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I didn’t realize how afraid I was to comment or post until being on here. Almost low-key traumatized. Really has been making me question what social media can ‘bee’ and how many people resort to lurking when perhaps they’d rather engage

I totally get it. When you get that kind of reaction to just trying to contribute or you read a toxic comments section, it makes you wonder why you should contribute or be there at all!

Also more willing to engage from what I've seen

Indeed, it's especially challenging within programming subreddits, as they can often appear anti-community. If you introduce a novel project, the immediate response can be insulting and berating. Criticism is often targeted towards those who dare to take a different approach, rather than contributing to existing projects.

As a result, I've largely withdrawn from Reddit and turned to alternative services for updates within the programming community. Maintaining an honest dialogue on Reddit can be tough without others attempting to derail the conversation. Any slight mishap, such as a misspelled word while responding on a phone, is seized upon and used to insult and belittle, thereby undermining any chance of relaxed discussion.

Beehaw isn't without its issues, either. However, these are growing pains and it falls to the moderators/administrators to steer the community in a direction that fosters a welcoming environment for honest dialogues.

Your father smelt of elderberries! :P

I really think there are more bots than people realize.

Right? I'd see a couple of notifications pop up in my browser and my first thought would be "Oh, fuck, what did I say that pissed everyone off this time?"

It's actually be kind of hard to turn off "reddit mode" when I comment here; I honestly didn't notice how I'd started to enter every comment thread with defensiveness and verbal aggression/threat displays right off the bat, as an anticipatory maneuver. There've been a couple of times where I re-read something I commented here and said "Oh, that was an unnecessarily aggressive way to phrase that. I hope nobody sees it before this edit goes through."