It's a matter of numbers and community.

If you want to be a jerk, people will ignore you. If there are ten other people in the room, you can only be a jerk ten times before everyone in the room starts to ignore you.

That's the Fediverse, it's a small community and word gets around fast with people who see and notice a bad character and start blocking them, their posts, their comments and their activity.

That's the thing about numbers .... if you are a small group, word gets around quickly who the jerk is ... if you are a big community, there are more systems in place to deal with jerks

So the only way for jerks to survive ... is to build a community of jerks for themselves ... and surprisingly enough, those communities don't last very long.

Yeah, indeed but some people are frustrating and objectionable in behaviour that doesn't immediately lead to bans. Sort of malicious compliance, knowing where the line is. "I'm not touching you" behaviour. They do slowly get banned, but they can run rampant on communities for a time until they do.

Why are you scrolling the All feed outside of initial curation? Or following the depression meme communities?

Just like on Reddit there’s a bunch of negativity but I’m following a butt load of fun memes comms, and wholesome stuff. I only tiptoe to /All for the occasional new article then hide in my subscription list again.

I have way more memes in my feed on Lemmy than I did on Reddit, too.

That is true about the extensive block lists.

It's not really the previously banned users that are the problem. It's that the real heart and soul of Lemmy is c/2real4meirl or whatever - ie, depression memes.

Reddit initially became popular because it was fun and interesting. Lemmy has picked up some of the old reddit crowd by being a bit more tech focused - but for the most point the links and comments posted are doom and gloom. Either AI is taking all our jobs, or its a huge scam. The world is run by evil capitalists who personally want you, in particular, to have a meaningless and miserable life. But don't worry, because we, the proletariat, will overthrow them in a violent revolution... just as soon as we stop doom scrolling and crying in bed - haha, amiright guys?

Nothing about this is fun or interesting. It is bitter, angering, and depressing. That is what drives people away.

Feel free to be a part of the change that you would like to see. There are tons of uplifting communities. Examples of news ones include: !upliftingnews@lemmy.world, !goodnewseveryone@piefed.social, !optimistsunite@reddthat.com, (though !positivity@lemmy.today seems dead now) and specifically for positive memes there is !lemmybewholesome@lemmy.world, !wholesome@reddthat.com, !motivationalmemes@reddthat.com, !nicememes@sopuli.xyz, etc.

And this is just specifically for positivity - there is also even more tons of niche content that is fairly positive or at least a lot more rarely negative like !superbowl@lemmy.world, !dadforaminute@lemmy.world, !womensstuff@piefed.blahaj.zone, !biscuits@feddit.uk, !lotrmemes@lemmy.dbzer0.com, and on and on.

It also helps to block the entire instances of hexbear and lemmy.ml - to see why, just visit them and show Local content without being logged in. Their ideas of "positivity" include beheadings of anyone who has a bank account i.e. who remotely participates in society. Okay then, that's their choice I guess... but you don't have to participate in the 4chan-like experience.

Yeah, people can be fairly negative, but you can choose what you see. Tbf, it helps to use PieFed's far more robust set of tools than Lemmy e.g. a keyword blocker and a true instance block (rather than mere community mute) if you so choose.

!lotrmemes@piefed.social