Every time I see that little red number in my inbox, my first thought is: Did I mess up? My brain jumps to the worst-case scenario—maybe I said something controversial, and now everyone’s correcting me and downvoting my stupid comments. Even though, most of the time, the messages are actually helpful and fun, that number still triggers some sort of insecurity and anxiety. The bigger it gets, the louder my worries grow.
Logically, I know I don’t screw up that often, and most feedback is neutral or even positive. But deep down, my insecure monkey brain panics at the thought of being wrong—or worse, publicly called out. Even when I’m right, the number still makes my stress levels spike up. What if people disagree with me? What if they don’t like what I wrote?
And yes, I see the irony in posting this. Writing about it is basically asking for it and feeding the very anxiety I’m trying to ignore. Maybe it’s my version of exposure therapy.
I do, and not only on Lemmy, but also Whatsapp, Teams, email etc. It’s the fear of screwing up and/or missing out, and a wave of anxiety combs over me when I see a number >0. I’ve been talking with my therapist about it, there are reasons and methods to overcome this…
Teams is hell, on a job we had all teams having their channels (so like 30?) and you were “supposed to follow them” but they churned out hundreds and hundreds of messages every week, add your own channel and emails and gasp your work… So productive.
Same here - any notification, for anything, my immediate assumption is that it’s someone who (rightly or wrongly) is angry with me or has bad news, or whatever. It’s fucking exhausting.
I feel you.
Same thing when your boss calls.
[tele tubbies ring tone]
Gulp. The whole office must be on fire and it’s all my fault, isn’t it.
[answers the phone]
Oh ok. Lunch at 11.30. Sure, no problem. See you there. Bye.
Phew.
Wow! Anything above zero? That must be agonizing. At work, I get lots of Teams messages, but I don’t find that so crippling. It’s just social media stuff like Lemmy where I have such mixed feelings about the numbers.
Oh, and sorry for the reply. Hope you can handle it. Here, have some flowers to cheer you up. 💐
Haha, thanks :)
Well, I don’t use any social media (besides Lemmy), so that helps :) There are a couple of Whatsapp group chats where I rarely participate, but I muted those, so I don’t get any alerts.
Oh WhatApp group chats? I can still remember the time when I had those. What an awful waste of time. Don’t miss those bad old days at all.
No.
Unless it’s going to be full of assholes with shitty replies for me to block from, then it’s a chore.
I do still freak out thinking i’ve been banned. Then i remember this isn’t reddit and lemmy appreciates free speech. Then i look at the notifications and most of them are just people adding on to my comment and a good bit of upvotes.
It’s nice to be in a place full of open minded people who are nerdy. Just where i want to be.
Most I’ve ever had is 1-2. Guess I’m not that interesting.
I think you’re somewhat interesting.
I appreciate your kind words.
The number of comments, likes, upvotes, responses and other metrics rarely tell you about how interesting you and your comments are. Let’s say there’s a post with 100 upvotes, and the top comment has like 50 upvotes. If you drop a comment there, you can expect to get 10-30 upvotes. Not more than 50, because the the parent comment already has 50. In some rare cases, the child comment can get more upvotes than the parent, but don’t count on it.
You are still a wonderful person even if you get only a handful of comments or upvotes. Even if you got zero, that doesn’t change who you are or how good your comments are. These metrics usually tell you something about the time and place of the comment.
The content matters too, but to a lesser extent. If the comment is all middle fingers, don’t expect many upvotes. Although, there are always exceptions. Posting the classic “fuck spez” is the kind of hostility people can get behind.
I should add “fuck spez” at the end of all my posts just in case. :p
That makes me miss the old forum days where everyone had some fancy bonus text (a signature) at the bottom of each post. Why don’t we have signatures any more on any platform? Was it really such a bad idea that it died with the forums?
Humblebrag.
No, because I don’t give a shit if people don’t like what I have to say and decide to be petulant about it.
You guys are seeing big numbers in your notification box?
Normally it’s like 0-2. On days when I write more actively, it gets a bit higher. If I happen to drop a comment in a popular thread at the right time, it can suddenly jump to 3-5, and that’s when I start to worry. Did I cross some line I wasn’t aware of, or maybe I was just at the right place at the right time. Who knows. 🤷 It’s probably ok, but my subconscious mind immediately jumps to conclusions, naturally expecting the worst.
