Before Lemmy I never really did social media. Lemmy is my first experience in getting ratioed. I notice a surprising amount of my posts get 50% or more downvotes. I never realized how divisive my opinions and communication style is.
Thankfully I’m in a good mental place in my life, so this doesn’t bother me… too much. But I can see how it would have a big impact on people testing their toes, and expressing their voice for the first time, that dopamine hit of validation is tempered by the lows of feeling unpopular social pressure.
I’ve notice other people getting downvotes, and they just delete their comment entirely. I leave mine up, since I believe in keeping the forum record open and transparent is more important then my posting history.
I keep posting to Lemmy in spite of it, because I know Lemmy is just at its starting point, and content is more important then my personal validation. (but it does eat at me some)
When you post something that gets negative feedback do you modify your post? does it change your opinion? does it impact your participation in the community?
That’s how it’s supposed to work, but it never will. It was supposed to be the same on reddit as well, but I can tell you that in more than a decade using the site, most people treated it as a “disagree” button
It also makes no sense really, it’s childishly idealistic thinking. Of course everyone thinks that anyone with a different opinion is a troll, bot, or some force of malicious evil - it’s like when architects make a zigzag path but everyone just walks over the grass, yes that’s not what you’re supposed to do but it’s obviously what’s going to happen.
Also why shouldn’t there be something to tap to say you agree or disagree, that’s a semi useful metric where as ‘contributing’ doesn’t really mean anything.