Hostile, no not really. Less tolerance for bullshit isn’t necessarily hostile.

Insular? Yeah. It’s a small community.

Its simply the old internet: A highly autistic place filled with highly intelligent (or at least, that is what they think of themselves) people with tons of StarTrek, inside jokes and oh so much petty grudges.

As someone who was around at the time of the Usenet and the end if the BBS era I love it, but it is a bit of an acquired taste…

Pee pee poo poop

I’m only a month in to my Lemmy journey (a few days or so of being actually active now I understand how it works) and I have so far found totally the opposite.

It’s sure a lot nicer than reddit, we can express ourselves better here without worrying about the banhammer or shit like that. Hell on Reddit I used to get permanently muted from communities just cause I said a ‘bad word’ - once was by a really good sub because I directly quoted an Australian animated skit with the word cunt in it. I’m Aussie so I’m not offended by it in the least, it’s an Aussie staple that can mean all kinds of things.

People here seem nicer, smaller community, more open for a chat, don’t have to autistically worry about someone getting offended as often. More likely to upvote comments too.

In short, fuck Reddit haha.

No, not really. Are you spreading misinformation or something?

A lot of people come here because they hate what Reddit has become without acknowledging that their shitty Redditor behavior is part of the problem.

As someone who’s trying go find my place online… Having tried Mastodon, Lemmy, mBin, nostr, bsky, wafrn, etc. Lemmy is by far the most hostile and it’s not even close. Yes there may be more trolls on nostr. But it’s obvious trolling. Not serious hostility.

Honestly, Lemmy feels like an echo chamber. I only rarely see people disagreeing with the OP or being willing to accept different opinions without judging.

On other networks, I don’t sense as much anger or judging based on single statements. I once made an unfortunate and unclear statement on Bluesky and while the immediate reaction from some of the other people in there was definitely negative, it was more of a conversation and it actually ended up feeling like we all ended up moving on. Lemmy feels more like a place where you say something that’s borderline centrist and you’ll be slaughtered in bright daylight and hung out to dry.

But I may just have been browsing the wrong communities I guess.

I’m not saying I’m not an asshat at times. I am human, after all. It’s just that on other networks, I feel there’s more opportunity to have an actual debate instead of being lynched by a thousand anonymous community-beloved personalities.

At first, I was very cautious here. After Reddit, I was expecting that people would go through post histories and attack me for misunderstandings and call me an AI bot, like some users do in sites like Reddit… But no. I haven’t had any issues, even when I have put out more controversial opinions or asked dumb questions. I have gotten downvoted occasionally when I have been wrong or misunderstood, which is fair. I have gotten replies from people with different opinions, but they have been polite and sticked in the topic, which is fucking amazing. I haven’t had a single even slightly unpleasant interaction so far.

Folk here have been very helpful, polite, funny or neutral. I’m actually becoming more brave at posting and commenting, and I no longer feel fearful/unpleasant when I see that I have an unread notification. Of course there are communities I have blocked or instances that I avoid but that’s just to curate my feeds.

Hostile? Yes, in the sense of purity spirals spiralling. Sometimes.
Insular? Maybe, but I already know I live in a bubble.
And then there are communities on Lemmy which feel both hostile and insular to me, like the one with “cars” in its name…

Its raw internet. You gotta put effort into customizing it to your taste.

It’s the complete opposite for me. I write stupid comments all the time, never bother putting ‘/s’ or anything and most of the time people just get it and joke along. Serious discussions are usually quite civil and interesting. Sometimes people get angry over silly things but I just ignore them.

Treating every comment you disagree with as through it were a dissertation is called Isolated Demand For Rigor and it’s a bad faith tactic used to burden the opponent with a workload no sane person would ever take on for an internet comment and win by default. You should probably block anybody you see who does that.

Nah, I’m one of the baddies. I want conversation, not just memes and canned comments.

Honestly, to me it feels more insular than Reddit. It feels like there’s no room for nuance in opinion. So for example, if I argue against something that isn’t a hard left economic idea I’ll get down voted pretty heavily even though it’s a pretty tame comment. It does feel like if you go against the grain here, it’s actually worse than that other site.

On Reddit if I posted something against the grain there would usually be one or two people who would chime in and say “yeah. I agree with this guy.” … But on Lemmy there’s no room for that.

No. I encounter people I would consider “hostile” far less frequently compared to another site that I used to frequent.