I like a lot of the communities on that instance, but every once in a while I just get hit with a random wave of toxicity by them for no reason. For example, there was a post asking which communities from Reddit do you wish existed on Lemmy, and I answered honestly saying more car related communities as they are one of my hobbies, and I got severely downvoted and got replied to with “there is a FuckCars community” There are other times in the past where something similar happened in a lemmy.ml community, where I said something that was 100% non-offensive, non-argumentative, and non-political but got mass down voted for no reason. I have not had this problem anywhere else however. Does anyone else have a similar experience or no?
I use the “block” feature pretty liberally. If some random stranger is being an asshole, I don’t really see the need to continue engaging with them.
I did that on reddit and it was pretty fascinating to see that some people really can be assholes one day and then be helpful and friendly the next, I would’ve never noticed had I not blocked them. I agree with you though, if someone acts like conversations on the internet are a place for them to vent their anger then I want nothing to do with them.
That’s interesting, not what I’d expect – but hey, everyone has their off days.
In an online space with more of a community feel, it would probably be worth extending a little more grace and patience. Lemmy doesn’t have that feel to me, though. It feels like having random conversations with strangers with no continuity.
I’ll admit, part of this is a pattern I started on reddit. I tried to curate my community list, but I made the – decision? mistake? – of including my city and state-specific subreddits. They were basically cesspits of racism and trolling compared to the good communities that I liked. There was also the increase in political propaganda bots over the years (not bad when I joined, terrible by time I left). I tried to avoid the worst offenders, but sometimes I’d get bored with my feed and click on the “all” feed. Bad idea.
I just ignore people who annoy me for the same reason. Either of us could be having a bad day or misunderstanding what the other is trying to communicate. It doesn’t mean they might not say something I want to read in the future - especially with smaller communities.
I used to really like the RES extension so I could tag people just in case I come across them again in the future. Both positive and negative experiences with people.
I’ve only blocked a handful of people like shallowboob (or whatever their name was) who karma farmed/karma bot and I just wasn’t interested anymore.