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Ask Lemmy @lemmy.world

King @blackneon.net

2w ago

Why are the you are the problem comments so common on Lemmy?

I read some people who vent on their posts or talk about problems they face in life and the replies they get is, no you are the problem, fuck you.

On Reddit, the only thing that is close to this is when women complain about their boyfriends, they got told to leave them, whatever is her complaint about.

Any explanation?

Disclaimer: I am not talking about my own experiences here, but rather what I read in other posts, my observations could be wrong.

56 comments

I don't see that at all. Perhaps you are just projecting your own issues onto Lemmy at large. I think you need to have a good hard look at yourself and your internal biases and then come back and apologise to all of us.
- Nice work!

Because it's often the correct response.
- Yea I'm remembering a post, which i sincerely hope was trolling, where someone was unemployed and played video games for most of the hours of the day and thought it was unreasonable that their partner wanted more interaction with them outside of gaming.
- The handful of times I can remember seeing someone complaining about a situation being told they were the problem, it seemed to me that they likely really were the problem.
  
  It's just like way back in team games, like Dota (the original one, I am old like that). People will always blame anyone but themselves, including their teammates. But in the end the only thing you can improve is your own game, even if that means accounting for other people's weaknesses.
  But it never was something people liked to hear.

Applicable to the early days of any platform. The early adopters are those that are comfortable being away from the masses on popular alternatives. They are aware their comments and posts will get less views and engagement and therefore can be less restrained. They also need to be relatively tech literate since it's less user friendly than more established platforms.
The result is you get a certain type of person that is more willing to speak their mind rather than craft the most acceptable response.
Lemmy is still more reddit influenced than old emerging platforms, so we get more of a mix which creates differing expectations.
Not saying it's good or bad, but once a platform develops and attracts the general public, there's usually an outcry for the "old days".
- Yeah. That tracks. Every community I was involved with in reddit... and IRL, kind of works this way too.
  It starts with open minded plain talking enthusiastic folks, then the 'concerned' people start invading it and want to sanitize it so that it's 'inviting' to non-enthusiasts and they start policing everyone the way they police themselves. And their primary concern is not the idea or hobby, but it's presentation being as 'acceptable' to as broad a spectrum of people as possible... which ultimately makes it bland and boring to the OG people. and the OG people are 'offensive' to the new people who are only there for the 'image' of the thing. Also the diversity of perspectives disappears, as only one perspective is allowed as the 'correct' one.
  I generally prefer an environment full of outspoken people who actively disagree. Average people find such an environment hostile and they want to build a loyalty based consensus and exclude those who are disagree or are non-believers. I like the former because I learn things. I hate the latter because I learn nothing and it devolves into a circle jerk of people who want 'safety'.
  
  then the 'concerned' people start invading it and want to sanitize it so that it's 'inviting' to non-enthusiasts and they start policing everyone the way they police themselves. And their primary concern is not the idea or hobby, but it's presentation being as 'acceptable' to as broad a spectrum of people as possible...
  I've encountered this first hand with anti-tankies. I was questioning their concern about .ml, suggesting they were being counterproductive and were actually advertising .ml, and several people responded that they're scared new users will find .ml and be so offended that they'll leave lemmy. It seems ridiculous to me that an average user would care about retaining and maximizing users on lemmy. Why would someone care? It doesn't make sense. This is lemmy, it's never going to be cool. It's where a bunch of nerds argue. People should go back to reddit if they want size and an echo chamber.

I haven't seen it, maybe you're the problem?

People seem to have an allergy to personal responsibility and taking initiative. Perhaps it IS their fault? Or at least, they're the people in the best position to fix things?
- Seconding this. In most situations, the only thing you can change is yourself. If you want to improve things, you've got to do the work. Sometimes people think responsibility is the same thing as fault or blame, but, again, most of the time the person able to fix a bad situation won't be the one who caused it.
- yep.
  IME people who embrace personal responsibility generally don't whine/complain that much. those who do so pathologically... absolutely refuse to take responsibility for themselves and angry/frustrated that other people won't do it for them.
  and the pathological people will hate anyone who calls them out. they will seek people who tell them it isn't their fault and how they are perfect as they are.

People think it always has to be someone's fault. It's easier to attribute bad outcomes to specific actions by an individual, rather than accept things often happen through mechanism out of your control.
- i mean, that entirely depends on the particulars of the problem.

If your referencing r/relationshipadvice you can just ignore anything you read on there because it certainly isn't advice.
It's toxic as fuck and the people commenting are probably incel chain-wanking 4chan fanatics who've never had a relationship
- Well I guess it is advice. It's just really really bad advice.
  But I feel like the real value comes from having to write your problem down and actually thinking about a lot of different facets to make a stranger understand what you are going through.

Were they by a nurse who keeps moving wards, but the other nurses in every ward are assholes?
- Nein. Äh, ich meine, no!

Like mentioned already: Without any sample, it's hard to tell anything. Maybe those people were the problem or maybe the question wasn't clear? Maybe the commenter was the problem or maybe they did not understand shit about the OP question?
What I can say is that I seldom see anything looking like what you describe in my timeline, but I also carefully curate it to avoid most noise.

The lemmyverse isn't huge, but broad.
Unless you give some examples, people are probably going to respond based on what they saw somewhere else than where you were thinking of.
My best attempt at an answer is that lemmy has fewer long-term well behaving residents, so people coming from other platforms because they kept being banned for bad behavior or just kept not getting along, stick out more.
- That's a great point, and it's an observable phenomenon of people showing up and talking about how they were banned from reddit, and a quick perusal of comment and post history shows exactly why they were banned - because they're assholes.

