Ask Lemmy

Brother, I'm dumb as hell.

I don't know if we are smarter, but I'd most of are here because we don't want to put up with some companies antics. So we seem to be a group that left on a matter of principles, I can get on board with that.

I don't think people here are smarter. Maybe communication is just more pleasant when removed from all the noise, and when posting is not incentivised by the wrong things.

It's harder to join Lemmy than to join something like Reddit; you have to understand the concept of fediverse, choose instance, etc. It requires some thinking and willingness to learn something new.

This is a self serving thread if I've ever seen one!

Lemmy users, myself included, are not smarter than the rest of the population, but we are a small community, a small community that probably joined for similar reasons, meaning we probably have better cohesion than other similar communities.

All I'll say is: I'm confident we are collectively smarter than a 5th grader

I don't know that we're any smarter (or dumber) but I think the asshole filter has far less impact here. On reddit, niche subs often became so much worse after growing to front page status. Once the assholes start flooding in, the nice people tend to give up and leave.

FOSS

Not answering in this thread puts you above the bar...
Wait
Fuck

I think a smaller community results in more thoughtful posts, due to likelihood of interacting with the same person more than once. Additionally, a smaller community tend to fly under the radar of those who join a community with the sole purpose of shitposting and trolling. Now, combine this with the fact that lemmy is (for the most part) not built around an identity or political stance (even though the creators have them), and the result is generally a diverse community with more thought put into a comment.

Source: None. Just my hypothesis.

As to where I come from, I'm a reddit refugee. And I joined reddit as an IRC refugee. I like decentralized smaller communities that don't tend to attract mainstream attention.

I don’t think I’m any smarter than average. Lemmy as a whole may seem that way, though, and two reasons come to mind immediately:

One, many of us have spent some time on reddit. We’ve grown up since then, and most of us have said “no more of that reddit crap, please and thank you.”

Two, people seem to have the patience to read longer comments, and think about them. I see more genuinely thoughtful comments here than pedantic ones where the subtext is “look how smart I am.”

Extreme sexual frustration and involuntary celibacy, I find it drives me with a pure energy which allows me to really hone my ability to bullshit.

I wouldn't call myself particularly intelligent, I'm just here to enjoy this slice of the web. The rest of the world is similar, it has bits and pieces of bright people and more basic people. Lemmy I think just happens to have more passionate people.

Replies to this question

smart people get pushed out of the public discourse, so we end up congregating in small circles.

Nice, Thank :)

Well, that depend, we can also write some very dumb thing, even clash with each other. Even myself. You can see that in the mod log.

I don't find us smarter than anyone and there is some bias due to our culture and knowledge. Which kind of people have heard about Lemmy ? Not a lot. We belong to the 5% Linux market share, maybe even less. :)

I think longer post play a key part in argumentations' quality, we not only react but also convey our thoughts, then add a sprinkle of moderators that care about human and try to find the best way to solve an issue. That's part of the recipe.

Edit : typo

I think that would be only true for tech. I don't think people here are smart about politics. For example, I asked What do you like about liberalism, capitalism and conservatism?, and only a few were able to give ok answers (e.g. Nemo's answer that was actually downvoted).

I was in the top half of Reddit. I'm in the bottom half of lemmy.

So I mean

Probably a third of the population is impossibly, mind-bogglingly stupid. Like it is literally difficult for even somewhat intelligent people to truly understand the depths of stupidity that the bottom 30% live in. Like, pushing the envelope of nonsentience level of stupid. Literally - literally - never had an original thought in their entire lives stupid.

Most of those people are physically incapable of accessing lemmy, so that drags our average up.

Of those smart enough to be able to post on lemmy, I don't think Lemmy is anything spectacular. I think Lemmy is, on average, dumber than reddit. Part of that is inexperience - Lemmy skews younger. Over time, through simple trial and error, most people get less stupid. Boomers excepted (maybe the leaded gasoline, who knows).

Jesse what the hell are you talking about

There are multiple reasons I can think of. First, the entry barrier is quite high in comparison to other social media platforms and might filter out many unmotivated or technically inexperienced people. Second, moderation seems to work different on Lemmy than on other platforms. Where other platforms try to be "free-speech" (which they seem to misunderstand as letting anyone say whatever blatantly false stuff they want), Lemmy moderators seem to be more strict in that regard and generally enforce stricter rules.