I went back to Reddit this morning. Yeah I know, but I just wanted to check the place out after all the blackouts. As I was scrolling through my typical stuff I was down voting dumb things as is pure habit and it struck me.. after being here only 2 days and not having any down vote button, what was just a pure habit suddenly felt a little dirty.
Those people I just down voted didn't do anything wrong I just didn't agree with them. But by down voting them I'm basically doing one little part in actually silencing them. It felt bad. In fact all of Reddit felt bad.. like, it was just such a habit and I was ready to go back, but once I did it wasn't as good as I remembered it.
All it took was 2 days away using a different platform that gives me essentially the same stuff I want to read and this no down vote thing somehow has resonated with me more than I would have thought. I actually went back and removed the down votes. Those people have the right to feel how they do whether I agree or not. I don't need to silence and invalidate people over things that are so incredibly minor.
I've decided I will use Reddit only via Google search if it has the content I'm looking for, just like any other webpage, but I think Lemmy, and Beehaw specifically, are my new home. It no longer feels like "the alternative." It feels like a place I actually chose to be. I wrote in my application that I wanted less toxicity in my life and I think that's already happening. I'm really grateful to have discovered this place.
What's sad is that back in the old days of Reddit, Reddiquette was actually a thing and people followed that rule more. In recent years, though, it feels like Reddiquette is completely dead.
Post any kind of dissenting opinion and you'll get downvoted into absolute oblivion. And I'm not just speaking about politics. You can write a well thought out comment in any sub that goes against the grain, and the culture is just totally to downvote for disagreement. I think my most downvoted comment of all time on Reddit was on r/juicing when I questioned whether carrot juice was actually effective for depression lol.
And a lot of people end up downvoting just because somebody else already did. I would see people posting milquetoast dissenting "hot takes" that are really just room temperature takes and then get downvoted to -68 over it. And then somebody would go "why was this downvoted" and he at +3