me_irl

Someone gave some advice on a forum or a blog or something a long time ago that really stuck with me and completely altered my outlook about social media and interacting with people via the internet in general:
Before you hit "send", ask yourself whether this is for your benefit, or that of those who will see it.
I basically stopped using socials after that, because I seldom thought of anything that followed this rule, and my feed was so full of garbage from people who also didn't, but saw fit to post it anyway. The internet has given society an ego masturbation problem.

Hello ADHDers! It really is a health management skill to catch yourself and pull away. The worst is when you do care about the topic and you know you're mismanaging your time, it doesn't actually matter, but you can't not "finish it so at least it's out there"
- Yup. I do this 100%. But mostly it's because sometimes I get so hot on the subject, it feels good to get it out there and then I worry I was too brash about it. A trick I use is to leave the comment written on my phone in the background. Maybe I'll send it, but more often than not I clear it out when I clean up my background apps and go, "Well, that was decided for me."

Yep. Me sometimes. Like you know the answer. It's simple and logical. The other person is obviously wrong and defending their position badly... But then you realise it's stupid to try and waste your time on a subject you don't even care about, to a person who cannot be educated.

Yep.
Flippant, mildly humorous comment, one sentence: (2,345 👍) (123💬)
Well thought out, reliably sourced reply of one to two small paragraphs: (3👍) (0 💬)
- Lemmy is actually better on this. I get a lot of upvotes for well thought-out long posts and comments here as well as humorous one-liners. I've been pleasantly surprised that people actually take the time to read out my longer posts. On reddit it'd probably just get lost and be another 1 thumber that never got read.
  The key is also to make your story interesting. Something that pulls your reader in. Be personal and amicable. Realize you're talking to real people and speak to those people in your writing. I'm more of a creative writing buff. I managed to eek out 98th percentile for creative writing in my SATs. I love writing. Its my favorite thing to do. I want to be an author. I fucking hate my ADHD. I've started a hundred books at least and either bore myself or tell myself its a stupid plot, even though I have friends and family begging for me to finish something.
  My early books were written in small notebooks. The old ones that sorta looked like they had cowprint covers with a title on them. They'd get passed around the school for weeks. I'd get them back and people would keep asking me to continue. I never did. Fuck me, I hate ADHD sometimes. But your words are alive. They can heal, hurt, cause laughter and tears, and, above all, words can influence anything. Words are power and, as long as you are careful of that power, you can write any damn length you want.
  Honestly, my fear now is AI. I like AI, but I don't want to write a book and have people claim its AI or AI assisted. I'm regretting not writing one earlier now.
  tl;dr: Is k. Writ stuf.
- Sorry your comment was too long I got bored halfway through
- This

I have to remind myself engaging is mostly useless.
- I've lived through the times when online discussion was considered "just weird internet stuff, not to be taken seriously" and then people grew up and everyone used the internet and it was the frontier of communication and was "shaping all facets of society" and now we're back at "just weird internet stuff, not to be taken seriously."
- Your engagement is valuable for current or future shareholders of the company owning the platform. It is of paramount importance that you engage as much as possible. Although not enough, we would recommend for example, sleeping 7 hours instead of 8 to make time for engagement such liking/disliking and commenting.
- When I read bs here I'm always switching between this and "if no one calls this out, people might assume it's true".
  
  Yeah but then the run the risk of arguing with a bot or a troll or a human being uninterested in having a productive discussion.
  
  Duty calls. Someone is being wrong on the Internet! 🦸

I do this, and I have a "graveyard log" file where I paste my discarded posts and replies.

I've wasted SO MANY hours arguing with stupid people on reddit....

"and suddenly you remember most readers of your comment will be bots"
- And the few humans there will go "I ain't reading all that"

I find myself tapping Ctrl+A -> backspace faster than I can react to it myself. Life is too short for waiting for the little cursor to travel all the way back.

About 60% of posts and comments on reddit are made by bots anyway, so except for really niche communities replying doesn‘t add anything to the conversation. I abandoned reddit a few years ago because of this, bulletin boards and small community sites are way more civilized and have no annoying astroturfing campaigns and israel/industrial complex shills.

yeah, no one changes their mind because of words on a screen. if you can't reach out and slap the shit out of them your point will never get across.

