I noticed that kbin has stalled in development recently and the ongoing problems with federation etc. made me use it even less for the past few weeks. I even spent more time on reddit than here.
Today, I decided to give my abandoned lemmy account a try and see how that goes.
As many others, I disliked the UI of lemmy, compared to kbin, but soon enough found this one https://p.lemmy.world and it’s been very smooth so far.
So yeah … hello from the other side of the fence 🍷
There’s even an option to hide the fantasy Internet points entirely. I love that option because I find fantasy Internet point chasing completely risible.
‘point chasing’ e.g. karma farmers on reddit is fucking stupid, but I find the metric useful on an individual post. I think of them like an online extension of a facial expression: if I read a post attempting to explain something, and it’s got way more downvotes than up, the kinda tells me the poster is full of shit, which is especially useful in threads where I don’t know enough about the topic to actually identify the bullshit myself. Like a flat-earther trying to give a lecture to an auditorium of booing geological scientists - my clueless medic ass is going to be gauging the audience as much as the speaker.
Or, say I post some joke: if it gets a lot more upvotes than down, that tells me other folks folks got a kick out of it.
It’s just another tool to communicate - and communication is hamstrung right out the gate in a predominately typed medium, so I’ll take the crutch.
That is a valid viewpoint.
It’s not mine.
So I turn off the votes view. I have no idea if my votes are up or down. And I don’t care. I love having that choice too!
totaly agree. Additionally if I see a post/comment with racist/fascist/sexist views I want to know what the general consensus is. It makes a difference knowing that people disagree or support.