I was Reddit earlier and viewing one of question subs. The top 5 comments were all ‘jokes’.
What’s worse is no matter how unfunny the top jokes are you’ll get hundreds of cold comments flogging the joke to death.
The 6th top comment actually answered the question.
Lemmy may not have as much content but what is here is so much better quality.
What’s also nice is that due to the lower amount of users, when you do find these people who can never take anything seriously and just spam, blocking them instantly cleans up your comment sections all over the place.
I’m all for jokes, but they get to be too much. I’m so sick of reading a long “history” of something that ends with “Source: I made it all up”. Especially when it’s in an informational community. I’ve been somewhat liberal with my block usage and it has improved things greatly.
Also consider blocking people who mass post dozens of articles all at once but don’t comment. They tend to flood communities with posts that don’t get much response and are no better than the bot reposting accounts. Especially when they post the same link to 5 different communities and it’s all that shows in your feed.
The ability to curate our individual experiences here is fantastic!
As one example: in the main niche Reddit sub I visited there is someone who continually downvotes literally every single comment in any given random thread, no matter what the content. It is extremely obvious when that occurs, especially when there is a rather pronounced demarcation indicating the time that it stopped. Ironically it seems to be just one person! Probably someone who was banned and since lack of consent only excites them further, now is out to “make them pay”, including the randos who never visited the sub before in their lives and now just wanted to ask an innocent question, having nothing whatsoever to do with the mods or common contributors. Here, you can see exactly who downvotes you, and could block someone doing that.
Similarly one person started abusing the report button on practically every comment I made, tagging my name 9 times in a message before I blocked them, so with that avenue to try to hurt me disabled they sought out other means. Here, again I think such reports are public.
Having to put your name to something rather than allowing it to be anonymous may cause someone to pause before jumping immediately to abusive behaviors. Sadly their parents never taught them how to behave, but at least we have better tools here to curate our receipt of what the platform delivers to us from these would-be abusers, making it much more enjoyable IMHO. I don’t think I’d like this place if it became more like YouTube or 4chan, even if some people seem to think the opposite (except those places already exist practically everywhere, even X nowadays, so like… go there if you enjoy it so much, but I’d like at least one place that is NOT that way, somewhere/somehow!?). And Lemmy/Kbin is that place!:-)
Wait, you can block and unblock individual posters and/or comments?
I did not know that, I must have not been fiddling with it enough!
Reddit is this weird combo of the unfunny pun-chain dipshits who take nothing seriously lumped in with the “AKSHUALLY” assholes who take themselves way too seriously.
The vibe on Lemmy is much better in general. And when you do encounter a random jerk here, blocking works. As another commenter pointed out, the lower population of Lemmy is a feature not a problem.
Reddit is this weird combo of the unfunny pun-chain dipshits who take nothing seriously lumped in with the “AKSHUALLY” assholes who take themselves way too seriously.
Hey, some of us do both at once! Get it right! 😡
I always love it when there’s a thread about annoying behaviours and people show up to demonstrate that they are the exact thing being complained about 😂
Well that’s not me because I’m funny fr no cap
That is the best description of Reddit users I’ve ever seen. And I guarantee you they’d downvote you for saying it even though you’re right lol
And, this comment attracted exactly the type of annoying users we’re talking about.
So, the replies in this thread have brought about my first use of the block button(x3). Thanks to whoever suggested liberal use of it. Definitely recommend.
Blocking makes the experience much better. People sometimes worry this can create a “confirmation bubble” but the real trap to avoid is engaging with the trolls and weirdos. I wouldn’t talk to them on a subway platform, so why talk to them online.
Excuse me, which platform is for trains to downtown?
Depends on how fast you block people, some users are going to have a pretty empty experience if they just block anyone that doesnt agree with them on everything all the time. As far as hive minds go it’s just as bad here as reddit.
I much prefer the higher mix of soft, sensitive types on Lemmy. Humor really gets in the way of feeling my feelings you know?
Have you tried LSD?
As another commenter pointed out, the lower population of Lemmy is a feature not a problem.
