nimble

1. Default behavior is to allow emotions to drive thoughts, which immediately inform behavior. Times are very hard for people around the world, so it stands to reason most people online are going to be in a negative frame of mind to start with. Anger going sideways and getting projected or transferred where it shouldn’t, and solves nothing.

2. Bots have definitely made their way to the Fediverse and like anywhere else their whole point is to foment disagreement and fights, as well as pressure people with a flood of information implying the majority opinion is far right, pro-AI and that sort of thing. See above, but it behooves them to create a stressful atmosphere since stressed people are angry people and angry people don’t think clearly.

3. Every platform tends towards certain patterns of behavior and I am inclined to agree on the specific pattern here. It’s almost always about something personal, including political beliefs. I have seen some incredible comments and comment threads based upon someone reading whatever OP posted as if it were a personal attack or a political press conference. People also seem here, like on tumblr a decade or two ago, to think that fighting with random people online is equal to real political action. It’s not. It never will be. Worse, it seems a lot of people feel insecure about their intelligence because man do these arguments stink of someone trying to prove how smart they are against, again, some random person they don’t even know.

tl;dr, people are angry but don’t know how to handle it in a more mature manner, or they’re deliberately fomenting discord with bots because they were paid to do so, which honestly circles right back to the beginning because why do that?

I do think it’s still better here than on Reddit though. I hope that this remains the case for years to come. I had some bad shocks on Reddit which caused me to cease engaging there. Same to BlueSky, honestly. I follow some people who know what they’re talking about, but… the keyboard warriors are just too much.

I’m gay, but, Yennefer (The Witcher series) is pretty fine, and back in college I had quite a thing for Seras Victoria (Hellsing).

Oh, I’ve been through a few. Most places in Ohio, but particularly Toledo and Cleveland. Sandusky, OH is also pretty off. Oh, and Cincinnati for hiring demons for its urban planning. I visited once and felt queasy the whole time. I mean, I don’t have a problem with hills but Cinci is an M C Escher print mixed with a Sonic the Hedgehog stage. Helen, Georgia has a pretty rotten energy. Atlanta, GA isn’t much better around Easter. Now, Atlanta was better when I lived there some years ago, but it seems to have dropped off sharply around the time I left. I’d say before that specifically Five Points and Buckhead, sometimes Inman Park, felt not good, but now a days it’s probably the whole city. I definitely felt a shift which prompted me to get out when I did. Dallas, Texas. What cold, miserable people. And I can’t really pick a place in Florida. I’ve been to a few, they all suck.