It's really hard to answer it without having a example to go by. Can you give any please?

A few things come to mind:
People don't seem to understand or care when a post is just to vent and the individual isn't looking for feedback. Some people have a really hard time not chiming in with their take.
It's a low effort reply that only requires a surface level understanding of the situation (and that might even be generous) so it's very tempting to people who are itching to chime in on everything.
Some people feel Very Smart when they make that comment because it means (in their view) that they are gifted at getting to the heart of the matter and seeing things as they truly are, without bias. There is also zero consequence to them being wrong about this.
Sometimes people get defensive when they see their own behaviors reflected through someone's vent post and it's now personal.
It's sometimes used as a general saying, like "You are the problem with this country nowadays", again the commenter feels real fucking smug about their pattern recognition skills.
I'm sure sometimes OP is the problem but I'm not sure it's possible to have enough information to make that kind of judgement.
- People don't seem to understand or care when a post is just to vent and the individual isn't looking for feedback. Some people have a really hard time not chiming in with their take.
  Reddit, Lemmy, and other Reddit-likes aren't unidirectional blogging platforms. Primarily they're link/image aggregators, but ever since the early introduction of comments, they're also places for people to share their thoughts on the things people link to and write. If you want a place to vent with no expectation of honest feedback, you should be using either 1) a community (shoehorned) within the Reddit-like which is expressly moderated that way or 2) a blog or microblog.
  Ironically echoing the OP: you are the problem if you make a text post on one of these platforms just to vent at people and get offended that people give feedback.
  
  There are a whole lot of assumptions in this reply lol.
  I'm not offended, but it's a good example of people not seeking to understand what they are replying to before they add their two cents.
  I understand this is what happens on the internet. It's not possible to communicate perfectly.

I've never seen a single one of these posts but then again I don't read

I dunno, I used to see that all the time on reddit, generally in response to posts that all started with "I'm 18 and..."

I think the niche nature of Lemmy attracts a large amount of ivory tower hipster types.
- huh? ivory tower and hipster are mutually exclusive, unless you just meant both types?
  every hipster i know hates education and academia. and i've never met a hipster academic.
  i also identify as academic and anti-hipster. and every hipster i interact with hates my academic approaches towards life.
  
  That's odd. 100% of the hipsters I know are at least college educated. And there's a few that have multiple degrees or masters in their fields

Because most people's problems are ultimate their own responsibility. Most of us can't change the circumstances around us, but we can change ourselves.
This is assuming the person wants to fix the issue. Many people... don't. Their misery is their identity. Personally I've had plenty of relationships in my life with people like that. I ended up leaving them, and they thought I was a selfish asshole for not fixing their issues for them, because they believed it was my job to 'adult' for them. And frankly, some people are happy to have relationships like that, where the other person is their 'child' they take care of.
Also it's very different if say you have a car accident. A random occurrence... than if you keep getting into car accidents. That's a pattern. I've had one car accident. But people who have many accidents... it's because they are bad drivers. I once dated a woman who has 6 car accidents in 5 years. She was a terrifyingly bad driver, but in her mind it was everyone else who was the bad drivers because they were 'in her way'. and when i drove she would scream at me for being 'a pussy' because I drove safely.

Can you provide an example? Or would that encourage brigading of sorts?

Because I'm the problem?
- No I’m the problem!

Same as most of the other commentors, this isn't something I've noticed. But that doesn't mean it doesn't happen, so it would be helpful to hear some examples. I feel like most of the time people here are pretty supportive / helpful, but maybe I've got a skewed perspective?

Because so many people aren’t self aware.

The times I've said have been because I genuinely thought the OP was the unreasonable one in the described situation.

When I see this kind of thing I lean towards communication skills, emotional immaturity, and impulsivity enabled by just sitting behind a screen rather than being face-to-face with someone.
I’ve seen some Reddit-like behavior here, but thankfully not very much, and I personally don’t engage/respond.

In short - people being deliberate assholes and know they can pretty much get away with that.
You don't usually need to think deeper on that.

I find it very interesting how many people jump on that statement as if it was true, when it's just anecdotal.
Just as an observation: In doing so one supports the statement, yet exhibits the opposite behaviour that is supposedly so prevalent on this platform.

It's a common trait of young people, often young men. I used to be one, guilty of it myself. "You're the problem" stems from a lack of sympathy, because they haven't had many bad things happen to them, emotional nuance, because they're young, and lastly they're taught to be independent and "solely responsible for their situations." Therefore it's extremely frustrating for people like this to care about others because someone who needs care is antithetical to what they've been taught, and they're taking care of themselves so why can't you, weak person?
I want to emphasize that people like this are not bad people. They are probably kind and caring and everything people should be, but they can't stand people not taking care of themselves. They can learn, and I suspect most do when they get older.
- so if someone keeps banging their head into a wall, and asks me why their head hurts, should i tell them how strong and brave they are and how stupid and mean that wall is for hurting their head like that?
  also, who is it that is shouldn't be taking care of themselves? apart from children or elderly?
  
  You could empathize with them, if they're open to it then maybe ask why it keeps happening. You could also say nothing if it's a stranger on the internet. If this person is important to you then yeah, tell better them how strong and brave they are and how stupid and mean that wall is. There's a time and place for constructive criticism.
  Who shouldn't be taking care of themselves? Everybody and nobody. It's supposed to work so that if you need help you get help and if you can help then you give help.

Depends on the topic and what its about. Ive seen topics like that here. Any topic about covid vaccinations - only one opinion allowed (you must vaccinate for the good of all) or you are a piece of trash. :)
But most topics are not like that. Maybe politics, I dont follow that since its pointless.

56 comments