And when an instance gets too big, smash that block button.
That’s the strategy I used… For your mom.
Man i am trying so hard to come up with an appropriate pun right now, but it’s just not happuning.
Most commentators there are playing to the gallery rather than answering the questions. The size of the question subs actually makes it harder to get a good answer.
The best karma return per comment is not to craft a lengthy, thoughtful reply but to fire of a snappy one liner as fast as possible.
What I have written is also not inciteful or original. It has been well know for a long time and is pretty much a factor of sub size and the demographic spread of the user base (which skews young, cis, male and american).
This is the crux of it.
I was so unbelievably sick of the rote comments (bAnAnA fOr ScAlE?!?), and edgelord opinions, and half-formed trains of thought that overlook a lot of the nuances of whatever is being discussed.
Lemmy is a lot better by miles.
* insightful. Unless you actually mean to encourage a mob, in which case, carry on!
Sometimes, a spelling mistake can be strangely insightful.
You’re trying to incite insight.
The trick is that people can talk however they like, but they cannot mandate that a particular comment rise to the top of a particular scoring scheme. If commentors and voters would both use discretion based on the magazine they are in… but that is a moot point bc that won’t happen either.
Short of something like a separate voting scheme (was this comment (a) popular or (b) insightful? or maybe both types can be up/down-voted independently; but then you could sort by either one or the other), I think it will just continue to happen here, even if less overwhelming than on Reddit, due to both different audiences and scales of population.
Until I left Reddit I didn’t realize how not funny the comments were.
Also repetitive.
Before entering the sub you could usually predict the top half dozen joke replies, every-time.
And my axe! This! What he said. The narwhal bacons at midnight! Pics or it didn’t happen.
The narwhal thing isn’t quite the same, as it very rarely came up and I think was always cringe (at least it was 10 years ago).
100% on the rest, and I throw in “what?” Responded to with the above post in uppercase. That one was fine exactly one time, after the great time it was no longer clever.
The narwal bacons at midnight
That brings back memories.
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This.
This is the only time this comment is acceptable.
I hate you.
Okay, I definitely agree the “meme” jokes and most-frequently-upvoted joke comments were stupid as fuck, but there was definitely some gold on occasion. I think we’re looking at a 1:100 ratio, but those 1’s would crack me up.
The actual original thoughts and reactions. Not the regurgitated “jokes” that were the Reddit in-jokes, but the genuinely funny takes you’d find every so often.
Not seeing “the ol’ ___ switcheroo” or “r/unexpectedthingthatispostedineveryfuckingthread” is great
The switcheroo has sadly already begun
What is the switcheroo
Where someone purposely misinterprets a question and answers it. Then someone says “Ah the old reddit -something-aroo” where it has something to do with the conversation and it links to the last time the switcheroo happened. Then someone else replies with “Hold my -something- I’m going in”. It creates a link chain where it’s just a bunch of switcheroo jokes.
Hold my funeral, I’m going in!
Where?
Ah, the new Lemmy switcheroo!
It would be nice to be able to mark a comment as silly while writing it, just like low priority emails. OP could skip notifications for those and they could be sorted to the end.
Tildes has this feature, and I love it. There are a bunch of tags that can be applied to comments, both of the “this is a brilliant contribution” and “this is noise/low effort/silly” varieties.
In general, Tildes culture is high effort, but there’s still room for fun. It’s nice to see each platform innovating.
Yes, this would be an excellent feature. Only problem is people exploiting it to hide or ridicule legitimate responses they don’t agree with. But that’s a problem for later. With the cussing userbase and growth rate this feature works be great for quite a while.
I believe the implication is you self flag these while writing them, so people can filter them out if they dont want the clutter
sage Sage SAGE When you have nothing of value to add, rage out with your sage out.
Time to appropriate a feature from *chan sites
Hey, man, do you even realize how hard it is to scrape the bottom of a barrel? It’s pretty hard. Especially if you’re a large fellow.
I’ve never understood what’s so difficult about it. Once you flip it upside down it practically scrapes itself.
But then it’s the top.
