Dealing with social media popularity

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?

17 comments

I tend to get downvoted quite a while recently, you can look at my history.
I would say to try to keep it in perspective. Some random person on the internet pressed a button because they disagree with you. No big deal.
With comments it's a different story, sometimes they make me change my mind.
- Yeah, I think people don't think about how downvotes aren't meant to indicate disagreement but rather to mark trolls, unhelpful comments, and so on. I didn't realize that either until someone said it in some comment section somewhere, something like this:
  https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/118396
  
  I had a recent experience, but on reddit because it was a discussion thread for a show, and there wasn't one on lemmy yet. I was just questioning the reason for a particular change of character in the show and that I didn't think it was necessary. I was in the negative by the next day. Then I added an edit to my comment and said that instead of downvoting, how about you explain why you think it was necessary for that change in the show. After that, my comment's karma went back to positive and people started to reply about their thoughts instead. Downvotes are absolutely not being used correctly more often than not.
  
  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
  
  Definitely a good point
  
  Maybe clicking downvote would require people to choose a reason for the downvote, and workflow would make it implictly clear that its not for disagreement
  Trolling Spam Abuse Off-Topic etc
I think your mental place definitely could use a lot of improvement since this is a topic that's clearly bothering you. Still, this is very normal and you're not alone on that sadly. Just remember, upvotes/downvotes are not a decider of truth. You can be absolutely right and be downvoted to oblivion. It just determines how much you match the group think of that community. The approval of faceless nerds is irrelevant, espsecially on reddit-style forums like Lemmy where your votes are literally meaningless. It's more of an actual issue on something like twitter/tik tok/youtube/etc where your interactions are part of your personal brand.
- I remember about a comment saying that the author got upset for arguing with someone for a while, then checke their history and saw that that person was drinking their own pee.
  No judgement, but never forget that on the Internet you can be talking to anybody.
  
  Really makes you think how many internet conversations would change if you could see what the other person looked like lol. For better or for worse.
My most downvoted comment on Reddit had something like negative 800 karma. I'm proud of it lol.
Ok ngl I do like getting likes, although mostly as an indication that people read what I wrote, and I wasn't wasting my time. Especially important when it's a post I put a lot of effort into.
Downvotes... It can be two things. Sometimes it happens that I write something truly idiotic - as a mistake or because of a bad day or whatever reason, that's when I usually delete the thing to not confuse or upset people when I realise it.
Other times it turns out my comment actually turns out to be controversial. But if it's something I stand by and believe is correct, it may bother me that a large portion of people disagree. I'm not any kind of extremist, so if people do find my opinions extreme, most of the time it's just puzzling.
I don’t even look at my up/downvotes. 🤷🏽
It depends, really. Unless you have a niche presence and have actually made it, we're all just John and Jane Does. I don't see this as "popularity," we just got really lucky with some posts or we're articulate with our arguments.
Don't take it too seriously, live your life more than the guy who's spending his on social media.

17 comments