I am somewhat disappointed, but I hope these are growing pains and that the community will improve. I don’t think Internet toxicity like I see is sustainable— who would want to only have interactions like that? It’s exhausting to read, participating must feel like a chore of unbelievable pointlessness. I can see a better Lemmy on the horizon where they get it out of their system, so to speak.

Commenters learning how to argue would go a long way. I took years of debate and honestly feel like one semester should be a requirement. There are respectful and effective ways to argue, but Lemmy users are more prone to unconvincing attempts to bulldoze. On Reddit that led to being buried, with quality arguments on the same topic getting upvotes. Here, the quality arguments are rarer so you only see the bad faith ones.

Still, I’m not giving up on Lemmy. I truly believe it can improve. But I can also see it driving away new users, or turning into an extremist platform like Voat. Now Lemmy is nowhere near the cesspool that Voat was so I’m optimistic.