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.
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?
Coming from reddit where I used to post on big current affairs subs there isn’t really anything comparable here.
I comment to put my opinion across and also to be challenged. It takes me a long time to change my mind on something but it’s only by hearing opposing views that it ever happens. In the meantime I generally enjoy defending my position and that’s what I’m here for. It’s a different perspective from yours but if a bunch of people disagree with me I don’t think that I’m “being corrected” I think “my correct opinion is in the minority here.”
Sometimes I do get a feeling of “here we go again”, that’s all
You’re approaching it in a more sensible way, and I prefer that style too. It’s just that my immediate emotional response to seeing the number is not in line with that sort of thinking. Most of the comments are totally harmless, so why worry so much. Some part of my mind just does irrational things.
Well, I hope your exposure therapy works!
So far, so good. We’ll see how that works out when I wake up tomorrow and look at a mountain of unread notifications. People on the other side of the planet tend surprise me.
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!
Removed by mod
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.
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
The point is to be controversial. While we still can be.
Depends on what instance or post I have commented on recently!
Was it .ml and there’s many notifications? sigh
Some meme I commented something I felt was witty? weeeeI’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.
its usually cause the communist gang or the linux gang has discovered my opinion. no need for alarm.
Yeah, business as usual. You say what you usually say, people freak out, nothing new. Rinse and repeat.
No
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.
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.
I feel you.
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 never got big numbers there. Maybe because I don’t write posts much and only comment.
I haven’t gotten to a point where I couldn’t read all the messages I got yet
No, because I use Boost and I do not let it check notis. I revisit comments that I would like to have a conversation around and I look for meaningful responses. I really don’t care what the average person says as most of the time it’s the player piano music in their head, or some logical fallacy.
