this post was submitted on 25 May 2025
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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Especially if the comment/post is written with the unpopular part first. People generally don't bother reading much before downvoting.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

I agree.

I also find that people don't bother reading beyond the first sentence which often results in downvotes.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago (3 children)

There are certain topics which you are expected to rabidly detest without question. Anything less than sheer, frothing-at-the-mouth, hatred will get you down votes and replies telling you why nuance is fucking stupid and you should just blindly hate with the rest of the hivemind.

A few examples:

AI

Bitcoin/crypto

The word "removed"

Brave browser

Any of Elon musk's companies. Not just the man himself, but Tesla and SpaceX as a whole.

Most religions; unless they are associated with minorities, then they're precious flowers that should be respected.

Reddit

Google

Microsoft

Personal cars as a means of transportation

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

jesus fucked whores and drank wine

Mohammad raped a 9 yo

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[–] MadMadBunny 14 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Talking respectfully about MacOS in linux communities…

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Not gonna lie, it took a while before i registered the words "in linux"

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Cross posting to too many communities.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Seeing the same thing 4 times is annoying, most of the time those communities already are federated so, yeah

What would be nice to see in Lemmy is if admins could (kinda) connect feeds together of similar communities, and the ability of community mods being able to connect the feed of another community to theirs (one-way)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

"Personal cars have utility"

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Reading comprehension isn't great which can often cause misunderstandings that lead to downvotes.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

Anything. People around here downvote memes they personally don't like in meme cookies communities and songs they personally don't like in song sharing communities. It seems like all of the types of people that never followed etiquette on Reddit either came here. And the problem is here is so much smaller, so every downvote is more noticeable and affects things more.

Not having 100% praise for Lemmy and criticizing certain things is a site fire way as well. And if you kick the hornets nest enough in that regard, they'll actually start actively downvoting correct information and upvoting misinformation, as long as it suits the circlejerk.

If you talk about how someone went through your entire profile and downvoted everything, you guessed it, that results in even more people doing the same thing. And now your stupid innocent comments about your life or hopes and dreams in casual conversation are all sitting at minus points and this whole thing feels like a joke and waste of time, while the people who put you there go "who cares? It's just imaginary internet points."

And some of these people that I encountered in this, treating people this way and intentionally ruining the experience and fun for them were regular and familiar faces around here. Those familiar faces that people talk about that are so nice to see around here.

And the fact that there were so many familiar faces makes me wonder about other things too. In the middle of that, I had someone completely baselessly accuse me of being someone else with multiple accounts. Which of course got upvoted by probably the same people that upvoted misinformation on how blocking on Facebook works.

And that left me wondering about the times I've got a DM warning me that a user I've interacted with is a bot or someone with multiple accounts for nefarious reasons. And I normally believe them. But are they going to be doing this to me now? Is this what the power users around here that act like nice people do to anyone that pisses them off?

Edit: I bet this will get downvoted too. Not that I can see it from here.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm one of the "imaginary internet points" people. To the point that I've turned off display of votes. I genuinely have no idea how many votes in either direction my posts or comments get … and don't care. Voting systems are stupid; they never work because they're so easily gamed.

My feed is set to New by default, not "Top" or "Controversial". I'll sometimes flip it to "Old" if i want the conversational history. That's about it. It doesn't matter to me what J. Random Internet Person thinks of posts. It matters to me what I think about them.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Voting systems are stupid; they never work because they're so easily gamed.

Yeah this is definitely true. Probably more so for smaller platforms too. BlΓ₯haj doesn't have downvotes enabled and you couldn't even if you wanted to (which I basically never do anyway). But after checking out an instance with them enabled for a while, I'm not all that impressed with how they're used around here. They probably get used like that on Reddit too but you barely notice it there.

And I'm of the camp where yeah, they're imaginary internet points but it's also something built into the platform for a little fun and also to boost quality content. I like upvoting basically everyone that has a decent conversation with me, for example. To me it feels like it's giving just a little extra acknowledgement, like an "I see you". And it's fun. Or should be. I'm a pretty gloomy person but not that cynical. This place is in a weird in between where people want it to be like a '90s forum site but also they want their 'agree' and 'disagree' buttons to mash.

