“Sometimes there’s a man… I won’t say a “hero,” because what’s a hero? But sometimes there’s a man who… well, he’s the man for his time and place!” – Sam Elliot (the Stranger) from the glorious The Big Lebowski
You know that classic quote about standing on the shoulders of giants (and pioneers)? Honestly, in so many ways, that’s how I truly feel about the good ol’ Fediverse.
So, to sum up-- who are YOUR heroes here, and what does keep you hanging on here, baby…?
EDIT: For people wondering about what kinds of ‘bumps & difficulties’ I’ve personally experienced, here’s a tiny sampler:
The vibe is a lot like “the old internet”. Sure, you don’t get a lot of responses most of the time, but those you do get are genuine and in good faith.
On reddit you can post the most innocuous thing and be met with ridicule or disdain. Most of the posts I made were commented on in a negative way. Even harmless things like “I found this funny product at the supermarket” in the appropriate subreddit was met with insults and a bunch of negative comments. Asking for advice on a popular advice subreddit got me a bunch of insults.
Here I have few answers, but those are genuine ones and so far they’ve been in good faith, no unprovoked insults, no sifting through someone’s history to insult them based on a post from 3 years ago.
Yeah, I hear you on that one.
Overall, I find Reddit to be a fairly well-informed, left-leaning (which in any other 1st world country would simply be ‘average centrist’) base, but the place is indeed also chock-full of dude-bros who form kind of a vast, ‘mean-girls’ clique IMO. And they like nothing better than to punish people (or in their juvenile words “shit on”) others for not conforming and communicating in modern ‘Reddit-speak.’
So, all-in-all something of a fascinating psychological study in to how people self-guide in to becoming deliberate weirdos, haha. Anyway, yeah, sorry to hear you had to deal with all that toxicity, as a newcomer. :/
Absolutely. Reddit just gets so nasty. Lord knows WHY people feel the urge to siftthrough someone’s history and bitch them out but they do and they’re cruel. The sheer size of reddit gives them anonyminity but also reddit don’t do much about it.
I like how personal it is here, people kinda know each other and it is like the olden days. It’s a good community and you get friendly, genuine comments with far fewer bad apples. I’m really happy here
Expanding on this, because you have said almost the same I was thinking, I feel AI slop and bots aren’t really a thing here, or they are easy to filter.