Disclaimer: This post is probably overly-long and a little all over the place. It’s just as much me writing things out to get a sense of where I am and how I feel about everything as it is asking a question to a real audience. For anyone who genuinely wants to take the time to read it, hopefully not read too into it, and provide any insights – thank you. I'm not sure how large the LGBT community on Tildes might actually be, I will probably end up x-posting this to Reddit despite the fact that I’ll most likely end up regretting that decision

I'm a late-thirties, gay, cis gendered, masculine presenting (for lack of a better term), otter (beard, harry, smaller frame so not considered a bear). For almost all of my life I've lived in smaller locals that lacked any real gay scene and so I have almost entirely lived apart from the larger gay world and community. To a large extent I'm grateful for this, I think in my younger years the focus on partying and sex would have been disastrous for me and now my friend groups are diverse with straight males and females and a few gay friends. However, a large part of me feels like I've missed out on something and continue to miss out on something.

In the past year or so I've developed a gay Instagram profile that is now very connected to the gay bear community in my country and a few neighboring ones. I’ve also been in a larger city for a few years now and have a real gay community that I could connect with if I wanted to. Obviously, I'm primarily attracted to more bear type men and I've found that through Instagram I'm seeing that a lot of guys in the community remind me of myself in manner of interests and style. I also see this as a chance to make some friends who would actually see me and understand me, something that I think gets a little lost with my non-gay friends and my gay friends who are not like me in other ways

Huge disclaimer: I'm viewing all of this through the lens of Instagram which makes my interpretations of what I'm seeing already dubious - the app is largely triggering FOMO and a touch of envy in me, I fully understand that.

There was a bear dance night in my city a few weeks ago and many guys from different regions came through to celebrate and find community. I watched it all distantly through Instagram posts and stories and through all my voyeurism I found myself extremely tempted to go to the party but remained frozen in intimidation by a community that I really don't understand.

My worries summed up:

• We’re not one of the bigger bear events around so it’s clear from their posts that these guys all know each other and probably hang out multiple times a year. Approaching that as a complete outsider is already anxiety inducing to me

• Even though I logically know that the only way to make friends is to put yourself out there, I’ve at times faced rejection and exclusion via the apps and just fear that this would be the same thing but in real life. Despite my attempts to date my way into the community, I haven’t had a lot of success breaking through. (Please don’t take this to mean that I’ve fully fetishized bears, I don’t limit my relationships to something so narrow at all)

• One of my hangups is the fact that I myself am not a bear. My understanding is that Otters and “masc” guys are often very welcome in the bear community, which I am, but not actually being one of them makes me question my place there. I am aware how terrible this is as it perpetuates the gay culture of largely basing worth on physical characteristics and the fact that bear does not equal masculine. I hate to bring up that last part but I just want to be descriptive

• I would be loath to enter into a community whose identity hangs on partying. I see on Instagram that a lot of groups of bear friends do other activities than drinking but they also do a fair share of bar-going and partying. If these bear events would end up turning out like the circuit party culture, then I have no real interest. I do like to occasionally go out drinking with friends but have no intention of maintaining a party lifestyle. In a similar vein, I wouldn’t want to enter into a community that is primarily sex-based either and I do get those vibes from these groups and parties sometimes as well

• My intentions for wanting to participate are unclear. I see these guys building what seem like genuine friendships with each other and I do genuinely want that but at the same time it would be dishonest for me not to admit that there is a sexual component to this and a desire for validation from a group of men who I find attractive

• Is my understanding of this community completely invalid? Maybe the impressions I’m gaining of the community are completely unrealistic and I should completely rethink the underlying question of this entire post – would I find value in being a member of the bear world?

It’s clear to me that in the end my Instagram habit, particularly my “bear” profile, is triggering some anxieties and insecurities in me that I’ve largely managed to concur in real life. I already have caring friends and have had a rich dating and relationship life without being part of any real gay community and so my final question to myself is whether I should just delete the IG profile and abandon any thoughts of going to gay parties – I may just be looking to fill a hole in myself that my real friends and love life should be enough for.