I’ve never experienced that. I can’t imagine it would worry me either way though. The internet isn’t real life. It literally doesn’t matter. I’d have as much concern as if I saw unread notifications in a video game.
I didn’t read anything but the title. When I see a lot in the inbox I mark all as read and never look back.
This is the way. Basically, the rule 1 of internet.
Always react based on the title, ignore any news articles or long explanations the post may have. Never click the news article, since we all know journalists are very good at conveying the core message in the title without implying anything even a little bit distorted. On top of that, the average Joes posting their random ideas are also professionals when it comes to crafting descriptive post titles.
I feel I need a few weeks to respond when I notice people dog piling me. It’s not common, but I don’t want to deal with all that negativity out there gate with people when I’m just looking to have a conversation.
Some people are looking to jump on you the second you even broach some topics which can be a bit frustrating.
Thankfully most of Lemmy has been so friendly, it’s other places that actually have gotten to me more.
I sometimes will respond to some comments if they aren’t being obnoxious, and will block the trolls
Judging by some of the other comments here, there are surprisingly many people who try to have a civilized conversation in a places where things escalate very easily into a flame war. I prefer to avoid conversations that lead to that much negativity, which highlights yet another interesting usage difference. Because of that, I don’t face anywhere near as much hostility as some other people. If I used Lemmy that way, dogpiling might occur more frequently, and I might approach it exactly the way you do—by neglecting those messages for a while.
Speaking of the friendly vibe, I think that’s just one of the many benefits of being a small platform. If Lemmy got like 100x the number of users, that vibe would probably shift in a more negative direction.
More like a resigned sigh and wondering which comment pissed off the tankies this time.
Yeah, but you don’t respect those pissed off commenters, so it’s easier to distance yourself from them. Maybe that’s my problem. I don’t usually try to be abrasive enough to cause such reactions, so I take each comment more seriously than I should.
Knowing how to be abrasive is a very useful social skill, I think.
I saw a YouTube video from this guy who just liked to yap and tell stories. He was friends with a trans man, though I don’t think he knew at the time. Probably figured it out at some point, but it never changed their relationship. They were just best buds.
Well anyway, this trans man passed away, and the youtuber went to his funeral. The guy’s deadname was all over the memorial display. They’d prettied him up to look more feminine. Even clothed his body in a dress, I think. People gave eulogies about her memory, her significance, her this, her that.
The youtuber (and this was all before he was even on youtube, by the way) finally had his turn to go up and give a eulogy. He went up and said a few words about his friend, and then absolutely laid into these people for their callousness; for barely understanding who this guy, the deceased, even was; for amending his history and mourning only the parts of him they could actually stomach. And then he left. Not much point in staying in the service after that.
Being able to do things like that, though, requires some emotional strength. It’s a skill you have to practice. That youtuber wasn’t the only one there who felt that way, but he was the only one to say anything.
That was a pretty good example. He was defending a minority by being abrasive towards those who just go with the flow and perpetuate injustice. If some people got offended, they got what they deserve.
At least one of those notifications will be calling you a liberal.
Its funny when you get called “fascist” by tankies, but also get called “communist” by the conservatives.
Then Reactionary by jai.lu
Same, or a holier than thou comment, or a gatekeeper which is the most annoying because they can get passive aggressive
No. It means I made the imaginary internet points number that no one cares for go up.
132 updoots! I feel so validated for 90 seconds!
I say relatively controversial shit(not to troll–things I actually believe in) quite often. I’ve gone since gotten used to lists of disparaging comments. It’s better to take it as an interaction dopamine hit
Thank you for your service!
Someone disagrees with me.
Someone is pointing out an error I made.
Someone is arguing an exception to prove me wrong.
I made an agreeable statement.
In that order of priority.
I will answer the first one, if it’s not condescending, but most of the time it is, so I just don’t respond to it.
Wait, so you’re primarily expecting the responses to be written by people who disagrees with you? You must enjoy politics.
Haha, yeah I do comment a bit in politics. Here it’s not too bad, I tend to have similar views as many here so the disagreements are the “genocide joe” type more often than not.
I haven’t gotten to a point where I couldn’t read all the messages I got yet
