Image text (Morpheus meme format)

Red pill:

Let people who pretend to know nothing about vaccines decide who can get what vaccines

Blue pill:

Let people who pretend to know nothing about guns decide who can get what guns

Red pill:

Let the weapon industry dictate gun policy

Blue pill:

Let big pharma dictate vaccine policy

I don’t know if political memes are allowed in this community. So far, I’ve mainly just gotten psychological abuse for posting this. I’m usually braced for this stuff after a past of over a decade on reddit, but some of the responses have gotten to me a bit.

That’s enough venting, sorry.

    • FrostyTrichs@testing.crazypeople.onlineM
      2·
      15 hours ago

      I think it’s important to remember that votes are nothing more than a knee jerk reaction to the content, and that doesn’t inherently infer anything about their feelings towards the OP. It’s also important to remember that while most of Lemmy/PieFed migrated from reddit the culture here is quite different for better or worse. Opinions will vary significantly from instance to instance. Some are more serous than others. 😜

        • FrostyTrichs@testing.crazypeople.onlineM
          2·
          4 hours ago

          I’m sorry to hear that. People suck sometimes.

          My personal belief is that drive-by downvoting leads to a lot of undesirable stuff like that. Removing the slight negativity as an option forces people to converse about their feelings instead of getting in the habit of being negative any time something they aren’t used to hits their feed. Over time I think that leads to a more positive and friendly environment than the standard up/downvote system, but there are a lot of people who feel like they should be allowed to downvote as a right or something. I think it’s weird and counterproductive to building communities, but everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

          Lemmy also tends to be pretty up its own ass sometimes so to a certain extent you just have to accept some people are never going to be hospitable for one reason or another. Reddit has a similar problem but it isn’t so glaringly obvious at first because of how much larger the user base is. I think a lot of people migrated from reddit expecting a drop in replacement only to find that things are just different here. Instead of embracing something new and different a lot of people have reverted to the same toxicity they were exposed to on reddit while simultaneously complaining there’s nothing here and everyone else is a insert whatever derogatory label is hot right now.

          There will always be haters and trolls and toxic personalities online. The less time you waste on them the better imo. The world is toxic enough offline, no reason to allow yourself to be subjected to that online when you’re just trying to have fun and relax. Block the clowns as they show themselves and enjoy the time and interactions you have with others IMO.

            • FrostyTrichs@testing.crazypeople.onlineM
              2·
              3 hours ago

              I’ve been on Lemmy for the better part of a couple years, running an instance in one form or another for most of that time as well. For sure Lemmy and PieFed are still growing.

              The catch is that a lot of the people joining us are coming here after reaching their breaking point on reddit or have been caught up in ban waves on reddit and this was the next logical landing place. They come here with a chip on their shoulder.

              The only way to reshape the landscape is to avoid falling into the toxicity trap yourself. Instead of bemoaning the lack of content they like people could focus on building the communities and topical discussions they desire, but that’s much harder than hating on somebody’s meme because it mentions politics, etc. Thankfully since Lemmy is decentralized we have lots of options, including finding or hosting instances and communities that fit the vibe we want, not the vibe we’ve got.

              There are unquestionably some bad takes and bad actors on the Fediverse, same as anywhere. If you are part of that group then the negativity comes with the territory. If you’re just a regular person trying to have fun and chill online without the gatekeeping and elitist attitudes, don’t let a bunch of faceless strangers ruin your fun. If people want to get riled up and hateful about someone trying to share something fun that’s their problem, not yours.