I'll try to keep it short. I'm not satisfied with the way I'm trying to contribute to the betterment of humanity and the planet. I want to contribute to my local community, but because of political and health reasons, I can't do that.

My relevant strong points are that I can analyze, synthesize, and write well (have been praised for them in professional academic settings). But the suggestions don't have to be about this.

I've been writing things here and there for years, but I feel like they lack direction. It's just one person putting it out there with very limited reach. I feel like being part of a bigger project could help me effect change better. At the very least, it could help me feel like I'm doing something more tangible.

1. A number of people on Tildes tend to be contrarians. If you say black, they have to say white. They pick knits, they split hairs, they are persnickety.

2. A number of people on Tildes jump at any chance to defend the status quo.

There are others who are neither of these things, of course. I've just been noticing the two patterns above ( "no you haven't!" lol ).

This is a question I eventually ask about every social media site I use(d). I like Tildes, and the discussions here are much more constructive than any other place I've seen, however I've seen it to be true even here. When one doesn't curate their feed, and use the default home page, the negative topics seems to dominate. I'm talking about the topics that talk about problems and what's wrong with something, often with titles implying the awfulness or emergency of such a problem. I think I don't need to elaborate on how this is much more prevalent and extreme on other sites. But nevertheless, it's a recurring pattern even here.

I know the argument that goes that humans are problem-fixing machines, and that there are psychological incentives to focus on problems. However, this seems overly reductive and lacking in explanatory power to me. Outside of internet, this is not a phenomenon I've experienced with people, unless they were mentally going through something very rough. Otherwise, people generally seem to talk about neutral or positive issues. And even while talking about negative issues, the tone often isn't grim, and doesn't leave a depressive aftertaste.

Even on the internet, in smaller spaces and more closed spaces, like chatting servers, this doesn't seem to hold true. Sure, there are politically-oriented, and therefore problem-oriented spaces even there, but most spaces don't seem to be that way. Back when I used Facebook too, while the posts were vain, most of my friends and acquaintances were just interested in sharing and commenting on social lives.

So I think this is a problem that is more endemic to "open" social media sites, with easily accessible and open-to-public spaces, rather than applying to the whole humanity or even every internet space. Its one of my biggest head scratchers about social media sites. So far I couldn't find a satisfactory explanation in the literature either. Doesn't mean there isn't, but I haven't stumbled upon such.

So, I'm interested in your opinions: Why do negative topics dominate on open social media sites, even here, unless curated against? Why is this such a strong recurring pattern for sites structured like this, while it's not in other online and physical spaces and interections I mentioned?

I'm used to browsing places like reddit, mastodon, kbin.social and midnight.pub. If I'm lucky I can find something lighthearted, witty or interesting. But there's a lot of outrageous posts as well as personal ramblings that make the effort feel like a slog.

I was slow to get into Tildes because I didn't find much "quick hit" posts, such as a good topical quip. I also wasn't as sure how to navigate to places I might want to post. But I did find it very easy to engage with existing posts.

It's in these existing posts that the transformative stuff happened for me. On other sites, long-form posts were often not in my interest or self-indulgent. But I found myself taking my time here, perhaps guided by the thoughtful comments that I saw already beneath the posts. Looking back, it's like a tone was set that I respected and didn't want to diminish.

The result is that I find the other sites under-stimulating, in spite of their design. Tildes has been really good for helping me reform my internet habits. I don't have that regret of excessive internet use as much now. Thanks to deimos and everyone on the site that makes it what it is.

If I miss one thing, it's using my native language. But at the same time, my gut says that things are good just as they are.

You might ask yourself “monthly mystery commenters”? Well, let me attempt to explain. I have noticed that on a semi frequent basis, someone will reply to me in a comment. The sort of comment that does invite a reply and isn't a stand-alone comment. Yet, in the case of these comments, whenever someone replies they never do reply in turn.

Of course, it is entirely possible for people to decide to not reply and still reply elsewhere on tildes. In this case, however, I noticed that there is a group of people who only ever leave single replies and never respond to any follow-ups. More often than not, I have noticed these are people who only leave a comment once per month or every few weeks. Hence, the title referring to the practice of monthly hit-and-run comments.