Top comment right here.
Move to Australia first.
Taps head
Nah, that stuff sticks, that’s why scraping is required.
I strongly agree with your sentiment. There is absolutely less karma whoring here and it makes the place nicer to be in. Jokes stop being funny after about the thousandth time but the circlejerk stopped them from dying.
I love that you don’t have to trawl through a mile long pun thread before you find a comment that is actually novel or contributes to a discussion.
Then again it’s not like this place is perfect, there was the bean thing which was funny for about five minutes but went on for weeks and meme accounts which are the same old flogging jokes to death that you were talking about.
^This
Banning all jokes is also a mistake. The biggest joke on Reddit was the science subs, where hardcore moderators pretended to be responsible for building an encyclopedia of only true statements. Leave that for Wikipedia or actual publishing. Nobody in their right mind would go to Reddit or Lemmy to search for the absolute truth about rocket science anyway. A forum is a place for discussion and conversations and should contain clueless questions and even jokes.
I don’t mind a joke or a good pun as long as it’s original and relevant to the context. Some jokes only work well in a serious context. The problem is that they’re not original and often forced to fit the context.
Serious and interesting comments also get repeated ad nauseam. This happens because of the size of the userbase. It’s “original” to someone. (Please don’t link the 10.000 xkcd).
Also the age of the users. There are soo many juveniles on Reddit who still have to learn how to even have a conversation that isn’t about arguing or one-upping the previous poster.
Overall, I think people here have a better grasp on what they want from an online community.
It used to be funny to open up a thread on /r/AskHistorians and see all the comments removed and the thread locked. In that sub, even true information was forbidden if it came from a dilettante.
siR tHis iS a WeNdyZ
Lol, the Earth will be fine.
Gonna have to disagree, the quality is identical there’s just fewer overall comments so it seems that way at first glance. Instead of the top five being jokes it’s only like two and they aren’t as upvoted.
@CashewNut me too. The top comment is always a joke. 5 out of the top 8 also attempts at jokes. Its not a discussion anymore.
That is bc Reddit used to be a discussion forum, but along the way (to the planned IPO) switched to aim to become a social media platform. Longer comments literally got harder to type out, as more users were pushed towards using the mobile app (to monetize their data?), which in turn brought in a younger crowd, used to different forms of interactions from other social media sites. I’ve heard reports of old-Reddit starting to break after July, and you just know they’ll kill it off entirely soon enough, or would if they thought they could get away with it.
Reddit literally changed, lead in large part by the push for the IPO, and it got harder and harder to buck the trend.
Until we all just gave up on it entirely and came here instead - problem solved! :-P
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I think I prefer the jokes over what I’ve experienced on Lemmy. So far a lot of it has been smartasses that seeming only care about broadcasting their opinion with little to no interest in actual discussion. Kind of like Twitter actually
Mentioned it elsewhere, but Mastodon continues to be one of the best social media experiences I have ever had (look, it isn’t as low of a bar as you would expect but still…). Something about the nature of Mastodon means people actually talk to each other and try to elaborate on talking points. My theory is it is because basically everyone on there knows it will never be “the new twitter” and are instead focused on being what twitter should have been.
Whereas lemmy… Lemmy is like going on a date with someone who just got out of a long term relationship. They can’t stop telling stories about when they were with their ex or comparing you to them. And… when you head back to their place after drinks they keep joking about whether they can film themselves giving you a blowy and sending it to their ex to show just how over him they are.
Combine that with a much more lax policy toward piracy and a LOT of “I just learned what linux is and anyone who doesn’t use it is a sheeple” college kids and… yeah. Plus, I have definitely gotten the vibe that a few people want to become one of the big “personalities” of the platform.
Honorable mention to Cohost. I think people have really done a good job of making it feel like something special. But it also feels like everyone isn’t sure how horny/weird they should go on nu-tumblr.
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I have noticed a much stronger contingent of Tumblr vibes. I wish I got more humor, but instead I get this gestures broadly.