When you're 20 minutes into an argument on reddit and suddenly get permanently IP banned for saying something that didn't even break rules
- I lost 7 reddit accounts, some over 12 years old, because I quoted someone saying a gendered slur on a serious discussion sub, so that he couldn't edit his comment. Then i reported it. They banned me for "using a slur" and I appealed and the mods of that community laughed at me and acted like the sewage that they were and then when I appealed to admins I got perma'd.
  New accounts made, those got insta-banned. Used VPN and new email, purged all cookies. Insta shadowban. Repeated the process, no VPN, reset IP, cleared everything, got shadowbanned within a day.
  Meanwhile there are AI and bots just pouring low-effort content and comments across the entire website. "People" scream racial and sexist rants without facing any consequence. Entire communities of hate and sexism running rampant and gaining members.
  It's enough to make a reasonable person feel unreasonably conspiratorial and suspicious.
  
  Ong bro, the reddit admins are basically just non-existent atp, highly doubt they do any work, cuz the AI based permabans are going haywire
- Or you spend all of that time writing a well research comment and then realize that you’ve been shadow banned for pointing out that several sexual health/advice communities on there are run by what seem to be serial rapists….
  
  That's so messed up man :/
  
  This feels like diffamation and harassment. Stick to the facts if you're going to expose someone
- Same on Lemmy
  
  Damn, but atleast it's decentralized here. Getting banned from a server doesn't get you permabanned, IP banned, device tagged and witch-hunted across the site (as of right now)
- The net is far more ban happy than it used to, it's gotten to the point that I don't feel safe using Steam Forums.
  
  Didn't care that much on Reddit, but on Lemmy, I feel like instance admins could choose to ban my account at any time, and that's fucking annoying.
  
  fr man
- But IPs are dynamic.

You already lost

Reddit? Nah that's literally every platform.

If I was the owner of Reddit, i would 100% save in-progress comments, and keep the unsent ones in the database for my enjoyment.
- Wasn't that implemented once? Or was that a browser feature? I swear at some point what you typed into input comment boxes was saved.
- If I was the owner of Reddit, i would 100% save in-progress comments, and [...]
  sell the data to AI companies

"I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote a long one."
i wanna say Mark Twain said that, but I'm not 100%
- It's a similar story with editing videos. Paring a video back is where most of the time goes.
- I thought it was Victor Hugo but apparently it was Blaise Pascal
- Jane Austen I thought
  
  Steve Austin?

It hits for me when I'm typing it out and I can already read the braindead response they're going to type and I don't want to spend another 2 paragraphs preempting the obvious response and I definitely don't want to wait a few hours/days to explain why they're still wrong.
- When I write two paragraphs to reply to someone making a stupid, hateful argument and then they reply "I ain't reading all that" and get a bunch of upvotes for it, I really think about every super-villain story where the bad-guy was trying to destroy the entire world and I feel a sharp pang of understanding.
- Or you say fuck it and send the comment, but you refresh the page and he's downvoted it faster than a human being could have read it lol
- Me when I realize the person I'm commenting to is from hexbear.
  
  I still don't know what the controversy is about with hexbear.
  
  Tank you!
- That's because Reddit sells anger quite well. Their bots and human instigators work overtime to get you to comment like that. I think all of us Reddit refugees have fallen for this shit.
  
  We're not doing great on deprogramming ourselves either. The news outlets not only manufacture consent, they also manufacture outrage. This isn't a new problem either. It's been going on since at least the Spanish-American war, probably earlier (see also William Randolph Hurst , Joseph Pulitzer).
- This is why "disable inbox replies" is such a great feature that I wish Lemmy would implement. For when you still have something to add, but it looks like the conversation is going downhill, the thought of further responses is causing anxiety, and you know the right choice is going to be to let the other person have the last word anyway.
  
  The block feature is wonderful for this. I'm starting to use it liberally when I just can't be bothered to deal with someone anymore. I don't know if there's a mute user function as well, but that would at least let them yell into the void instead of being blocked outright.
  
  Yup, though on the upside notifications seem to only work half the time here.

