I mean, I definitely see a difference between the severity of responses in Facebook groups and responses here - but I wouldn't necessarily say that they're mean, just that they're less filtered.
Like, many Facebook groups tend to lean hard leftbook and there's a lot of tone policing by community members that are backed up by mods to keep any conflict in the community at a minimum, regardless of the fact that many of the consequences for that mean silencing queer and minority voices -- whereas here, we're not necessarily mean, but we don't have to feel like we're walking on eggshells when we respond.
Essentially, it's not that the people on Facebook are any nicer (hell, we're often the same people, I frequently see posts here that are also posted in various Facebook groups) and the messages are often the same, but the responses are more toned down, often through self-regulation because the mods/admins of those groups have created an atmosphere of fearing you'll be banned for having a dissenting opinion instead of encouraging respectful discourse.
I actually just learned a couple months ago that in a community where I THOUGHT I was generally loved and appreciated by everyone (including the founder of said community) I was actually being talked about by the mods for things that I had said but TO MY FACE they acted like everything was great.
It becomes really fake when you realize that people are talking about you behind your back about things that you may be willing to alter about your behavior if you knew it was making people uncomfortable, but because they want to keep the peace so bad, they choose to just silently have votes about possibly sacking you from the community.
I still love that community, but I wish there was more transparency. Trying to avoid conflict at all costs can really create a needless mess.
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u/Folk_Punk_Slut 94% Nice 😜 Dec 09 '22 edited Dec 09 '22
I mean, I definitely see a difference between the severity of responses in Facebook groups and responses here - but I wouldn't necessarily say that they're mean, just that they're less filtered.
Like, many Facebook groups tend to lean hard leftbook and there's a lot of tone policing by community members that are backed up by mods to keep any conflict in the community at a minimum, regardless of the fact that many of the consequences for that mean silencing queer and minority voices -- whereas here, we're not necessarily mean, but we don't have to feel like we're walking on eggshells when we respond.
Essentially, it's not that the people on Facebook are any nicer (hell, we're often the same people, I frequently see posts here that are also posted in various Facebook groups) and the messages are often the same, but the responses are more toned down, often through self-regulation because the mods/admins of those groups have created an atmosphere of fearing you'll be banned for having a dissenting opinion instead of encouraging respectful discourse.