Everywhere you browse, people have such strong opinions about everything and are so toxic or extremely negative. You start playing a game, want to check the forums or something and most of the posts are people being mean to each other. You open social media to keep in touch with people that you’d like to maintain a certain level of contact and there’s always some people that are always complaining about every single thing.
I see myself more and more closing myself into a bubble which makes me appreciate Beehaw much more. I know I am guilty of being taken away by the toxicity and sometimes replying things I wouldn’t be proud of but since I joined Beehaw I see myself policing myself more and more focused on being better.
Just a quick rant, I currently started playing Baldur’s Gate 3 and I am honestly pissed off on the fact people can’t give feedback without being rude or “gamers” just shitting on developers because they are stans of another game. I wanted to be active on the forum and comment on bugs and such because I want the game to be better but it is so depressing reading people being awful so often.
Why are we so shitty to each other? I’m so tired.
Edit: Pardon me if I used weird terms or grammar errors, english isn’t my first language
Edit2: removed specifics
I honestly believe that modern social media and “the algorithm” has conditioned us into this kind of behaviour.
It’s already quite easy to forget we are interacting with other humans when we are behind screens and keyboards. This has always been an issue on the internet.
But when the internet is fuelled by algorithms which only want engagement, it is going to encourage behaviour which drives this. This is often extreme, sensational opinions and language. I feel like the algorithm constantly tried to show me content that would upset me. “What’s hot” is basically always “what’s controversial”, and controversy drives engagement. It certainly engaged me and I’ve had to make a conscious effort to just rip myself away from it.
Furthermore, social media doesn’t encourage long-form discussion, and it also conditions us to seek immediate gratification. Twitter especially wants us to summarize our points in just a few words, which doesn’t lend itself to mature, thought-out discussions.
I often make long posts here on Lemmy which I often feel aren’t really read by people or responded to because TL;DR. Me writing out paragraphs of analysis about Starfield isn’t going to get as many responses as someone simply saying “Starfield is the game of the century” or “Starfield is dogshit in every way”.
Lots of Rage bait out there, or people purposely posting things and making it sound slightly wrong, knowing people will comment too