It feels like people are a lot nicer here than on Twitter and Reddit, and even when people disagree, it’s generally civil and not an all-out flame war. Also, there’s no algorithm promoting outrage all the time.
For me, the anticipation of toxicity was a huge deterrent for me ever participating in real discussions, but here I feel like I can be myself.
I think it’s healthier this way.
I first joined reddit back around 2009 and this is pretty much how it was back then. Small discussions, generally pretty friendly. Discussion was ok, debate would usually have sources to back up claims. I wonder if anybody else here is from that time. It was about when Snoo became the official mascot, there was that narwhal bacon slogan, the scandal with the biologist that we all loved until it was discovered he was pumping up his own posts and comments with alts. Good times. I wonder if Lemmy will follow the same path
With regards to snoo, snoo actually predates reddit. Alexis drew it up in late 2004, and they wanted to call reddit “snews” with “snoo” as the logo