this is an experiment i have done for the last week or something. no upbear counters, no upbear buttons, just sorted by new or new comments. it has been very nice, but i know that inevitably somebody is gonna feel like i’m being snooty to them for not upbearing them. its very nice that people are taking time out of their day to engage with me on the net, and i always feel that when i get the notifications, but i think some of them are gonna take it personally if i keep this crap up
the question: how important is this little courtesy to you??? does it bother you if you dont get upvotes when you are talking to people?
thank you for your replies but know that for responding to this survey i cannot offer any remuneration. you are encouraged to not upbear this post or even report it if you see any flagrant rulebreaks
just for context i have done this experiment to see if it feels better and if i feel less obsessive about innernet points/see if i make better comments without the motivation (turns out this one is a no)
I like to upbear every comment I see because I just appreciate everyone who posts here, unless what they are saying is some bullshit or overly rude
Yeah, unless the reply is attacking me personally or they’re just being douchey, I’ll upvote anything. And i’ll do it again
I upbear to show I’m here lurking even when I don’t comment
I usually upvote anything that contributes to a conversation.
If I get no upbear I self crit and think about how I can be funnier
I always upvote everyone I respond to and everyone who responds to me, even if I’m in an argument. To me it’s just common courtesy. I get offended if I’m arguing with someone and they don’t upvote me - it’s what turns the argument from a friendly exchange of opinions to one of aggression. I usually remove my upvotes from their comments at that time.
And of course I don’t upvote wreckers when responding to them.
edit: if I’m in an argument and I’m trying to be aggressive, that’s when I’ll actually not upvote a post I’m responding to - but I’m usually not trying to be aggressive, especially not on this site
this is the kind of thing that makes me question whether or not i am in the right spot. like i personally feel like its a sort of system that causes a lot of people (like me) to get too caught up with how many points they get, but then i don’t want to abstain from that system and make people feel bad. feels like a lose/lose - obviously that’s just my perspective and not everyone feels that way
the way I see it - “upvotes,” “likes” etc are just a digital form of the verbal validation someone would get irl. Like if you told a joke, people would laugh, smile. If you made a good point, people would nod, say “uh huh” or something. A thread would look pretty weird if someone wrote something funny and there were like 30 people underneath going “lol” and “haha” so that validation is replaced with likes and upvotes.
People absolutely get too caught up with how many internet points they get, but idk I don’t see that obsession as fundamentally different from being obsessed with social acceptance in general. We all have a desire to fit in and idk, I think it has the same root causes as someone who gets too caught up with trying to be funny irl or something. It’s something we all have to work on, whether online or irl.
GOOD post. Sums up what I was thinking too. Since in this medium we don’t have the kind of emotional ques we would normally get as a response in group conversations, upvotes serve that purpose. It is unfortunate that upvotes are so… quantifiable in a way that nods and grunts of approval are not, which really exacerbates any problematic obsession someone might have with getting positive responses. But that does not mean we should scrap the whole method we have for providing that kind of light social approval that is necessary to some extent to have real communal (as opposed to one on one) discussions.
I also think that what you said touches on something that seems to often get forgotten in discussions about the validity of upvotes: They’re not just fir the person receiving them. Upvoting someone gives me a sense that I am participating even if I don’t want to say anything. I very often feel like I have nothing really worth adding since much smarter people here say it better than I could, but upvoting others I agree with gives me, as a shy lurker, a way to feel like I’m genuinely part of the community too. People talk about the dopamine hit they get when they see they got upvoted. Well I get a dopamine hit by upvoting others and knowing they got a dopamine hit because of my doing so.
A thread would look pretty weird if someone wrote something funny and there were like 30 people underneath going “lol” and “haha” so that validation is replaced with likes and upvotes.
:porque-no-los-dos:
Upvote and comment lol or emoji
worthy of being put into !effort@hexbear.net (although so many people don’t browse through there unfortunately 😔 )
like “agree twinkles” which anyone who was tortured by a certain era of consensus meetings will remember. here is a great infographic i found.
it doesn’t really come across but when agreeing you don’t just put your hands up but you are also waggling your fingers around.
it feels silly but really does speed things up to be able to show support without getting on the speakers list.
