When I first joined this community I saw it as a respite from reddit where I was free to chill with people without being constantly expected to debate or defend arguments or anything. Just a forum where people are nice.
Lately though it seems every active comment section is filled to the brim with, to be frank, obnoxious people who want nothing more than to fight with you about everything you say. I think they’re known as “debate bros.”
I’m not saying debate shouldn’t be happening but to be honest it’s disappointing seeing it be the only thing occurring. I’ve tried contributing in other fashions but have been met multiple times with people trying to start arguments with me about things or get me to defend “points” that I didn’t make. This in particular has been very annoying. I’ve reported every instance of this due to it not contributing but I feel as if that’s not helping.
I like talking to people I disagree with. I like conversing with differing opinions. But I feel alone in that this isn’t the only thing I want to do on a forum.
Again, I’m not trying to definitively say we shouldn’t debate at all, but just pointing out how prevalent it seems to be. Id like to just converse with people without being expected to make and defend points. I feel like that’s a major thing we should’ve left on Reddit.
If people want to debate then they can do that. I just dislike that it appears to become the base-level expectation for the instance.
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I’ve been on the internet long enough to know that any argument that goes on for long enough is going to get uncivil. You’re also very unlikely to convince someone who feel threatened by your point.
So I’ve got a soft ‘respond once’ policy. if someone replies to one of my comments, I respond once to clarify my position and address anything important. If I have failed to make my point by then, then my writing ability will continue to be insufficient in
n > 2comments, and I am adult enough to let them have the last word.Yeah this how I operate now. It’s not worth my time to argue with people. I don’t even post a second response a lot of the time, especially when the interjection is obnoxious.
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Yes. This is really just the standard internet policy of “do not feed the trolls”. This goes way back. Nicely said though.
People have different opinions on what an argument is too and what is civil. Not sure what OP is seeing. I have not seen much for issues myself. The then again I choose when and how I engage and most of what I follow is not that political.
Great policy, thanks for sharing!
Ohhh, this is a good policy. I’m taking this!
Yes, and I’ve been using beehaw less and less because of it.
Your father smelt of elderberries. :p
I’ve done a lot of reading since I joined here, and not much replying or posting. What I have noticed is that there does seem to be a certain number of people replying in different threads with similar arguments which end up getting people riled up. I am starting to recognize some of the user names, and I confess that when I see one now I tend to just drop the thread and stop reading.
I am not suggesting that what you are noticing in only due to that, since obviously there are a ton of people coming and going, but there are definitely “regular players” who seem to not know how to engage in a positive way - no matter what the topic. In some ways, I also think it’s likely to always be an inevitable issue here specifically since Beehaw has made its goals as a site quite clear. I think it just urks some people coming here that this site strives to be a positive, welcoming space and so the idea of compromising that is likely part of the appeal for the behaviour.
The more people in a public place, the more likely you are to get argumentative people in the mix. There’s going to be someone who throws the first punch.
That’s one of the reasons I block every community/magazine focused on politics, no matter the country they’re related on. Although European politics tend to be more civil than US politics. But I’m tired of too much polarization and lack of civil discourse. Tankies don’t help either, and luckily for us, exploding-heads is leaving Lemmy.
I read an interesting thread about “I hate politics” being an inherently anti-minority/anti-oppressed stance. Because to the majority, “politics” is often anything related to race/gender/social-status/etc. so it’s a disservice to those causes to ignore them.
And while I belong to a couple of minority/oppressed groups, I also get the idea of wanting to not be constantly inundated with those debates.
I’ve got no answers other than it’s complicated and something worth thinking about.
It’s well-docmented in Aotearoa, Australia, and the UK that low turnout favours the right so some centre-right parties - advised by Crosby Textor - try to create divisive issues because it puts voters off politics and voting altogether.
But, I think there’s often a big difference between engaging politically in your community and society, and debating strangers on social media.
Like @[email protected], I block things called “politics” on the lemmy and kbin sites because they are mostly catch-alls for well rehearsed/rehashed arguments relevant to America.
