But the issue (while we’re small at least) is that downvoting and toxicity causes that lack of engagement, and so it becomes a toxic cycle

and then are confused why people turn around as soon as they get here

I’m also looking forward to private subscriber only communities, that’ll enable real niche communities to dev

Same, when they come I’ll spin up a couple more small communities I think would do well, but not before.

Fully get it. I don’t know either which is why I exasperatedly wrote this. I downvote the negativity, and I try to post positive things, I have a full blocklist and defed list, but it’s all just tiring.

It just kills me that the same people will turn around and complain that lemmy isn’t bigger, or that people don’t post enough, or that there isn’t enough engagement, and then will constantly downvote anything that they don’t 100% agree with.

Lemmy is adding it soon, but until then I’m stuck. I think that’s a hurdle most users won’t do, if they have to actively subscribe to a niche community to downvote it’s posts I don’t think most would. (Why would you subscribe to a community you actively dislike)

The reason was pretty clear i thought. Because it is better to be positive, that instead of adding yet another negative post try to add a positive one.

Very possible. I know I dislike platforms like Facebook where there is no dislike, so everything seems super popular, but also here with unlimited downvotes it’s so easy to dislike everything (and then complain that there isn’t enough content).

I wonder what people would do if there were only so many downvotes they got a week/day. How would they parse them out? What if when you ran out you had to choose to downvote this or take a downvote away from something else?

But you’re exactly right, people want to be angry.

Thanks for saying this, I hope your coffee is great! I think you hit the nail on the head, art can be enjoyed even if it was not created by/in the best way. Now giving money to them is a completely different thing I’ll admit, but I’ll never demonize someone for enjoying a thing when that thing has done nothing. …there’s probably a better way to say that. The people saying you shouldn’t read harry potter because Rowling is evil is the same as those who said you shouldn’t read it because it’s anti-christian. Enjoy what you enjoy, and decide for yourself.

Agree on your caveat. The only intolerance I have is to intolerance.

I swear I got them from my local mom and pop shop!

Don’t you know that Pop buys his jeans from Levis who is directly responsible for the crisis in…

I run a couple of very small niche communities and this is exactly what happens. I can curate as much as I can as a mod, but if one of my handful of users post something almost immediately it has a negative rating purely because people (who are not subscribed or related to our community) downvote it. They can read the title or even just the community and they’ll downvote it for that alone. So people stop posting as much, and then it dies. I have a couple on life support, but it’s very hard.

And people wonder why niche communities aren’t taking off here

Maybe I’m tired of hearing people complain about GTA when I see way more posts here complaining about it than I do anyone who is interested in actually buying it.

Pretty sure on most mainstream social media saying bad things about Odyssey and GTA will only earn you insults.

So it’s justified, doing the opposite here. Since they might be doing it that way we should be just as rude to people here, as long as it’s in reverse?

No I don’t think so, I think the negativity is exhausting everywhere, and it’s infuriating here because we try to claim that we’re better than mainstream corporate media but then fall into the same tropes.

You’re right, people aren’t “afraid” to voice their opinions when they’re “bad” towards Odyssey and GTA. Because on Lemmy that is the popular opinion. Lemmy isn’t voicing unpopular opinions, it’s voicing extremely popular ones to it’s limited audience.

Hey I like gardening and having little plants!

Don’t you know that the soil is going rotten and the planet is dying how could you even do are you even tracking your water consumption?

This was the funniest post I’ve seen all day, thank you :)

Absolutely true, this is one in what feels like, maybe not an ocean but a very large lake of constant negativity. It is the one that was at the end of several posts about how everything is horrible.

why are you even here?

Because I think Lemmy could be a more positive place if we started calling out the loud negativity more.

I do not owe you an explanation of why, you have the entirety of the internet, posts, and awards season to explain there. That’s why I’m not focusing on your post.

What I will say is that my point boils down to this. If you are a film buff and can think of other films, I’d much rather see posts about smaller films that you think are very good instead of posts about things being very bad. And hey, I haven’t creeped on your history maybe it’s full of posts like that and this was the luck of the draw that I had fiver or six super negative posts and your happened to be the one I finally snapped on, but it’s tiring being here and only see negative.

You say I need to prove why it’s good? I say we should be showing examples of others that we want those to see. To use my Pink Floyd example, don’t say “Dark Side of the Moon was terrible”. Show people why you thought Astronomy Domine was great. That’s how you welcome people to a community, not tear it down.

For this guy hopefully he proves that. For any of us regular folks what you’re saying may be true, but would bankrupt us trying to prove our case.

We’re what… 1% of the size of Reddit? Less? (Lemmy+Piefed, not the whole Fediverse). To set up custom APIs and annoyances for what would probably be almost insta-banned doesn’t seem worth it compared to Reddit who will happily allow you to send to near everyone. Hell a basic NSFW subreddit is probably magnitudes larger than all of us.