It is a bit of a curious pattern, isn't it? To me, this doesn't make a lot of sense. Like, I get that people sometimes don't want to continue a conversation. But to structurally leave comments to never follow up on replies is entirely alien to me. Even more so for comments that really are replies to other people, not stand-alone comments.

This whole thing has got me scratching my head just enough to make this post. Are they dropping these comments with the best of intentions to return, only to get swept up in other aspects of life? Or is it more about leaving a mark, however brief, to say, “I was here” without the commitment to a full-on conversation? Maybe it's something completely different I haven't even considered.

So, hit-and-runners, what drives you? I am genuinely curious about this and looking forward to any replies.

Edit

This already did get a lot more responses than I ever thought it would get. One observation so far is that a lot of people that replied seem to identify with the title. Yet, so far, for all people I checked they don't fit the type of commenter as I describe in the post itself. It is possible my description just sucks, maybe there is room for a future discussion about commenting based on titles alone. ;)

It's still interesting to read all the different perspectives people have about commenting!

Tiny edit: because of the subject, I almost feel obligated to respond to most people. I really shot myself in the food there :D As that is an impossible task, sorry to the folks I don't end up replying to.

This behaviour is thankfully not common on tildes? But like, I understand that if they try to pass off as their own argument. But what with the preface "I ask ChatGPT" and then end with "I don't know enough about topic" or "What do you think". What do they think how that contribute to the discussion? If OP want to ask ChatGPT-like answer, they can just log on and do it right there and then. And they clearly know the stigma and drawback of it (at least I hope so), but still believe it has enough factual information in the answer despite having little or no knowledge of the topic in question (Otherwise they will edit the output or outright just provide it).

(Sorry, if this come out not clearly, I am not very good as convey my idea, even in my native language)

Edit: Well, given there's already a vaguely positive reception to the idea, I've went ahead and set up the server! It's by no means a finished product yet, but it's at least a start!

Here's the link: https://discord.gg/FqArkERU2U

About a year ago, I was running a pretty active, small community board game server and it was a lot of fun until most of the regulars got busy with life.

After that, things happened and it fell by the wayside, but my time here with Tildes makes me really want to bring it back, I just wanted to gauge interest first. The idea is that anyone could set events, anyone can invite people, etc. Obviously, it wouldn't be an open server, but one in the same vein as Tildes, but in board game community form.

Specifically, things like hidden role games and other more complicated games really feel like they shine when there's a solid group of regulars that are able to teach newbies how to play.

(And selfishly, this would be a great way for me to learn new board games, as well)

I've always been interested in entrepreneurship, and I think I want to get serious about doing something. I checked out the Millionaire Fastlane forums, and it's just completely saturated with the whole "grindset" BS. I tried reading a couple of threads, and my eyes almost rolled out of my head. 🙄

I've also hung around on the entrepreneur subreddit, and it just seems like a bunch of people without much experience trading unproven advice and people trying to sell courses.

Does anyone know of a better community? I'd like to find some friendly, welcoming adults with actual experience to talk with. Are entrepreneurship and hustle culture always a package deal?

I've noticed that Tildes generally has a way more levelheaded and even friendly caliber of responses compared to many other social media sites that I've seen. I'm genuinely curious as to why this is. I regularly see the same article posted here that I also saw on say Lemmy, but over there the comments tend to be more hostile and explosive. Meanwhile, disagreements on Tildes rarely get THAT heated (at least as far as I have seen), even on posts involving very intense and personal subjects like politics or war. Even the disagreements and arguments I see on Tildes tend to be more respectful and level-headed, so much so that it's jarring to me to see the comments on some other site where someone's response to a user they disagree with is just straight name-calling.

Is it the invite-only nature of it? The lack of downvotes? The moderation? Confirmation bias? The demographics of the people here? Pure luck? Something else entirely?