I dunno, I'm over the event itself but I still have the bad taste in my mouth and a different impression of things and certain people now.

For what it's worth, even though you don't care lol, you're one of the people that I always enjoy seeing around here. I actually tried checking out your Pixelfed, couldn't figure out how to view it from my instance, wasn't in the mood to look up FAQs and shit, and haven't been back since lol.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (9 children)

Hello,

I've been testing Piefed for a bit, it made a lot of progress since last time I used it. Actual blocking is possible there.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Saying anything positive about AI. AI is Satan in the eyes of most people on Lemmy and if you disagree you're a fascist pig. I also got downvoted once for pointing out that being a millionaire isn't that hard to achieve these days if you're a well paid professional in response to a comment saying that millionaires are evil people who should be sent to prison. Like pointing out that the math works out that most engineers will be millionaires by retirement age is apparently evil lmao.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Doesn't even have to be anything positive. I see wrong explanations of how AI works all the time, and if you correct them you're very likely to get downvoted.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Yeah I've been downvoted and then accused of being an "AI Bro" because I actually like machine learning and know how it works. It's kind of insane how much people just blindly hate it here.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (10 children)
  • Saying anything critical of Hamas or non-critical of Israel
  • Expressing non-negative views about AI (LLMs)
  • Pointing out that not all members of a group are the same
  • Calling out extremism, for example posts inciting violence against CEOs or rich people
  • Defending unpopular individuals from false or exaggerated claims
  • Trying to defend yourself against false accusations
  • Highlighting obvious double standards in how people or ideologies are treated
  • Criticizing performative outrage or moral grandstanding, even respectfully
  • Asking sincere questions that challenge the thread’s emotional momentum
  • Stating that you’re politically neutral or independent
  • Defending due process or basic legal principles in emotionally charged situations
  • And of course, writing this response
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (5 children)
  • Saying anything negative about Star Trek: TNG
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[–] otter 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

With a lot of these topics, it depends on how the post or comment is worded. I've seen plenty of posts/comments where the user spoke about the topics and viewpoints in your list and didn't get downvoted for it.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Nintendo. They definitely do some frustrating things sometimes, but I don’t think they're anywhere near the worst in the industry right now. But the circlejerk at any mere mention on this platform has become beyond insufferable.

I've had someone tell me I'm killing gaming because I said I'm excited that Kirby Air Ride is finally getting a sequel after 22 years. Fuck off and let me enjoy things!

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (10 children)
  1. Post anything that involves China. A Chinese word. Chinese food. Chinese culture. Chinese clothing. Chinese history. Hell, even having Chinese in your user ID. That is almost guaranteed to get a downvote or two within minutes. Like to the point of getting downvotes in a group dedicated to talking about snack foods when you show street food (you know, snack food) in China. It's incredibly funny watching those knees jerk around spasmodically.

  2. Post anything critical of how the western (chiefly American) left does things, despite the obvious complete abject failure of said left in the past decade or so. (I mean really: Brexit. TWO Trump terms. The rise of populist authoritarianism all over Europe and the Americas. How can you not see this as abject failure!?)

  3. Point out how stupidly ineffective (and indeed maladaptive) voting-driven sites like Reddit and Lemmy really are.

  4. Even in "leftist" Lemmy, pointing out that capitalism is mid-collapse will garner you at least a handful of downvotes.

  5. Be a woman who doesn't defer to a man.

  6. Be nonwhite not deferring to white folk.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Defending transphobes, defending israel, and using the word "gwinv" in a sentence

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

I was going to upvote you, but then you said that word. Tsk tsk. 🀣

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

gwinv

This was the closest I found

I am assuming that is not what you meant.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I'll assume the best and you're just saying those and don't do those

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

complaining about downotes (and it should)

posting links to a video without providing a text summary (and it should)

complaining about censorship on "lemmy" when the user has only tried one instance (and it should)

reposting content (this one's more iffy)

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Being too silly

Not being silly enough

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

You were the correct amount of silly so I upvoted

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Point out that neoliberals (so people like UK's Labor, Germany's SPD and America's Democrats) are not your friends and will screw you over at the closest opportunity. Also being critical of US veterans or current servicemen.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Also being critical of US veterans or current servicemen.