I think it’s possible for us to stand in solidarity with Americans without resorting to that, and in other countries their causes tend to come up in social media news so I try to take real world actions based on that, for example writing to our minister of foreign affairs to ask that NZ takes a particular stance or action.
Someone else where tried to tell me that I was “privileged” for not wanting to discuss politics - I told them that if they knew me (which isn’t that hard to do, I’m pretty transparent on the internet…) then the idea of calling me “privileged” is an absolute joke.
There’s definitely a huge difference between “I don’t want to discuss politics [with people who are most likely not going to discuss it in good faith with you and will only scream at you]” versus “I don’t want to ever be involved or know about politics whatsoever”. I don’t even discuss politics with friends because the potential consequences are… bad, to say the least. If I don’t discuss it with friends, then I’m certainly not going to discuss it with people I have no connection to (for lack of a better phrase, I don’t mean that in a harsh manner of course) on the internet. I too also tend to block any political discussion from any feeds I take part in because it also, tends to not go well.
Heck, I usually don’t even go into the “why” all that often either, because of what I mentioned in my first sentence.
Politics seem more exhausting than on reddit, since there’s entire instances that exist soley for the purpose of spreading their beliefs. Which is a pro for them with instances helping to foster a stronger community, but then they seem so much more present every where too. /c/all can be flooded with the topics they want to push if there’s a mass submission. And new instances pop up if defederated with the main goal seeming to be not just a community for themselves, but evangelizing. And lemmy isn’t at a stage yet where subscribed feeds can provide enough content to avoid /c/all like back on reddit.
Connect for lemmy with keyword filtering and instance blocking has really helped though to reduce the frequency of manual community blocking. Didn’t block during the first few weeks though, which was a nice period before it became necessary to curate personal feeds.
It happens when you get more users, always. There are people who just wants to argue as some form of entertainment.
Precisely this. 100 users can come across a comment and think nothing of it, when 1000 users or more come across it, one is likely to get ticked off by some part of it and be willing to write a response.
I wonder how much of this may relate to some folks not really knowing how else to try to interact online…? Maybe even offline as well?
Some seem primed to take any opportunity to argue, and for them I don’t think it registers negatively so much as simply how one discusses stuff. A sort of playfighting if you will, worrisome & exhausting if you’re not interested, but a joy (up to a point) to those that are.
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Argument Clinic https://youtu.be/uLlv_aZjHXc?si=TPn9cjOH1UUOmIvC
Yes, I think some of it is Beehaw-specific because everyone flocked to Beehaw with the idea of building a better community and being better then slowly reverted back to their Reddit-arguing selves.
Lemmy/kbin/Fediverse was also very bubbled to Linux and privacy-focused people, now it’s grown and keeps growing and that original bubble is very closed-minded. I’ve found a few times where I’ve mentioned some generally obvious things like “deleting Facebook means that a lot of people can’t talk to the elder folk in their family.” a common thought that is generally agreed upon but yet I got a bunch of people saying that was bullshit. A phrase I’ve started to like is “terminally online” which Lemmy seemed to be filled with. People who refuse to see there is another opinion out there and that even their opinion isn’t common. Even when their opinion is refuted by statistics. They seem to just press on.
So I see more arguing on two levels. 1) Beehaws NRE has worn off. 2) Fediverse got an influx of more people bringing in a more common mindset that the old Fediverse crowd was generally against because they lived in a bubble. (which I know I’ll get a lot of hate and arguments of “no, we didn’t”, “Linux is clearly the best OS”, “Microsoft is literally Nazis!”, “Privacy isn’t dead yet!”
Just in my experience a lot of people on the Fediverse seem to have the attitude of “my opinion is the facts” or “the one thing I read on the corner of the internet with no cites is the definitive fact!”. They are more closed off than Redditors. It’s been surprising how many posts I see saying “We don’t need to be like Reddit!” To then discover they aren’t like Reddit, they are far worse.