Take a look at the Tildes Statistics site. Couple things:

1, and most obvious: there has been a decline in users over the past few days for the first time that I'm aware of.
2: (I was going to make this point before the user decline occurred but it's probably moot now) Due to the scaling of the Y-axis, it appears that there is healthy user growth in the site. But if you look at the numbers, we're talking about user growth of roughly 60 people over the past month.

I know we want controlled growth, and I know we don't want to open it up to the masses. But we also want this site to succeed (i.e. provide interesting discourse and keep people coming back on a regular basis). I don't believe success can happen when growth is stagnant (or, declining!)

I don't think that the conversations are necessarily stagnant per se, in fact there's an impressive amount of thoughtful discussion relative to the size of the user base. But if a given topic is too niche (e.g. MLS football or MUDs, two of my interests), the odds of finding like-minded users to discuss with is obviously lower.

Is it time to consider some sort of growth campaign (one that is not reactionary a la the Reddit API changes) in order to infuse some new life into this awesome site?

To preface, I have accounts on multiple link aggregators, three microblogging platforms, and I have my own (transiently online) blog. I'm a member of more niche Discord servers than I can count, and I'm in a few other nooks where people generally seem to gather and talk. Despite all that, I find that it's incredibly rare that I ever actually participate in any of the discussions that I see taking place, and that's something that I think I'd like to change.

I think part of the problem is that I grew up in the formative years of the "modern" net, and was always taught that you should be careful about what you say online (and, implicitly, that saying nothing is probably even better), lest an axe murderer track you down and explodify your tibia while you sleep.

So, does anyone else, or have stories about, posting anxiety? Anyone gotten over it? Am I just crazy?

I have, at times, experienced that opinions I share online fails to win people over, to the extent that the essence of the thread transforms from that of an exchange of ideas into that of a shitstorm.

Curiously, this is seldom caused by me having controversial views. I’m not especially hateful, and I don’t hold any conservative core ideas, such as advocating for an even less equal society or attacking or belittling various minority groups. If it were just that, then there would be no mystery; my views horrible, and for that reason, they provoke a strong reaction. But despite this not being the case, my views, which are truly very civilised and boring indeed, are sometimes intepreted in interesting ways.

I think the issue is me not expressing myself as well as I could. Assuming this to be the case, what follow is my own notes on how to better get your (mine) ideas across without misunderstandings.

Beware of the shortcoming of contemporary writing

Most of todays readers do not read. Rather, they impatiently give the text a quick glimpse, their brain already craving the next bit of novelty. I've noticed this in myself when I impatiently select random random test when trying to get my brain to read a text online. What's more, those who write has begin taking into account that their audience does not read. This has spawned a peculiar writing style which, for the first time in history(?), is designed not to actually be read, but merely glimpsed through.

It mostly consist of short paragraphs.

Often just a single sentence.

Sometimes two sentences. Maybe three. Four sentences are considered the max.

To help readers easier skim through it.

Read more: How can you write web content that people can skim?

If actually read, it has a staccato-like feel.

Almost like free verse poetry.

There are other characteristica too.

• Scattering links throughout.
• Inserting “Read more about“ references to other articles.
• Inserting list such as this one.
• Adding heaps of headlines.

I guess pretty much everyone have seen this particular style, and, to some degree, adapted it themselves. So there is a tendency to naturally try to boil everything down to a single, ultra-short paragraph. However, human language is not computer code; trying to destill a deeper set of ideas down to a Xwitter-length sentence will inevitably cause its fragile essence to be lost in translation. There is a reason why books are the length of, well, books, and not just the SparkNotes summary thereoff.

To build upon this idea, note that most dog-whistles comes in the form of a single, short sentence, as the shortness, unlike computer code, make it vague, opening it up for multiple interpretations. Indeed, some dog whistles doesn’t contain any words at all, but consists of a single emoji, such as “milk” or “the OK sign”.

If you write about more elusive fluffy ideas, ideas where your angle runs the risk of being read the wrong way, your writing has to go all the way, fully exposing your point with absolute clarity. You have to show it from every angle to make your vision travel through the written words and into the mind of the reader.

