I saw an earlier post that showed Lemmy's recent rapid growth followed by a plateau and then slight decline. My feeling is that there is a very LOUD minority of Lemmy users that are trying to act as self-anointed gatekeepers and they're bringing the platform down as a direct consequence. It makes the platform look petty and small to new and existing users alike. If the top posts are continually about shaming other users then this platform isn't going to last. Let's focus on building communities and having interesting conversations rather than one upping each other.
When Sync lauched it was all anyone was talking about. I don't see the memes for and against Sync as people actually upset I just think it is the meta topic of the week. Like when beans were a meme following the "how can I not poop for three days?"
Imo when it comes to topics like that, people tend to be able to just brush it off as a silly internet thing.
A silly internet thing is not necessarily equivalent a toxic community. I'm good with annoying posts, but a lot of people are taking other people's personal decisions a little too personally. I find that behaviour more annoying than I ever found the bean posts, tbh.
Why would someone spend their free time somewhere that they feel brings bad aspects to their life? Why would someone want to deal with a lot of negativity over (let's be honest) pretty minor things? Of course some users will get put off by that. It's why some people left Reddit years ago.
Nailed it. Some users are intent on making this reddit 2.0 with all the baggage. Ive seen entire subs be spam downvoted because some user had the time and hate.