Wish that was me more often

If you had made the effort to remix the meme by changing it to say lemmy, I'd've upvoted.
- Who cares?
  
  Is it not clear from the way I wrote that comment that I thought it mattered..?
  
  A lot of us are here because we burned our Reddit accounts and walked away.

Here's a tip for how I've improved my social media experience greatly:
Stick to a rule of 1 comment and no further replies.
Strangers online are not going to be convinced by your point of view and there is nothing to gain from getting into a back and forth conversation. Unless it's a particularly positive or productive conversation about a particular interest you share....there's nothing to gain from arguing online and lots of potential mental damage you risk.
- My rule is: nothing of value happens beyond the third level of nested replies. Lemmy's (and reddit's) format is about not just conversing with others, but the conversation being public and other people having a chance to interject with their own thoughts. But unfortunately, after a certain level, the UIs have to collapse or hide replies and comment, and almost no one clicks to see more or follow a thread, unless it's a controversial discussion. So, if it is so far away from the OP that every single interface will hide it by default, and it's not something positive, then it is not worth it to keep the convo and it doesn't warrant a reply.
- My stance is: when arguing on lemmy, you're not only trying to convince the other one. You're also trying to convince future readers. Even if the other one is an asshole, people see that and that has an effect.
- You're clearly incorrect!
  
  I know you're playfully joking, but I second their opinion. I was basically on a crusade against misinformation in 2020 and 2021 against COVID deniers and election truthers. Nobody ever changes their mind. Nobody ever admits their wrong. No matter how respectful and accommodating you are, no matter what sources you find, it's just not worth it. Give one response if you feel inclined, but don't reply to the reply. Don't waste your time. Don't get pointlessly stressed.
  People do change their minds sometimes, but it's never done in the moment and if you press them too hard on their beliefs they'll double down.
  
  I gotta say, there's a sentiment that nobody has ever said anything on the internet that's ever changed anyone's opinion about anything. And it is not a damning indictment of the internet nearly as much as folks who live by the theory.
  But maybe they're right enough that it doesn't matter. A thousand hours of posting could be spent doing something more productive in swaying public opinion. Maybe "Ender's Game" is a lie and you cannot actually post your way to the Presidency. I mean, I certainly can't think of anyone who went so ham on social media that they reshaped an entire nation's political philosophy.
  But also, maybe there's a negative valiance to posting. Perhaps it's just harder to post your way into people's hearts and fill them with love. But its comparatively easy to post your way into their amygdalas and drive them insane.
- Proposal for an exception: Where the comments/discussion revolve around something non-controversial with people who are OK with partaking in a conversation without needing to win it.
  
  Alternatively also:
  If the topic is controversial and everyone is level-headed and talk calmly.
  (Almost impossible on the internet, unless if there's real good moderation).
- Actually a great tip, thanks! I will take this into my memory.
- This seems great but I wonder what the point is then.
  If I can’t convince someone right of centre to come to my side and they can’t convince me to come to theirs what’s the point in conversing with people?
  Furthermore why do we keep having a circle jerk about how right we are on things and calling out dumb stuff in the world if it’s all futile? Like we know the world is shit and getting worse so why do I relish in it and not just go climbing more.
  
  You're welcome to do that, but learn to do it properly. If you're just looking to preach and be outraged, then you're part of the problem. You can't change others, but you can change yourself.
  I personally love podcasts. I'll always be able to recommend from there:
  You Are Not So Smart: 306 - I Never Thought of it That Way - Mónica Guzmán (rebroadcast). Episode webpage and Media file
  If a black man can make friends with the most racist KKK members, and actually get them to change their minds through conversation, then there's hope for anyone.
- I do this but I've come to believe it isn't an admirable quality. I know I should probably strive for a different answer.

If someone is an obvious tankie or far-right troll, just be like "Lol loser" and never elaborate further.
- Or you can call out bad faith and veiled extremist views in a few words. It only takes a little more effort.
  Sometimes that is infinitely better for people reading (who are not in the know) and it still gives the person with the controversial views something to latch on to that inadvertently exposes their beliefs and bad faith further if they keep engaging.
  
