Truly a pretty terrible place for any kind of social activity.
People here are super self righteous and unwavering in their beliefs, quick to insult others and be generally bitchy, pedantic and quick to dogpile. Worst of all while still usually slightly wrong about a thing, but unwilling to hear it.
It’s basically the worst parts of reddit users where we have boiled it down to the most affluent or socially insecure.
Even if it’s as simple as a question people jump to defend their position with insults rather than answer it cause they get worried the person might be confused and it’s best to just make sure it’s a closed community as quick as possible.
This isn’t an open community it’s a private gated one where everyone jumped the fence and is scared that the wrong person might have come in with them.
Condescending is not welcoming.
Upvoting cause they are your in group isn’t community.
Berating outcasts cause you at least don’t feel like them is still bullying.
I find that if you avoid the political and news forums and some of the meme forums, you avoid 90% of the assholery that exists on Lemmy. But that’s true for Reddit as well and I think is probably just a truism about the internet in general.
It’s not really the people, I think, that is the problem; it’s that people feel strongly about politics and when they have the anonymity and disconnection of the internet to free them from true social accountability, we express ourselves in increasingly overconfident and arrogant ways, which obviously pisses other people off and creates arguments. In other words, the internet is ideal for festering toxic debating environments. Our psychology just wasn’t meant for it.