Obviously, the internet has always been a toxic place, (the phrase “flame war” has been around for decades,) but it seems to have gotten so much worse over the last few years. I used to think decentralization of the internet would fix the worst of it, but Lemmy seems to have gotten worse alongside the rest of internet culture, proving me wrong. How do we fix/improve this culture of toxicity?

Block .ml and don’t engage with .ml users And hexbear and lemmygrad

Shun the toxic people. Block them and don’t look back.

Seriously, block them. They’re still gonna toxic whether you’re there to observe it or not.

Find a well moderated instance that isn’t afraid to show toxic people the door

Block .ml, grad, hexbear, dbzer0, and quokk.au

Block any other instance or person that centers itself around identity politics

Block all the news/politics communities. Just get your news from actual news services. The comment section for most news/politics posts here is worse than an entire garbage dump on fire.And you’ll end up with like 3 federated users left which is basically my /all feed now 😑

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[–] Cowbee@hexbear.net 34 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

In a short word, yes.

Reddit was once good enough to join, but is now bad enough to leave. Could be from the IPO, API scandal, or other period. Thus, we have Reddit’s more ideological crowd, but not the ones who are interested enough in the structure of Lemmy.

Lemmy.world provides a generalist, non-committed community that they believe will replicate “earlier” Reddit, though the nature of federation means the people with more niche interests already joined a different server.

Lemmy.world attracts, therefore, terminally online radlibs with no specific interests.

~2 years ago (looks like a deleted post, found the comment by searching for it)

I'm sure others have said similar even earlier than I, just remembered this being something I also predicted.

[–] Damarcusart@hexbear.net 25 points 3 days ago (1 children)

You know, I never really thought about it, but that "no specific interests" thing is really what is so offputting about a lot of redditors. They are only interested in the social capital that social media upvotes gives and don't express an opinion or share an experience for fun, but so they can get more upvotes. Their obnoxiousness is a byproduct of their unpleasant and empty existence, not the cause of it.

[–] Cowbee@hexbear.net 24 points 3 days ago

Yep! It's not that they are formless, but they are formed in a neutral way embodying whatever is culturally dominant. Humanity is a social animal, and Lemmy.world as a subsection is for those that specifically love the flavor "general, non-descript."