Does the reddit style format inherently make for a toxic environment? Or is it a culture of toxicity from the influx of reditors? For lack of a beter example, on stackoverflow, when someone down votes you, it comes with a comment saying how to improve. On mastodon, people can’t downvote you. These platforms are a joy to use, lemmy is depressing if you post. Its depressing because every post or comment, no mater the quality comes with downvotes, and usually no criticism to accompany it, you are left not knowing if youve made a mistake, or if its just trolls, bots, or idiots. At the end you feel insulted not improved. What do you think?
Most of the time the downvotes I would get on Reddit are on topics where I disagreed with a couple of the early people and they downvoted. This would cause a cascade of people piling on. Other times I could make essentially the same comment and get lots of upvotes.
Not a big deal either way, it is boring to always be aligned with everyone else as long as you are open to constructive discussions about it.
I got majorly downvoted once for sharing my opinion on not wanting to travel to a foreign country alone as a woman. A lot of flippant comments too. Like okay, this is not the sub for me. I still can’t believe I was attacked like I was.