I’m always surprised by the quality of comments on Lemmy and the analysis provided, often by experts in their field. It gives a sense that the average Lemmy user is a lot smarter than the average member of the public.
Also, when it comes to politics, I think the average Lemmy user is pretty perceptive of what real power dynamics are at play and what interests society should be looking to promote.
It’s been a pleasure to be on this platform with you all. Where do you all come from? And why is it so hard to find people like you in the real world?
Brother, I’m dumb as hell.
The trick is being just smart enough to stay silent on topics we know nothing about.
Spittin’ words of wisdom right there.
that’s why I’m always quiet
I don’t know if we are smarter, but I’d most of are here because we don’t want to put up with some companies antics. So we seem to be a group that left on a matter of principles, I can get on board with that.
That’s a small number of people.
There’s also the people who were IP banned from other social media sites like reddit. They’re not choosing to be here, this is just all they have.
I’m also pretty sure OP just changed some old reddit copy paste thing to Lemmy, and people are legitimately believing it
Meh I’m here not just because I got banned from Reddit but for why I got banned from Reddit.
I told some troglodyte to crawl back into his hole and got permabanned for “threats of violence”.
My foot was already out the door due to a lot of the censorship rules as it was so this was just the final nail in the coffin.
I don’t think people here are smarter. Maybe communication is just more pleasant when removed from all the noise, and when posting is not incentivised by the wrong things.
Your spelling and grammar is perfect. This place isn’t even close to representing the average internet user.
It’s harder to join Lemmy than to join something like Reddit; you have to understand the concept of fediverse, choose instance, etc. It requires some thinking and willingness to learn something new.
All I’ll say is: I’m confident we are collectively smarter than a 5th grader
What if 1/5 grader is really really smart?
This is a self serving thread if I’ve ever seen one!
Lemmy users, myself included, are not smarter than the rest of the population, but we are a small community, a small community that probably joined for similar reasons, meaning we probably have better cohesion than other similar communities.
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I don’t know that we’re any smarter (or dumber) but I think the asshole filter has far less impact here. On reddit, niche subs often became so much worse after growing to front page status. Once the assholes start flooding in, the nice people tend to give up and leave.
Yeah, Reddit had its own enshittification cycle for niche topics. At first, it’s just the people who are passionate and/or experienced in the niche interest. Then as it grows, those experts slowly get drowned out by the hobbyists who know juuuust enough to activate the Dunning-Krueger effect. So now you have a bunch of people who are confidently spouting surface-level info (or even outright misinformation) as if it’s gospel. And since the majority of the users also only have a surface-level understanding, that’s what gets upvoted.
On Reddit, it’s less about what you say, and more about how you say it. If a comment is eloquent and makes the reader feel smart for understanding it, it gets upvoted. But highly technical comments will tend to get downvotes, because they make the average reader feel dumb.
I saw it all the time in my area of expertise, audio. There’s a lot of snake oil in the hobbyist audiophile circles. Lots of $1000 cables, $900 isolator boxes, etc… All will claim to make your system sound better. Meanwhile, in the professional world, we’ll use the cheapest $1/foot cable and $5 connectors, because we know they’re durable and they work just as well. We’ll set up million dollar speaker arrays for a concert, and run the signal down $15 cables and $10 isolators. Because we understand the physics of getting an electrical signal from A to B, and know that a more expensive cable won’t do that more efficiently. I can guarantee that Taylor Swift’s Eras tour was run through $1/ft cable. How can I guarantee that? Because I’ve seen the specs of their rig. I know people who worked on it. But good luck going into an audiophile subreddit and saying that; You’ll get downvoted to oblivion and called a troll. Because they don’t go to those subs to listen to actual experts; They just want to go to a place where they can have their surface-level knowledge validated.
There’s an old saying along the lines of “everyone trusts the news until they talk about your job.” Because just like Reddit, the news is targeting the broadest audience possible. And that means they can’t do deep-dives into a topic. They just skirt along the surface, giving just enough context to make viewers feel informed. Because validating the viewer is more important to audience retention than actually informing them.
Gold cables just work better, man.
Totally kidding. I know exactly what you’re talking about. I’m not an audio engineer but I have worked with some.
And you’re 100% right that on reddit it’s more about the “hip vibe” of the post than the content.
Not answering in this thread puts you above the bar…
Wait
FuckFOSS
I wouldn’t call myself particularly intelligent, I’m just here to enjoy this slice of the web. The rest of the world is similar, it has bits and pieces of bright people and more basic people. Lemmy I think just happens to have more passionate people.
I don’t think I’m any smarter than average. Lemmy as a whole may seem that way, though, and two reasons come to mind immediately:
One, many of us have spent some time on reddit. We’ve grown up since then, and most of us have said “no more of that reddit crap, please and thank you.”
Two, people seem to have the patience to read longer comments, and think about them. I see more genuinely thoughtful comments here than pedantic ones where the subtext is “look how smart I am.”
I was in the top half of Reddit. I’m in the bottom half of lemmy.
Nice, Thank :)
Well, that depend, we can also write some very dumb thing, even clash with each other. Even myself. You can see that in the mod log.
I don’t find us smarter than anyone and there is some bias due to our culture and knowledge. Which kind of people have heard about Lemmy ? Not a lot. We belong to the 5% Linux market share, maybe even less. :)
I think longer post play a key part in argumentations’ quality, we not only react but also convey our thoughts, then add a sprinkle of moderators that care about human and try to find the best way to solve an issue. That’s part of the recipe.
Edit : typo
There are multiple reasons I can think of. First, the entry barrier is quite high in comparison to other social media platforms and might filter out many unmotivated or technically inexperienced people. Second, moderation seems to work different on Lemmy than on other platforms. Where other platforms try to be “free-speech” (which they seem to misunderstand as letting anyone say whatever blatantly false stuff they want), Lemmy moderators seem to be more strict in that regard and generally enforce stricter rules.
