I realized I interacted / posted / commented less and less on reddit these last couple of years. Couldn't even tell you why exactly. Now I've been here for a week and, I don't know, I just like interacting again... Hope it stays like this for a while :)
I thought it would be a really hard shift since I used reddit so much. The more I go between them, the more I realize reddit is just another forum website - it's not even a really good one, either!
This change has been super helpful for me to learn not to get so attached to stuff. The people here are the same as the people there and the stuff I post can go anywhere I want it to, there's nothing extra special about reddit. It's super freeing!
You should try Beehaw, or any other instance that’s disabled downvotes. THAT’S awesome. If someone disagrees with your point, they actually begin a conversation, instead of just slapping a down arrow.
Im on lemmy.blahaj.zone and I’ve enjoyed the same thing. So, too, does mastodon feel this way - by default, you can’t see how many likes, boosts, or replies something has. So you end up with people actually talking to each other, rather than clicking a button that makes someone else look bad. In general on the fediverse there’s a prioritization of positivity over negativity, and healthy engagement over petty fights. It’s nice. Makes things easier on the moderators, too, I’m sure.
Can you clarify on karma not mattering here? I’ve heard that before, but I also see a total upvote count on my profile page. Does karma not impact the sorting of posts or what?
Well, for a start, I'm on kbin.social so when I click your profile you have 0 everything. So whatever we have on our instance probably doesn't come with us into the fediverse.
And here at kbin our upvotes are not karma. I can see them on my comments but they don't accumulate anywhere. So it means nothing. (There is some kind of system here where downvotes matter locally and not upvotes but apparently its broken and Ernest will probably fix it one day).