One of my most active subs on Reddit was /r/MensLib, an open, pro-feminist, trans-inclusive space for people to discuss men’s issues without toxicity and without anger or violence directed at women or men. It was a (mostly) wonderful community that fostered lots of genuine, heartfelt discussion, and it would seem to me that Beehaw as an instance would be the perfect place for such a community to take root on Lemmy.
I’m aware of the community on lemmy.ca, but there is both an article written in bad faith (though I don’t think it was posted in bad faith) and a post from a bad actor on the front page that has been up for several days with no mod action, which concerns me.
Thoughts?
(Edited to be more fair to the most active poster on the lemmy.ca community, as I don’t think they’re posting in bad faith and I should have been clearer about that)
I’d be interested but I don’t think it’s really possible. These spaces are always overtaken by extremists on all sides. I’ve had my fill of it from Reddit.
Edit: changed “both sides” to “all sides”
This was not at all my experience in the specific community I’m asking about recreating here, which is why I’m asking.
I also don’t agree with the take that extremism of some form or fashion is the only natural course of human discourse. I’m sorry your experience of people has left you with such a negative view of them.
We all have different lived experiences and it’s very apparent here haha.
Even now after you telling me that you had good experiences there, it still baffles me how you managed to avoid all the extremists and have a generally positive overall experience.
I can’t even fathom that. Every time I interacted I got at least a Reddit Cares automatic suicide message and pretty nasty personal attacks and lots of people “questioning” my masculinity as if it was some intrinsic quantifiable substance.
Same thing in any gaming lobby I’ve been in with voice chat.
I’m not saying that it’s inherently human for things to break down. Im saying that I don’t believe it’s possible for there to be an open anonymous forum or place for dudes specifically where it doesn’t revolve into a bunch of nastiness. I wanna be proven wrong. Desperately. I’ve never experienced otherwise in my life.
Just chiming in that my experience has been similar to each of yours (you, and @Vestria ) in those kinds of spaces. There is the potential for truly positive social interaction even in anonymous dudespace but highly granular mod tools are necessary. Really, those tools are necessary in semi-anonymous and real name internet spaces too, and lemmy hasn’t got that specificity in mod and admin capabilities yet.
My interactions on Beehaw have convinced me that, once the mod/admin tools exist, it stands a great chance of being able to navigate the hosting of such a community with few/er of the seemingly inherent nasty tendencies. For what it’s worth, I’m one of the mods who was a vote against forming it before the tools we need are in place, and I’d volunteer to mod it if/when it gets created.
Reddit as a whole was an absolute cesspool, I don’t deny that. But some of us were lucky enough, through lots and lots of searching and trial and error and weeding out of bad eggs, to find a few places where we felt welcomed and accepted without judgment.
I’m sorry that you never did!
Luckily, I think Beehaw and Blahaj are doing an admirable job, and I’m happy to be a part of it!
Extremism comes in more than two flavours. Let’s not perpetuate the stereotype that there are two sides in every situation … that’s propaganda.
Obviously not just two flavours, guess I could have worded that better. Was trying to generalize.
There’s /r/menslib on Reddit which is well-moderated and I’ve never seen any toxicity there (not that I go looking for it!) so it is possible.