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.
Who cares what people on lemmy think about you or your opinions? I’d rather hear your honest opinion I disagree with than hear you agree with everybody else
It’s true that the opinions and comments don’t matter. At the end of the day, they’re just meaningless internet points and text that will be lost when the disk of my instance eventually gets formatted or when bit rot gradually eats them away.
However, that’s not how my social monkey brain feels about it. Some primitive part of me that ignores all logic and reason clings to the notion of social acceptance and shivers at the mere thought of rejection. Can’t disable that sort of thinking. Seems to be a hard-coded part of a function or something.
Never look at my inbox. Not once.
FUCK YOUUU!!!
Let’s see if you see this one
LOL. Here, have some Lemmy Silver.
That’s exactly the kind of energy I like to see.
Thanks kind internet stranger
I get the same feeling sometimes, but only when I posted something that I know could be going against the general opinion. Otherwise I’m happy to see the number go up
No
I never got big numbers there. Maybe because I don’t write posts much and only comment.
Nope. I just go in periodically and click the button to mark all as read. The button doesn’t actually verify that I’ve read them, basically just takes my word for it and then makes the number go away … kind of in the Lemmy way where it might go away for a second, come back a minute later, go away again for awhile, then come back again for a bit, and then finally truly go away long term, permanently.
Joking aside, I get way too much hostility here on Lemmy for what amounts to making stupid boomer-style jokes and sharing personal anecdotes, so I don’t even bother reading replies in my inbox anymore. I find my time on Lemmy is much more cathartic and enjoyable this way. Sadly, that does mean I probably miss out on some discussions or responses to questions I’ve asked, but at least I don’t generally ever even see the nastiness and negativity towards me when I’m just here for a mostly light-hearted break from reality. And that works for me. After all, haters gonna hate, don’t mean I gotta participate.
Let me guess, you throw those light-hearted boomer jokes in political threads. I prefer to avoid places like that, since they bring me no happiness. For me, the web is a place to chill, a balancing force to the dull reality of normal life. Sticking with nicer places makes the web serve my purposes.
Anyway, that’s yet another very interesting way to use Lemmy and its inbox. I’m learning so much from people in this thread, so thanks for opening my eyes. If I had kept my mouth shut, expecting everyone to use Lemmy the way I do, I would never have found out.
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.
Hell no.
The reason I post here is to discuss things with people like things.
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.
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.
“Oh here we go. Why do I keep posting honest takes on things instead of getting a feel for the general vibe and blindly agreeing with the majority?”
Some times you just roll the dice and see what happens. Make a risky comment of the day, pay the price, get back up again and do the same thing next week. Basically, just spread your unpopular opinions in places that weren’t designated for it.
I’ve burned my fingers a few times, but also found some unexpected supporters. Write a teasing remark about a particular group, and you’ll find that everyone hates you and you get downvoted to oblivion. Say the same thing in a different place, and all you get is upvotes and comments that go even further than you did. It’s a dangerous game for those who like to live dangerously.
Blindly agree with the majority if you want to play it safe. Not a very spicy way to live your life, but I can see the appeal of it.
Try mentioning that you’re a Christian that despises the GOP.
All they hear is Christian and the comments begin.
If I blindly agreed with everyone, I probably would be dead, having killed myself from the lack of moral obligation and common decency this species seems to be deficient in. I’m only sticking around because I feel like this is the end of the Anthropocene and I want to witness it. Is that honest enough for ya?
I feel this comment acutely.
Humblebrag.
Nope!
Oh wow! So you never ever mark them read, or how did that happen?
I had a decent stretch where I was just making comments and expected them to get bad replies, or I didn’t really have the space to care about any replies I got, so I stopped checking obsessively and they built up. I’m in my 30s with a wife, a toddler, and a job that alternates between “oh god you need to lock the fuck in for 8 hours straight” and “you’re being paid to be here if something happens”. I also have had some big life shit happen in the time since I started using lemmy that would pull me away from checking/responding.
Then I had some replies mentioning things I wanted to look into later, so those I made sure to keep as unread.
More recently, I find that I use my own profile’s comment page and the upvotes and downvotes on any of my comments in there to get an idea of what I’m about to walk into. Also helps remind me what the fuck I posted in the first place. So any replies I interact with that way don’t get marked as read either.
Kind of like email, once it passes something like 20 or 30 unread the count just kind of becomes visual noise.
That visual noise angle is true though. Once the number grows beyond a certain point, it looses all meaning. Might as well disable the red dot entirely, since it serves no purpose any more.
BTW “save for later” is a thing. I use that when I want to get back to something.
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 only clear my inbox every few months, I like to see how big I can get the number
That is very interesting. Talking to people about weird things like this shows me that we use the same tools in very different ways. For example, many people prefer to look at the “all” feed and filter it with an ever expanding black list. I do the exact opposite, which is to use a reasonably short white list. Just ignore the “all” feed for the most part, focus more on the “subscribed” feed, and you get what you want.
Now I can see that people don’t even use the notification inbox the same way. If there’s an alternate way to do things, some people are going to do it that way.
