Obviously I'm generalising here, but I feel like this is largely the outcome of putting a bunch of middle-aged white STEM bros on the same small social media network as a bunch of queer communists who trend a lot younger.

The latter group would be mostly content keeping to itself (albeit with the usual amount of infighting), but the former group sees it as its god-given duty to barge in and disrupt any and all "echo chambers" they happen into online. They have all the social awareness and political literacy of the stereotypical facebook boomer, they're just more technically literate.

To be clear, a lot of folks here are perfectly amicable, but if the quality of the experience on Reddit hadn't dropped so drastically in the last two and a half years that I found myself questioning my sanity I probably wouldn't have come back here.

Speaking of which, I was in a discussion about that yesterday:

I specifically avoid .ml and .world because the collective behavior (i.e., hostility, downvote trolling, etc.) is so much like Reddit.

Beehaw, Hexbear and Blahaj have all disabled downvotes, but Blahaj is the only one that's decent, which is why I'm here.

(I would link directly to these if I could, but am having issues with that.)

For what it's worth, Discuit is also a generally friendly place.

It's absolutely been worse here lately. I don't know that I'd call it worse than reddit, but Lemmy is definitely trending more toxic. I'm certainly not a heavy user by any means. Idk if the more reasonable voices have just become less active or if more toxic voices have arrived or what, but where as 6+ months ago things tended to be more discussion prone than antagonistic, it's now mostly antagonistic, especially in the more popular communities.

I will say, I've left many of the lemmy.ml communities in favor of similar communities on other servers and that's helped as far as making my feed of posts less toxic to boot (and less spammy).

I haven't done much of my own moderation in blocking so I'm running mostly based on the server moderation.

I will say, lately lemmy has been in uncharacteristically confrontational. It's been a rough year so far, hopefully things chill out

I don't agree its as bad or worse than Reddit which is packaged fury everywhere. However, the last few months tempers have certainly risen and bad-faith takes and antagonism are more visible in some communities. There seems to be a lot more right-wing people, or centerist apologists at least, than there were before the US election results and I think those results might play a part - emboldening some to speak up and causing so much stress in others that they lash out where they wouldn't have before.

Just make liberal use of the blocking options and take your time to find your people.

I totally understand that. A lot of people here are arseholes.

I think my experience has gotten much better now that I have a long blocklist and am on an instance with downvotes disabled. But yeah it doesn’t feel super friendly all the time here.

But I feel the same way on reddit.

Yep yep yep, it's very confrontational and getting worse by the day

Sorry to hear.

I saw your post yesterday, I knew it was going to get negative reactions.

Maybe you can try more positive communities like !casualconversation@lemm.ee ?

There is a selection of communities here: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/20504960?scrollToComments=true

If that may help, someone told me I was an "energy vampire" today, so it seems like everyone will get a not so nice interaction every once in a while. I hope you'll stick around, but it not, all the best!

I think that your desire for a place where you can discuss the experiences unique to your generation is totally reasonable, and I'm sorry you've gotten backlash for asking how you can have the same thing others are enjoying. To me, there's obvious value in a Gen-Z community. Later generations too eventually.

My friends and life were already firmly established during the covid lockdown and I imagine that the younger you were the more impactful that period and the time after it must have been. I'd love to watch younger people talk about that time of their lives if only so I can learn more, and it's obvious I could learn other things I'm not even aware of yet from younger people's conversations.

I for one hope you stay, and even if you don't feel up to starting a new community I hope you get what you're looking for. There's nothing wrong with posting to a slow or dead community and just thinking of it like a small forum every once in a while. You're definitely not the only Gen-Z on here, and if you post someone else might feel more comfortable posting too!

I know you're venting, and there's not much to say to help.

I am genuinely surprised that you've found lemmy more unwelcoming than reddit. Yeah, it runs higher to snark here, but there's less outright nastiness. But on either platform, it usually is going to come down to the community and the type of community.

You know, gaming communities tend to run high to assholes because gamers run high to assholes. Same with specific anime series or other fandoms. Politics is always a shitty subject matter to talk about. That kind of thing. But, you step into one of the knife communities on lemmy, and you don't find the kind of aggressive jackassery that's available on reddit ones (not all of those, a couple managed to keep good mods during the debacle).

It sucks that people suck. Genuinely, I'm not dismissing your experience. I haven't found any corner of the internet that doesn't have suckitude due to sucky people, though some specific communities/subs/forums moderate for a civil and chill atmosphere. The jerks still pop up in those places, but they get whack-a-moled soon enough.