It doesn’t bother me at all. I made a comment, someone replied, there is no need at all to continue the discussion unless I want to.

It’s important to remember that you don’t owe it to anyone to engage in a comment fight. If someone decides to be grouchy and try to pull you into an argument, you can just ignore it and move on with your day.

I post a lot of memes across Lemmy, and you’d be surprised (or maybe not) how often someone goes out of their way to be upset and attempt to bait me or others into arguing with them. I think some people just enjoy being mad, but I’m not one of them, so I’ve decided that it’s not worth the mental energy to engage with that.

Talking to people is why I’m here so I am the exact opposite

If you don’t want to get sucked in, don’t respond. You don’t owe anyone anything on here.

Only when there are suddenly a lot of unread messages.

What did I say?

What’s in your anonymous inbox can’t hurt you irl. If they’re right, or make an argument that convinces you, you can always say so. If they’re personally hurtful you can block them. Meanwhile reflect that their nasty comments say more to the rest of us about them than you.

Imagine being able to walk into a bar and block anyone obnoxious from interacting with you, wouldn’t that be peaceful…

Edit to add: you’re probably going to get more posted comments from people who don’t experience inbox fright than from those who do. So keep in mind there’s a circle of silent friends supporting you!

Used to. I realized that the worst that happens is that you pissed off some dickhead who writes bad words to you. You don’t get hurt or die or anything. It’s just some words.

Learning to walk away and not waste your time engaging with people that fundamentally make your life worse is a valuable skill.

You are not obligated to engage with everyone that tries to goad you into a pointless argument.

I get this exact feeling, sometimes to the point where I’ll block an entire community. I work a lot with people, and I speak regularly in front of large groups, but I’ve never experienced the kind of aggressive comments in real life that I do online. It gets exhausting. And I know that I can block people, but it’s also hard to distinguish between people who are just having a bad day vs. someone who’s an exhausting troll or debatebro. I usually can’t tell the difference until after the struggle session, when I’m exhausted from arguing against … usually against points I didn’t even make lol

Edit: Just saw someone on a .world community who is repeatedly misgendering a trans person. I totally think “inbox fright” is valid, and the people who think it can just be ignored are not the ones who are in marginalized groups who are frequently targeted by hate. Even a good ally will get inbox fright, because these users will turn on you too, if you call them out for their bigotry.

This was a thing on reddit too. Don’t think that Lemmy is immune to group think or even bots intentionally farming divisiveness. If anything, the inconsistent moderation by design makes it even more susceptible.

I try to tell myself to just roll my eyes at pointlessly negative comments, throw it a downvote if I think it’s not contributing anything useful, and move on. Otherwise they’ll drag you to their level and beat you with experience, as it were.

sees 1 new notification oh cool someone responded to something let’s see what it is

5 notifications hmm. Well something I commented on must have hit the front page / trending

22 notifications oh god what community decided to take issue with me now… (after blocking a few instances, the amount of gif and emoji spam on my inbox has drastically reduced)

At first I didn’t like the fact that my Lemmy client didn’t support notifications, but it turned out to be the greatest thing about it. It basically helped me cut down on social media time.

I had this when I was younger, too. Today, I don’t mind if someone posts or messages me nasty stuff, I either ignore it completely or just block this person and move on. There is no use getting frightened because of some internet stranger who decided that today is the day to type random bullshit to someone he doesn’t even know.

What’s a struggle session?

Inbox fright is an interesting term. I certainly know and can relate to what you are talking about.

It doesn’t affect me too much I don’t think, but I know the feeling you are talking about. And I wonder how related or intersecting to/with social anxiety it is.

I have this with checking emails at work. I hate when I have a new email and don’t know what it’s about to say.