I haven't had a negative experience, so I checked your post history to see if your communities might provide any clues as to why you're having a lot of negative experiences.

It looks like you post a lot to unpopular opinions and politics. Is it possible that maybe you're inviting debate on contentious issues? For comparison, I checked my own history and it looks like I engage primarily with tabletop RPGs, technology, and memes. I also comment on world news, but it's not my primary form of interaction.

I'm an Admin for a Lemmy instance, so see a lot if reports related to users' comments and, from my perspective, it seems like the vast majority of people on Lemmy are having reasonably respectful discussions.

However, your personal experience may vary depending on where you post and what you post.

If you run into someone and they’re an asshole, it’s likely that they are the asshole. If you run into people all day that are assholes then it’s likely you need to do some soul-searching.

Block negative people. After a bit you will find lemmy to be enjoyable with fewer people clogging your comments, embroiled in modern social media hate.

It makes a huge difference and this place is small enough to make blocking highly effective.

As a bonus you can tell when blocked people have commented. It brings me joy to know am not exposed to their toxicity.i

You have to ask yourself what you hope to get out of with your comment.

If someone is asking for opinions, then it's maybe ok to post your opinion.

If you want to point out something wrong, do it without personal attacks.

If you want to disagree with someone, do it without challenging that person, and in a factual way with evidence that adds to the conversation, instead of trying to convince someone.

If you want to call someone out, you have to realize someone will want to do the same to you, and do it with a short and factual comment and keep emotions out.

If you want to change someone's mind, just log off. You cannot change anyone's mind on the internet.

Loving Lemmy! Never felt like it was worth posting on Reddit, this place feels like some weird, dysfunctional, extended family.

Lemmy has been mostly chill minus maybe a couple trolls here and there

No, I honestly haven't. Even the contentious arguments I've had are generally pretty civil. Sure, there are exceptions, but that's always true with human beings unless it's a highly constrained or moderate forum.

There was just a post by someone recently who said they could talk about being a woman here without getting an inbox full of gross personal messages, very unlike Reddit. It seems like it's generally good here, with exceptions.

There's quite some toxicity here, but once I blocked lemmygrad and hexbear plus most instances on lemmy.ml, it's much better.

Don't shy away from blocking a ton of communities or prolific shitposters as well, especially when browsing by new.

A lot of users here have a lot of wrong opinions about a lot of things, but it's not our job to fix them.

and I stopped trying to argue in the comments.

This is allowed. Maybe if you let someone get their last reply, they'll think they won the debate and keep on being wrong. But if you keep arguing, they'll think you're an asshole, and still keep on being wrong. Myself, I rarely share my thoughts on a topic more than once per thread, even if someone disagrees with it.

I think you're just annoyed by all the jeans.

I saw a saying (maybe here) recently. Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action; but by the tenth or twelth time, it's probably you.

Maybe it puts me at risk of forming an echo chamber but I make liberal use of the block user, block community, block instance features.(in connect for lemmy. I don't know which are app specific.)

Lemmy seems to be small enough that blocking a few dozen particularly argumentative users noticeably improves the experience. Although I do try to avoid the politics communities and posts as those frequently end up with arguments and eventually name calling.

Are you consuming the all feed unfiltered?

So you never visited reddit then. Be glad.

Only ver recently has it felt this way BUT the amount of comments has also skyrocketed so it’s only natural to have more arguing and pedantry (god I hate the nitpicking).

Don't take it social media too serious mate, just have some funny time here..

I make it a point to avoid the political communities and not browse by "all". Seems to do me well enough.

No, you're definitely not.

I block many users and that seems to solve most of my problems with negative people. Like psyop type trolling of any kind I block or if someone is just an ass. I don't even reply. If they really piss me off I reply and immediately block so they can't even respond. I've had a few go through every post I've made in a month trying to down vote everything. That, now that, I get a kick out of myself. I never start the BS though, or at least I do not think I do or intend on it.

Also, use Alexandrite the 'a.lemmy' version of the interface. It basically ignores the downvote trolls by design so you won't even see their stupidity. This interface makes this place much more enjoyable overall.

Back a few months ago I was about ready to leave over negativity, but using a.lemmy.world completely shifted me in the other direction.

Go to Beehaw. Or wherever you pick, maybe just move the process along a little faster?

Usually it's the same users who always come into discussions in bad faith and simply argue against whatever is being said. There are a few people I have had blocked for months now and my experience as improved a lot.

My only gripe is, that I can still see them in my threads in the unread messages of kbin, and that kinda sucks.

But since the community at large is fairly small, it's not super difficult to eliminate the constant gripers and argumentative folks from your experience.