Frankly, this whole thing has made me second-guess trying to leave Reddit behind. The only thing stopping me is a decent phone app to it. I could see myself somehow trying to set up a PWA with RES built into it if that’s even possible. I see far more decent conversations (and open-minded people) on Reddit than here at this point and it’s a huge shame.
A lot of it is very black and white thinking/refusal to see nuance…
Absolutely agree! There is no wiggle room. These arguments are usually someone saying something definitive and someone else saying “No, it’s directly this way and always this way. There are no alternatives!” or “The alternatives are unethical, and if you use them your entire existence is unethical!” or worse “I am superior to you if you use these unethical alternatives because I can get by without them!”
I block them all. Honestly I like it here, but if it gets too frustrating, then I might contemplate going back.
There’s a lot of that here, I block more than a few each day.
The generalization.
From capitalism, landlords, privacy, microsoft, non FOSS apps.
If you even post something positive about these things, they’ll pile up on you. It’s sof the real world is a simple binary thing where there’s nothing in between and all people are one dimensional.
Some days are more frustrating than others.
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From my perspective specifically as a Canadian, it seems that it’s an American/North American thing. Some threads I was in on reddit would be full of vitriol and hate until the Europeans woke up; then I would have some actual conversations. Of course, this is just what I think. May be other reasons for that.
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I think part of this also stems from there being a lot of strong takes on certain subjects that appear in comments. Thinking of just the past few posts I’ve been through, I’ve seen statements (which i’m intentionally paraphrasing here, just using them as examples) like “all information should be free”, " is better than fad languages and all opinions to the contrary are completely unbacked" (different instance to be fair), “X service should be provided for free by Y private company”, etc. That’s not to say that any of these takes (except the language one, in my opinion) were intentionally inviting people to debate them, but making strong claims like these does invite debate.
That being said, I think the purpose of a lot of posts is to invite discussion, and within those discussions I’ve often seen people agreeing with each other. From my experience, it tends to be more of an outlier when there are argumentative posts being made, but I think it stands out a bit more as well.
Also, I think that how the opposing view is presented is important. For example, I’d rather see a response that opposes an initial view to provide more discussion around the matter than “no you’re wrong and a bad person”-style responses. Generally speaking, I’ve seen more discussion-oriented replies, but occasionally I do see the latter-style response as well, and even saw one (which I’m not pointing to) in the discussion for this post.
Edit: I should also clarify that first paragraph. Opinions to the contrary of what I listed can also be strong takes. Generally any opinion in which there is a significant population of people that disagree with it can invite discussion. The discussion itself isn’t the issue in my opinion, what is the issue is how that discussion is held.
I joined Beehaw almost 3 months ago because I saw it as a place that it was possible to have an opposing or differing opinion and discuss it without being mean or hurtful. Beeple talked, Beeple listened, they had fun and maybe most importantly, Beeple knew where to draw the line when things were getting out of hand and it was time to end the discussion.
Be sure to report any hurtful, mean, unnecessarily argumentative and inappropriate behaviour. I know I have had reports made against me that mods have contacted me about. I do my best to heed them and improve my own behaviour as well to best fit each community.
Certain topics, like politics are meant to attract discussion and debate. Many headlines are specifically crafted to spark arguments and debate. If there was anything I could ask from Beeple and Beehaw visitors at large, it is to keep a cool head when discussing, think of the other person while you talk and report if you see “not nice” conduct.
In my experience this has happened most strongly with topics relating to LLMs. Ive had good discussions on the topic too, but ive also seen lots of “BOOM I just shut down your argument!!” at any mention of negative impacts LLMs may have on society.
I’m sorry but what is a LLM? A quick search didn’t do anything
Learned Language Model, a form of machine learning that people tend to call “AI”. ChatGPT is an LLM
It’s actually “Large Language Model.”
Whooooops, that’s what I get for not verifying things sitting in my brain for a long time
No worries, I wrote an article about them recently, so it was on the top of my mind.
No, it hasn’t.
Yes, it has.
You’re wrong.
I think you’re both wrong.
I think I am always right!
I’m humble enough to know I’m not always right, but in this instance I can most definitely assure you that you are wrong.
