its inhabitants. I don’t think there’s anything particularly surprising about this.

However, most of the examples of ‘negativity’ you provide aren’t even negative or toxic. They’re just people informing others of harmful effects of various things, like indirectly supporting union busting or lowering of wages, among countless other horrible practices, by purchasing a copy of GTA 6, because Rockstar and Take-Two are very well known to go all-in on both of these.

Unless it comes down to specific wording - ‘fuck you for giving money to company xyz’ vs ‘did you know that company xyz (…)’. As in the example towards the end of the post. That makes sense, and I can agree that antagonizing people for this is a bad idea.

Otherwise it’s never negative or toxic to point these things out. They are incredibly important, and everyone should know about them to make informed choices.

It may seem negative, because the corporations, and nearly everything they stand for and do are extremely negative. It’s hard to mention genocide positively, isn’t it?

Of course, you can, for instance, buy and play GTA 6 without thinking about all the terrible things Rockstar and Take-Two do. You’ll probably have a better time, too. But surely, you realize it’s nothing more than willful ignorance, and at the end of the day you’re supporting horrible scumbags in exchange for some fun, whether you want to or not.

One of the reasons the world is such a removed is precisely because a lot of people choose to live in bliss. At least those who can afford to, because more and more simply can’t. Many Lemmy users are trying to combat this, I think out of desire to create a better world. Which we should absolutely encourage, minus the part about antagonizing people.