When I was on Reddit I felt like my opinion didn’t matter. But here it just feels more open and free.
It’s like a little trophy or a symbol of validity to some people. You’d see big edits addressing downvoted as if people got personally hit in the head with them.
I don’t blame people though because viscerally, these things are little tokens of “approval” by others at large.
Votes have a bandwagon effect, both up and down votes. Sometimes it just felt like arguing with an army of mute downvoting zombies; no reply, just downvotes. I completely understand some communities on Lemmy disabling downvotes, even if that means there is no mora a “controversial” vote.
My only fear is that as Lemmy gets bigger, the same botting, brigading and mindless bandwagoning, will also come here.
