Fediverse

One my favorite ways to summarize this kind of thinking is with the Bill & Ted quote "Be Excellent To Each Other, and Party On Dudes" (mostly the first half applies to this post though). The part that applies to this post, Keanu Reeves said he interprets as follows:

I think that the sentiment of it is really just be the best person, the best human being you can be, and if you do that, then you can party on and live life to the fullest, but you’re gonna be safe... You’re going to be supported, you’re going to get the gift of giving, you’re going to get the gift of receiving, you’re going to get to the gift of sharing. We’re all just some humans on a rock in space, and so it’s kinda nice to kind of promote that idea of ‘give a little, get a lot’, kind of bring it in for a group hug."

Here are some more specific examples to think about!

• Compliment people's art and ask about their process

• Teach people about something you're knowledgeable on

• Give constructive criticism on peoples projects when it's welcome

• Thank people for posting things you're glad you got to see, tell them you enjoyed it

• Tell people you're glad they're here

• Tell people you hope they have a good day

Thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts :) if you have thoughts of your own, I'd love to hear them!

Getting better at communication takes time and practice. Depending on where someone is in that journey, a post like this can make a big difference. And I think we can all use a reminder to be kind every so often. So, thanks for taking the time to write this out

Most people know this in some capacity, but it's not talked about enough: the shape of the platform massively shapes its culture. Every mechanism, intentional feature or not, is a factor in resulting user behavior and should be accounted for.

Reddit Karma was (shitty) reputation from the start, but Slashdot user IDs became one despite being mere sequential identifiers; negative user feedback such as downvotes can be harmful to communities (yet, users without an outlet may lash out in other ways e.g. reports); even how the platform communicates with users influences them; and so on.

I'm not saying you shouldn't be nice and incentivize others to do the same, but unless the system naturally leads to the desired behavior, you'll have a bad time in the long term because building culture by interactions doesn't scale. By the time you realize there's a shift, it's too late; interactions will compound and affect how the average user acts faster than you can try to course-correct.

I wish lemmy was more experimental, because by building a clone of reddit, we've copied too many of its faults. We've already got gatherings to complain about mods, and the one time devs considered changing a core component, discussion was killed by an onslaught of users. Problems with the current setup that were brought up then will likely never see that amount of people thinking about how to solve them.

Contrast with Mastodon, which gets crap for not being a faithful copy of twitter, but their reasoning for not including quote-reblogs is understandable. They're now putting a lot of thought into how to add them safely. Not ignoring functionality users want, but also not ignoring how it will affect culture, that's compromise.

I'd like it if we could talk more about how our platforms work and, particularly, how they affect us, because that's a big way we can build better platforms, right up there with being nice.

The thing in this post about curiosity isn't just a lemmy/online thing.

The vast majority of people are mainly interested in themselves. Like - if you have trouble on dates, making friends, getting along at work, anything to do with people in general - approaching them with a sense of sincere curiosity will completely change things overnight.

Get people to talk about themselves, be supportive in your discussions with them, and shut the fuck up wherever possible and suddenly you're interesting, a good person, kind, whatever - traits you've done exactly fuck all to demonstrate, but that people will swear are true because you seem interested in them.

It's fucking bonkers but it's true. Curiosity can change your world.

@Cris_Color@lemmy.world being nice helps establish the "tone", but I'm not sure that wouldn't change with another "API event" on Reddit that results in another, larger mass migration.

Another suggestion I have for college graduates is to ask your alma mater if they are going to start using something other than commercial social to engage with alumni.

Most universities don't want to make mistakes investing in the bleeding edge, but they are quick to follow. When a few schools do something, many more quickly copy that. They are also looking for low cost wins. Their engagement numbers are already telling them that Xwiiter no longer works to reach alumni or potential students.

If even a handful of alumni suggest a change at the right time, that is often enough to get them to give federated social a try.

That is when the less toxic "tone" really helps.

There was a movement in the blogging community ~15 years ago to leave positive comments on posts you like. It was an approach to conquer negative comments and a general destructive nature of online conversations. I still do it to this day. If I really like something or appreciate someone's work, I leave a nice comment.

I don't miss the thousands of obnoxious, foul mouthed folks on FB that I routinely blocked. Haven't experienced any of that on the fediverse yet.

Well I came here to chew bubblegum and talk shit, and I’m all out of bubblegum.

Kinda wish we could pin this post to the top of everyones feed for a while! 😅 Lemmy has been a great place so far but think we can do even better. Especially with the points you bring up.

Thanks for sharing 😊

If I'm in a toxic mood, I go to reddit.

OP simply asks people to be kind, People proceed to tear each other apart..

OP now knows how Jesus felt 🤣

I've noticed most discussions i have here end with a LOT less anger and a LOT more learning and that makes me happy.

Great post.

To add to this, not resorting to calling others tankies or Russian bots when you have differing opinions, especially around politics.

Hey this is a nice post, I wonder what the comments say :3 click

"Oh you think being kind is good? You're a fascist OP >:T. You can't make me vote republican"

A big problem is too much politics, feels like politics is always brought up even in posts where it's not the topic of discussion. Just look at this post. Then if someone disagrees with your view they'll attack you and then they'll claim they "are on the right side". People have forgotten the golden rule.