Greentext

Not saying the OP was banned fairly, but to do the devil's advocate, there's people with PHD in biology or medicine who still don't believe in Evolution. You can always find idiots with PHDs, even in their chosen fields.

Let's not pretend we're in any better of a situation. Same exact thing could happen on any Lemmy server, especially since each server is a small fiefdom run by randos.

I left Reddit after the fuck spez debacle and haven't looked back. I occasionally go to reddit through Google for some specific things. But I don't log in or engage in the content besides reading what I was looking for. And I use my ad blocker so that dickward spez doesn't get anything from me.

But yeah I suppose this is more about mods. They think they have so much power at the end of they day it's a fucking forum, that is not much power.

As an expert on everything I find the Internet constantly frustrating.

Op probably does not have a PHD. He posted a stupid opinion and got down voted for it, and ran to 4chan because he was sad.

Gotta cite your facts when it's about such controversial facts.

Now do lemmy.world

Don’t fuck with the hive mind. Many a time I’ve taken a reasonable, well-thought out and even sourced opinion and been downvoted to shit.

Meh, it’s always how you present the arguments. Regardless of being right or wrong, if OP comes off as dickish, it’s gonna get downvoted.

be me

go to reddit

lie about my credentials

start a fight

eventually just start insulting everyone

"Y GOT B&???!!!"

scurry back to racism and CP board

complain

OP might not have a PhD but this stuff happens a lot on reddit. A lot of people here on Lemmy have an IT background and would get a rude shock looking at some of the dominant opinions on the major technology-related subreddits, particularly those that are heavily astroturfed.

It could also be about your tone. People will downvote you just because you sound like an asshole.

Well, they could just have posted sources to their claims instead of just playing the self-authority card the whole time.

The modlog is such a great feature of lemmy.

Being an expert in any arena is fucking annoying when you have to deal with idiots.

The same happened to me on Lemmy. I brought evidence, they brought anecdotes, and I was the "loser" of the discussion according to the hive

What you say is never as important as how you say it. I noticed that if I came off as a self-righteous dickhead, people would disagree with me out of principle and if the person was still wrong they'd bring neutral "Sure, but" arguments to avoid the same thing happening to them.

The only time you can be a jackass is if you do it in a funny way or the person is so far gone it's the equivalent of default dancing on their grave.

All that matters is whether you’re speaking for or against the prevailing assumptions of the site/the subreddit. Most people on the internet are not experts on the topic but somehow already have their minds made up.

Also, Lemmy is not better than Reddit in this regard. Dominant opinion > everything else.

Average internet interaction be like:

Reddit is great for watching communities being radicalized. Wehther they do it themselves or they get a psyops push is up to everyone's guess but I've watched it several times.

SRS: Started out as a community pointing out misoginy and racism, ended up as a very weird hate group. I didn't watch it that closely, only saw the result.

some tumbler centered sub i followed, I forgot the name: same story, started quite light hearted, making fun of stupid shit said by kids on tumbler, turned into a right wing hategroup. This one I witnessed. They ran out of material quick, started posting lame shit but now they gave it their own, made up context in the comments. After a while, people who pointed out obvious satire got downvoted.

Happens everywhere where there's voting involved. Convincing argument I feel sounds right > argument that's actually right.

Quite often when I see the person who is "technically correct" getting down voted heavily there's usually at least one of several other factors coming into play that would easily explain the down votes.

For instance they edited their comment to add something like "Edit: The down votes just prove I'm right", they're being uncivil or disproportionately aggressive, they're resorting to logical fallacies and arguing around the other people instead of debating with them, or they're just adding confrontational/controversial hot takes in a community that doesn't embrace that type of thing.

And honestly, you can be totally factually correct 100% of the time, but still be a drain on the community or take down the quality of a sub. If mostly all you are doing is punching down on ignorant people instead of building bridges and leading them to the factually correct conclusions, then you are probably a drain on the community and discussion. If you're basically doing nothing but feeding the trolls, then you're also helping to undermine the quality of the sub.

To be fair, it was only in the last couple years that it became that bad. It's still better than Elon's white nationalist vehicle of a social media site.