Answer questions if I can
This + I like to just give people answers. I find too often online somebody will ask a question and a lot of users will often try to be helpful but fail because they didn’t actually answer it.
Dumb example Q: “What’s the best Indian food in this city?” A: “There’s not a whole lot of Indian food but you might have luck with a burgeoning southeast Asian store”
If people would interact with others as they would do face to face. For whatever reason, we are so quick to forget the person at the other end. You’ll see people complain or discuss real people with literally no empathy and it can be mind boggling at times.
This is sadly so true. I think part of it too is that text is a poor medium for expression at times. For example, it’s harder to read sarcasm.
I find this to be less of a problem in less formal spaces. When typos, capitalization, and memes all get incorporated into the dialect, sarcasm and other nuance comes across much more readily. See also: Tumblr.
I suspect that sort of dialect wouldn’t be as comprehensible here though, because of the greater diversity in demographics here than Tumblr or my small closed group chats with friends. Here on Lemmy, I try to mitigate this by giving the benefit of the doubt and never ever feeding the trolls.
(Does downvoting a troll count as feeding it, because it gives them attention? I don’t want to risk it, so I usually pass them by, but I’m curious as to people’s consensus here.)
Part of the challenge of social media is that it leads you to interact with many more people than you ever could in normal life.
While the vast majority of people are delightful, there are significant numbers of people with whom I wouldn’t want to interact, either face-to-face or online.
One thing I should get better at is avoiding engagement with those people online who I wouldn’t benefit from interacting with.
I don’t talk to the crazy person ranting on the street, why would I do it online?
Absolutely.
If people would interact with others as they would do face to face.
Man, I’d never say anything online if I did that.
If i have something bad to say, i don’t.
I block and never talk to the nazis.
- Report spam, scam, racism, hostility and clickbait
- Don’t engage trolls
- Don’t answer questions I’m not sure I have the correct answer for (or else point out that I’m just giving a “best guess” response)
- Try to be neutral or positive/affirming in replies. If I can’t, I’d rather not reply at all.
Not feeding trolls.
It’s not a life hack, but I try to be polite and open with people to a reasonable extent. I turned around several internet arguments with this attitude, even when we had a different opinion at the end there was no toxicity.
There are always the unreasonable idiots and straight up crazies and of course the trolls. Well fuck those people, just block them 👍
Curate my feeds so I mostly don’t see negatuve content (doomers, cynics, trolls, etc)
I do this, and employ frequent and rapid blocking on social media.
Instead of engaging, dick wads get blocked without comment.
Since switching to Lemmy I use my up/downvote in a different way than on reddit. Upvote now means I think the comment/post contributes something valuable while downvote means the comment/post is unnecessarily unfriendly or just not contributing anything constructive.
Typical Reddit voting v Lemmy voting
Reddit Lemmy I agree Upvote Upvote I disagree, but it contributes to the conversation Downvote Upvote Meh Downvote - Trolling and bad faith arguments Upvote Downvote That’s what they were originally about on Reddit as well before its gradual decline. “Reddiquette” as they called it.
Unfortunately it turned into an “I agree” or “I disagree” button.
When some nihilistic edgelord cares too much about others caring about something and screeches “WHO CARES?” or “NO ONE CARES”
thought-terminating cliches to try to shut discussion down, I voluntarily say “I care” and that often shuts them up and whatever was being cared about usually continues.It’s a small thing, but I think it makes a local difference.
Commenting to creators with specific things that I like about their work
Radical optimism. Hell yeah! Basically anti-doomerism.
not be an asshole to everyone, and trying to explain my reasoning.
Moderate the OnlineFavors subreddit.
Disconnect.
