It feels like people are a lot nicer here than on Twitter and Reddit, and even when people disagree, it’s generally civil and not an all-out flame war. Also, there’s no algorithm promoting outrage all the time.
For me, the anticipation of toxicity was a huge deterrent for me ever participating in real discussions, but here I feel like I can be myself.
I think it’s healthier this way.
I was also a lurker in “the other place”, but convinced myself to participate here since I wanted to help lemmy feel “alive”. Now I really like it and comment regularly.
I’m right there with you guys, would rarely comment on Reddit, but lemmy has been so great and I want to help it flourish as much as I can.
Definitely feels more comfortable here. At first, I thought I wanted all the other refugees to come here and recreate Reddit. But after a few days, I kind of hope no more do. It’s such a nice place here as is.
I was also a habitual lurker. In all my time there I posted maybe 3 comments and that was only because I wanted to be helpful and I knew the answer to very specific questions.
I’m not a very confident person in my interactions with other people, but got inspired by others like yourself that I should be the change I want to see (or something like that, I’m paraphrasing). So I took a deep breath and just started posting whenever I had an opinion, or thought of something that tickled my funny bone. And I have to say I’m enjoying it so far, people are positive and I love the sense of community I’m feeling.
I’m glad I took that step.