Unpopular Opinion

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Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!

How voting works:

Vote the opposite of the norm.

If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.

Guidelines:

Tag your post, if possible (not required)

If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].

Rules:

1. NO POLITICS

Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.

2. Be civil.

Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.

3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.

Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.

4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...

Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.

5. No trolling.

This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.

Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/

founded 1 year ago

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People who get bothered about downvotes, don't understand how to use social media. (self.unpopularopinion)

submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by Joker to c/[email protected]

54 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I used multiple social media platforms and I can say in medium confidence that downvotes are almost useless to see for users.

They are made to influence the algorithm and that's it, if you are really bothered by them it's because you saw something you were never intended to see.

Reddit try to communicate this by showing you only one number for the total score and they are trying to not show you if your post score became in negative.

Matter of fact, I personally find downvotes pretty refreshing for me because I expect to hear something I don't know or a passionate criticism on my opinions or posts.

I think what could discourage me from posting is the lack of comments, not the downvotes.

Note: If you are really bothered about downvotes, you can disable showing down votes on the web client and in the mobile clients by changing that option in the settings.

Downvote if you agree.

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[–] [email protected] -2 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Downvoting is intolerance made cheap. It's a button to say: "You're wrong, I don't care what you have to say, LA LA LA LA SHUT UP". If you did the equivalent of downvoting in an in-person discussion, you would be an asshole.

But what really annoys me personally (someone else mentions it) is that downvoting reduces the visibility of the downvoted opinion. It's literally soft censorship.

I regularly leave discussions after receiving cheap downvotes in return for my carefully considered contribution. It's a statistical certainty that I'm not the only one.

Downvoters should consider the opportunity cost of their actions for the quality of the discussion they are taking part in.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

I tend to downvote obnoxious comments, or ones that it’s clear the commenter is in love with the ‘sound’ of their own voice. I tend to leave the ‘carefully considered’ ones alone because they add to the conversation unless they stray too far into the above categories.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Interesting. Of course, "obnoxious" and "in love with their own voice" are highly personal judgements that are pretty vulnerable to motivated reasoning. In other words: if they were making a point that you happened to agree with, perhaps you wouldn't think those things.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

I definitely see where you’re coming from. At the same time I don’t tend to get involved in deep discussions where I have strong feelings, on the Internet. I save those for in-person with friends.

I guess I am just very sensitive to tone and (what comes across to me as) arrogant people, and I have downvoted obnoxious comments on all sides of an argument before. I try to be aware of my bias, but nobody’s perfect.

Of course YMMV, but I find blocking people like that (especially on Discord) make my Internet experience much more pleasant.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 days ago

It's a button to say: "You're wrong, I don't care what you have to say, LA LA LA LA SHUT UP"

Idk, my downvotes mean "ugh".