  There is no way to reason sense into someone who has reasoned themselves into their mindset. No evidence or proof can change their mind for them.
  Any reply on confirms the beliefs of anyone who reads it, regardless of their side on the matter.
- 'Know your place, trash. Fucking robot.'

deleted by user

I am slightly concerned that I recognized the anime source from that one frame 😅 To be fair it is a fantastic series! Check out Paranoia Agent if you can 🍿
- I have a plushie! :)
- Literally just finished watching it. Incredibly series from the GOAT Satoshi Kon. But... I will admit when I first saw it, my brain went to
  
  Nah you're not wrong. I thought it was GoldenBoy too.
- Oh, hey! I know Paranoia Agent! I need to start that one over; I never finished it.
- Thanks I just started watching because of your comment! Wow that scene is literally 2 minutes into the first episode.
  
  Haha, right! It’s like the very first scene 😅 Have fun! It’s a wild ride, but in the best possible way.

Yeah arguing on the Internet is a waste of time which is why I don't do it much anymore unless I feel very strongly that someone's reply to my comment needs to be disputed.
Most of the time I make my point then don't bother responding to any replies. It's much more pleasant to respond when it's you're not arguing, just discussing something interesting.
- Yeah arguing on the Internet is a waste of time
  No it isn’t.
  
  !!! Wrong! Ths user is INCORRECT on the INTERNET. !!!!
- Sometimes I commit to online arguments to vent out frustration from irl problems. "The worst that could happen is I get banned."
- Arguing for something you believe in is a thankless job, considering it only changes opinions once every twenty five times, and gets you flak, infinite arguements or insults the other Twenty four times

I bookmark subreddits and read them without logging in. Every time I feel the urge, I've got a hurdle to cross before I can type anything. Then it's immediately a "fuck it" moment and move on
- The Reddit interface is so fucking obnoxious when you're not logged in, I've just given up on the community entirely. Days of casually browsing have been ruined by the constant gating and engagement baiting and GUI hell they've injected into the site.
  
  old.reddit.com works when logged out luckily.
  r.50501.chat and redlib.northboot.xyz also work.

Yeh I've stopped myself from making negative comments before, you aren't changing anyone's mind and it's probably gonna get you banned
- lol I got permanent my banned for saying I was surprised Kanye hasn’t murder/suicided Kim or Taylor yet… they’ll ban you for anything at this point
  
  Most likely, their in-house AI saw the Unalive-Word and auto-flagged it. Then another AI that has been inserted to replace some data sweat shop worker picked it up and auto-approved the ban notice. Very possible that no human ever saw what you posted before you were ejected for Word Crimes.
  
  I've never thought about that before but now that you mention it, I could absolutely see him doing that

Actually it's a keyboard shortcut to close the browser tab.

I do this all the time with regular comments! I get sidetracked by life, come back and see this giant post i was making and go eh who cares and back out.

If I said a quarter of the shit I typed out online, my corpse would be in a Lebanese prison cell.

No one, on their deathbed, has thought "Man, I should've spent more time arguing online"

don't go there bro. not worth

Same on Lemmy

Yeah this is why I try to avoid arguing on the internet. I never feel better for it and I'm fairly certain that I've never convinced anyone to change their position on anything.

Been there

I wish I did it more often, far too many eristics have come over from Reddit (main reason I left), and I'm easily baited by them on the right day haha
- I mean, we're human. We do the inner work and realize it's never really "done," but we just move to different levels, with persistence.

Me but the post got deleted.

Writing about it for 20 minutes kinda proves you absolutely do give a fuck about this. Lots of fucks, actually.
- You can give a fuck about the topic, without giving a fuck about the current conversation.
  
  ^^^^

I'm gonna start fighting everyone in the comments right now.
But also yes, the internet brings the worst out in people.

This is me when I try to tell my dad about my mental health problems. Why even bother

So many frickin times.

I'm feeling a little called out...

It is when you don't even bother attempting to respond, is when you're free. You are the co-author of your own narrative, with the only other author being whatever you view God as.
- You are the co-author of your own narrative, with the only other author being whatever you view God as.
  You are the only author.
  
  As I said, whatever you view God as.

It'll probably get deleted anyways!

Or: I suddenly realize my input is being monetized and fuck Reddit.