It feels like people are a lot nicer here than on Twitter and Reddit, and even when people disagree, it’s generally civil and not an all-out flame war. Also, there’s no algorithm promoting outrage all the time.
For me, the anticipation of toxicity was a huge deterrent for me ever participating in real discussions, but here I feel like I can be myself.
I think it’s healthier this way.
My very first ever post on Reddit,12 years ago, the first commentor called me a fa**ot and the second commentor told me ‘KYS’. I posted a picture of a dog sitting in the driver seat of a car with his elbow hanging out and he was wearing a sweater. It was discouraging to say the least and burned me pretty bad. I deleted the post, tried to wipe it from my memory, continued on reddit for the next decade treading lightly knowing how toxic and mean it could be.
Here’s the picture in case you want to see it and say nice things. I thought it was worthy.
What a disguished looking dog. Is that a cardigan? Thank you for contributing fellow lemming.
It is a cardigan with a collard shirt. The way his elbow is propped and the glare he’s giving me…one of the luckiest days of my life.
I totally don’t see that as a glare - to me it’s more like “hey there”. Relaxed, bit of eye contact. Lovely.
I think you lost a sylab
this is the kinda shit that’ll do real numbers here on lemmy
I love that he even has a nice collared shirt
Cute and meme-worthy!
Since you said so… https://imgur.com/a/Ao7j3yY
I would like to see more of this dog. Have an upboat.
He is my spirit animal and reddit origin story. A friendly lemmy user suggested I turn him into a meme. He is so worthy of being seen. I parked next to this dog 12 years ago, took this pic, best day ever.
havent used this word in years but all i can think is “this dog has swag”
Definitely cooler than me and most the people I know
I’ve been at various points on reddit where I would open the replies in a background tab and just close it without reading them… or, and maybe this sounds weird, hold my hand up over replies so I could screen them without reading them so I could ignore insulting or provocative replies and not be tempted to engage.