It’s the brooding sensitive types that crumble under humor or criticism that I see most. Maybe I’m the antagonist of this story but I feel like I’ve made more people cry on lemmy than I’ve made laugh or change minds, and I’m not the even the mean reddit type.
Edit: a word
I feel like I’ve made more people cry on lemmy than I’ve made laugh or change minds, and I’m not the even the mean reddit type.
This is certainly a statement.
I can’t speak for Tumblr vibes since I’ve never interacted with that platform much. But I do agree with you, I also see there are more sensitive users here than on Reddit.
I’ve seen individual instances like that, but ofc ymmv. Curate what you do not enjoy, and maybe consider switching instances even if need be, to get something acceptable to use. Life is too short to waste your time otherwise - there will always be trolls, so let them troll, but you don’t have to choose to share the same space as them!
Although ofc some amount of that is going to happen no matter where you go, so it’s a matter of degree (and also of kind, in terms of new levels of severity) depending on your instance, the magazine you are in, etc. Even so, blocking can work wonders for someone who simply ruins every single conversation they are involved in without ever contributing positively. It is not your responsibility to help train everyone around you to live life, if you do not want to! It is nice to have choices, sometimes:-).
lot of it has been smartasses that seeming only care about broadcasting their opinion
Honestly, I have not really experienced that much at all. Sure there is the odd case of it but blocking the odd user or sub seems to fix that pretty well.
It may well be that your instance is federated with some of the problem ones and mine is not but I haven’t really paid much attention to the federated/defederated stuff.
I have seen several posts of people complaining about the users of a periarticular instance (there are a few recurring ones) but I haven;t a seen it despite spending a bit of time browsing /all.
It’s a fine line between information between smug comments and expected internet room meme banter.
I just want to learn without being judged and there’s always a place for funny comments with some nuance. I don’t want to be talked down on for not “knowing it the right way” or only see callback comments to that one funny thing 7 years ago, y’know?
in reddit someone argued that Lemmy isn’t user friendly because you have to make several accounts in several ‘instance’ thingy’s and thus not practical at all. tbh if it takes unpracticality to fend off those single braincell people then all the better: might as well require 2fa and an iris scan just to post a comment or sign in smh
An argument against that is that typically the only need for multiple accounts is if a specific instance has defederated against another instance. In most cases those defederated instances are hosting hostile or pedo content. Good riddance!
In most cases those defederated instances are hosting hostile or pedo content.
Except there has been (still is?) all the drama between the tankie instances and the big instances defederating from each other that I was happy to sidestep by joining a smaller instance.
all instances dont upgrade their Lemmy version at the same time: sometimes a spare account is required to keep browsing Lemmy. Also some servers become sluggish when they become popular and have high usercount. I always prefer to sign up to the next newest and smallest instance out there: that way i keep browsing Lemmy smoothly. And also yea: multiples accounts spare me also the Lemmy drama of federation/defedaration.
I went back and forth on this when I was new to Reddit. At first I was frustrated by the humor in the comments but later I appreciated having a laugh so I actually liked it most of the time.
Laughing is good for you. Questions on social media don’t have to be stoic academic discussions. There are other places for that. It is ok to laugh a bit.
I also think the question should be answered, so I do agree with you…in part.
As an early adopter of Reddit, it always had jokes. What it only recently came into possession of is an inability to be serious. I consider the jokes an enzyme, in that they are a small piece that accelerates the coming of an answer and the proportion of joke and answer should be similar to enzyme and substrate. At least one of the top 3 comments should be an attempt at answering the question or both the jokes and the answers are devalued.
I agree with this entirely. A joke can be satirical and bookend a thread but the top comments deserve to at least be thoughtful and insightful. It’s much like how comedic timing and actual contribution have to be balanced in real life.
Try your best to get your voice heard but always ask yourself “Am I really contributing to this conversation?” before submitting.
Funny is good. The same endlessly recycled puns, references, and predictable comment chains aren’t funny, though.
I do agree with you, however.
Did nazi that coming
How could you not, it was reich in front of us
Well demonstrated. Puns are facile and AIDS, especially puns in response to puns.
…i don’t get this one