As a retired US veteran, I encourage people to actively be critical of us! Most of us aren't heroes just for signing up. Most veterans didn't do anything heroic during their service; heck, I was an IT technician. I spent 20 years mostly sitting at a desk, working on/with computers. Any civilian could do that.

The hero worship has gotten out of hand. And I get it; the American Public blamed the Vietnam War on the soldiers who served, and we treated them awful, even though it was the govt who started the war and conscripted a lot of service members against their will. It was a bad time.

But since the Iraq War kicked off, it's like US society decided to make amends by worshipping the ground military members walk on. And it was really awkward for us. We really didn't deserve the praise.

Another thing to note: people act like the US military is a very conservative-leaning organization. And to an extent, they're right. The Republican Party has latched onto the military and heaped tons of praise and adulation on us, and a lot of conservative people sign up to show their nationalism isn't just words. (Those guys mostly join the Army or Marines)

But the truth is, the Republican Party only does that to win votes. In public they praise us, but in private, they're constantly cutting our funding, programs, healthcare, pay and benefits, etc. If it weren't for the Democratic Party, the military would be borderline slave jobs. Which is about all the Republican Party see us as; we're just minions to enforce their rules and laws. According to their attempts to gut our military, we don't deserve to live like humans!

In the years before I retired (~3 years ago), I noticed that the military was leaning pretty heavily to the left. There were still some die-hard nationalists who worshipped the Republican Party and turned a blind eye to their policies that neutered or removed our benefits. But a majority of the people I worked with around the globe seemed to be happier to serve under a Democrat president.

Sorry, I apparently had a lot of say about this topic. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that veterans are people. Don't treat them like shit, but also don't hero-worship. There are very few of us who actually deserve that title. If you see someone going out in public covered in military swag or bragging about their service... they're probably a piece of shit who did absolutely nothing in the service. They're riding on the high of public adulation and probably shouldn't be given another glance.

Speaking of... one last quick story. Throughout my 20 years of service, we always had a name we would default to as the "bad example" when doing things. "Sergeant Snuffy pulled this lever and fucked up the processing line; Airman Snuffy mouthed off to the Command Sergeant and got his ass detained; Private Snuffy left his tools out and caused everyone to stay 3 hours late for inventory."

This "Snuffy" example turns out to be based on a real person, Staff Sergeant Maynard Smith, a WWII Medal of Honor recipient! This is the highest award you can earn in the military, and he earned it in the Air Force, which is notorious for rarely handing that out to anyone!

Regardless, Sergeant Smith was a complete tool. Disliked by his crew and always getting into trouble with his leadership. Heck, he was serving on KP Duty (kitchen duties) as punishment for being late to a meeting when he was awarded his Medal of Honor. His crew nicknamed him "Snuffy Smith" in honor of the bumbling idiot character in the comic strip "Barney Google and Snuffy Smith." And despite earning our highest award, his legacy, which is still remembered to this day, is for being a total fuck-up.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Posting the same thing with a female username name has gotten me more down votes than a male username.

And people ask why there are comparatively fewer women on Lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yep! In [email protected] we get regular downvotes for innocuous stuff

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Yeah, it's funny. Like the thread that's basically "rape is wrong" gets downvotes. 🀣

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Authoritarian dick sucking.

Pretending communism is an Authoritarian ideology.

Edit: found later in the comments that OP is pro forced birth

So I'm adding prolife genital obsessed religious sickos to the list

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Mentioning that you're into cars or crypto.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (7 children)

Basic milquetoast feminism. I've had more issues with weird misogyny on here than I ever did on Reddit.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

"Capitalism has some positive aspects"

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