I try to be mindful of my Lemmy image/persona since I try to be supportive and educational here. I don’t have a problem with sharing my personal beliefs, but I try to keep it constructive and not too judgemental.
I’ve spent a lot of time cultivating the community where I spend most of my time posting content to, and I like all the comments people share on a daily basis because it’s a positivity oriented community.
Between things in real life and fighting feelings of burn out here, it’s been a bit tougher to stay motivated. One thing I’ve been noticing more lately, and I’m not sure how to deal with it, and I’m curious how you all deal with it.
If you have regular commenters that you like in your community, but you see them being kinda shitty in other communities, does that affect you?
I know there are stressful things going on just about everywhere, but it’s tough when I see people I look to for positivity in return for my work having bad takes or saying things that make me feel less happy about them.
The broadest recent example is probably the Luigi/United Healthcare assassination. Without getting into a whole thing, I don’t support it the way many have expressed here, but I can empathize with the reasoning behind why Luigi has broad support. But I see people I like saying what I feel are pretty hateful things, and I’m having a hard time separating what they show me of themselves in our positive space with what I’m seeing of them in the general Lemmyverse.
I don’t know if I should just ignore it, but I don’t feel there Is really any ideal way to discuss too much as I don’t want to alienate people from my content. I don’t use any alta as that just seems like too much work, but now I kind of want to avoid people a little bit.
Just curious if any of you go through anything similar and to see how you deal with it.
It’s only an opportunity to remember that we’re people, with many flaws. And that’s true for every single one of us. No exception.
My approach is that if a message is not addressed to me and if I have nothing nice to say (or if I feel like being judgmental, like you said), I’d rather say nothing. And if the message is addressed to me, well, it’s more or less the same: if I have nothing positive to say, I will not reply and ignore it. If the person insists a little, I will say ‘sure, thx for sharing your opinion’. If they insist more, I will block them.
I don’t worry about people disagreeing with me. In fact, I quite appreciate diverging opinions as they can be opportunities to learn new things and to revise my own certainties. But I also don’t care at all about alienating anyone that I would consider a pain because I don’t think there is much (new) to learn from that kind of pain.
Quietly moving along has been the approach I’ve been doing. I try to keep in mind that I only really interact with them in a very brief sense every now and then, so I’m only getting the tiniest sliver of who they are when they interact with my posts. They’re their own people with their own thoughts, and since there’s no face-to-face interaction, I think I just project a bit too much personality on them sometimes.
I don’t think I’ve ever responded to any of them, because I enjoy the interactions they have with me that do pertain to me and what I am interested in sharing, That is a success that I have at that point, and the likeliness that I will change someone’s opinions on politics or whatnot isn’t very high, so it’s not worth it.
With some I’ve interacted with on a daily basis though, I guess I just wish they would always be smart and funny like they are in my space, which is almost purely positive, all the time. It’s unfair to expect them to be happy and rational though when they’re in a thread talking about things that make them mad though, It bothers me to see them get upset, even if we’re not friends in a traditional sense, I feel I’ve gotten to see them as good and happy people and I don’t like something making them be angry/upset/sad/etc.
I’m fine with people disagreeing with what I say though. I try not to throw around too much opinion and generally will have sources for things I share, so if they turn out to be wrong, I really do wish to know about it so I can be properly informed. I like to learn in general, so it’s important to be able to vet the facts I’m finding.