Sleep on it

If you aren’t sure you got everything right, no rush. You can always wait a bit, and go over it later.

Don’t accidently target other users

Lets say that someone posts the notorious recipe “Chicken and ham extravaganta”, and say that they don’t think society should go vegan because a balanced diet is better than a green one. You just happen to have a bunch of replies to that. For one thing, flesh food is not traditionally balanced, but centered around the meat, with everything else being mere decoration. Also, there are lots of protein sources other than meat. But most importantly, the vegan movement is not about what is the most healthy diet, but about it being morally wrong to kill a sentient creature just to eat its meat.

But this is a general argument about veganism. If you write it as a reply to someone recomendinging a “Chicken and ham extravaganta”, you’re essentially calling them a bad person.

So don’t reply. If you want to push your point, at least wait a bit and then create a new post, so you don’t target a specific user.

Don’t drink and post

Nope. Just don’t.

Avoid provocateur headlines

I might have given this post the headline “How to speak honestly without being banned for misogyny, racism, transphobia, and fascism”, or maybe “I was banned and censored on tilde.net. Here’s my conclusions.” Headlines which are undeniably more juicy, more clickbaity, if you will. You can almost smell the raising adrenaline. Controversy! Read all about it!

To me, this is hard to resist, because I really love the aethetic of blatant, vulgar marketing. But it also tends to backfire more often than not.

Also, even if the actual content of my post is okay, people who have experienced racism or transphobia might not be super thrilled about me playing around with racism and transphobia in my headline. Saying something “jokingly” is still saying it.

As an aside, me being temporary banned and having my posts deleted was what inspired me to write this post. I don’t have anything much to say about this itself, other than I would have liked it if removed post had a line about the reason for removal, and I would also note that, if you get banned, the red text bleed into be backgrund in a way which is aestetically displeasing.

Diversity reading

You might try mentally test reading your post from the perspective of groups which play a role in the content of your post. After all, if you talk about someone, you should be able to say it to their face. Also, it is entirely possible that your post will be read by those you talk about.

Take the rules for being a good listener, then invert them

Listening is a skill which most people haven’t learned. So when you speak your mind, it is worth taking precautions for the likely scenario that your readers will not follow the rules for the optimal listener. So let’s try inverting the rules:

When listening to others, always give their view the most generous intepretation —> If your words can be interpreted as ignorant, biggoted, or fashy, they will be, always.

Truly listen to others and try to understand them before giving your answer —> Assume that people will skim through your post.

I want to point out that (in bold and uppercase just for the heck of it) I DON’T SAY THIS TO WHINE ABOUT BAD PEOPLE READING MY POSTS UNFAIRLY. Nope, absolute nope. My point is the exact opposite; I have a deeply held belief that any writer or author who is “misunderstood” could have avoided it by writing better. The writer should be expected to know his audience and know how to write in circles around any potential misintepretation.

Got that? Ok. Let’s look at what we can do to address those two issues.

If your words can be interpreted as ignorant, biggoted, or fashy, they will be, always.

When writing a post, I sometimes get the notion that something I write might be taken the wrong way. But then I forget about it, because I’m busy building a clever metaphor finding just the right word. And without fail, my post get misinterpreted in exactly that way I thought it would. So always listen to that little voice. In my experience, it is seldom wrong.

This is not just to avoid you getting trashed online. Another more important aspect which is typically overlooked, is that if your post can, somehow, be misinterpreted in horrible ways, it may also be read as such by people who truly hold those views, people who then sees you as an ally. You really don’t want that.

Sometimes it is a simple matter of changing your phrasing. Other times, directly stating what you do or do not believe is in order.

Assume that people will skim through your post.

While you can’t predict exactly how our post is going to be skimmed through, It is likely that they will have read your headline. So use that as leverage to push your most important points, or the general vibe of your post. Your first paragraph is likely to be read too. If your post is longer, you can also add subheaders with key info. You can also use the inverted pyramid structure, leading with the information any reader must know, followed by things which will grant them greater understanding, and ending with the interesting nice to know stuff.

This is what I got so far! If you got any advice of your own, please share!