What's with the downvotes? - eviltoast

I can fully understand when me or someone else gets downvotes for saying something controversial or silly (yeah, it happens, I admit), but why would anyone come here and spend time downvoting things that perfectly align with the political climate here?

Are we that popular that we are being displayed in other instances so often? Do we have lurkers who only pretend to be communists? And in that case - Jesus, I thought that I am wasting my time sometimes… 😆


The fact that the first thing I received was a downvote is a comedy gold.

  • ComradeSalad@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    Don’t worry about it. There are always weird, deranged, and terminally online Libs who are crawling around and mass downvoting everything.

    If there is a genuinely bad take it will have 10+ downvotes or around there. Don’t worry about 1-2

    • ColonelRevolution@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      Thanks, I have received almost nothing but warm welcome here and I have very warm feelings for Lemmygrad in general. Online activities are not enough to judge it, but I feel like some of us here would make good friends, if I may being corny for a moment. I like to joke that Lemmygrad members should form an international ML party.

      • ComradeSalad@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        That’s perfectly alright mate! That’s what this space is for, first and foremost! A safe place to discuss common interests with likeminded people and to grow as people ourselves!

        We welcome everyone no matter who you are, but we will defend our borders fiercely from those who seek to undermine the space we have here. So it’s nice to hear that you’ve had a warm welcome!

      • ghostOfRoux();@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        Just what we need is another leftist org(someone save the mess that is the left in the states please).

        For real though this space has been fairly welcoming. It’s cozy here even with the downvote trolls.

        And tbf I periodically go over to our “fanclub” comm and downvote any new posts there. But that is mostly because I suspect that user is one of the people that add the common 2 downvotes to a lot of the posts here.

          • ghostOfRoux();@lemmygrad.ml
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            1 year ago

            Shortly before I joined some user got butthurt and started meanwhileongrad and the place reads like a whose who of buzzwordy reactionary libshit nonsense.

            • ComradeSalad@lemmygrad.ml
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              1 year ago

              It’s so fun to read that site, I can’t stop checking lol, it’s like a combination of a Lemmygrad highlight reel, extremely out of context comments, and posts that are complete self reports about the OP’s ignorance and stupidity.

              • ghostOfRoux();@lemmygrad.ml
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                1 year ago

                It’s kind of endearing in a weird way that someone wound make trying to shit on us their online identity. I lost it when they posted about the prolwiki wiscon(sp?) stuff and called it doxxing.

                • CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  don’t you know that if you are mean to your abuser you are actually the exact same as him and you’re not any better. hand in your liberal card >:(

      • TokenBoomer@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Hello Fellow Comrades. I would like to join your (insert socialist organization here). I’m interested in (insert socialist ideology). /s

  • diegeticscream[all]🔻@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    There’s a couple reasons, I think:

    • Sometimes comrades downvote posts that look like they might be troll questions.

    • Our posts do get some traction out in “all”, and “regular” libs see our viewpoints and downvote out of anger/cognitive dissonance.

    • There are at least a few motivated downvotes lurkers. It’s lame, but it’s been happening for a while.

    • I think one particular troll/griefer has a group of accounts they bring along. You’ll notice specific comment threads with something like 17 downvotes on every comrade saying things that are normal here.

    • There’s a Lemmy bug that pushes 3yo posts from here all the way to the top of the “all” queue, and they get absolutely obliterated by downvotes from regular Lemmy users.

    • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      This and the Barbara Streisand effect as other instances are making threads and creating drama about us, which will lead people to look us up out of curiosity (I won’t link anything because I don’t think it’s healthy for us to participate in it). For any such lurkers, I encourage you to take a good look around and read what we actually write.

      • FuckBigTech347@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        This and the Barbara Streisand effect as other instances are making threads and creating drama about us, which will lead people to look us up out of curiosity

        Literally how I found GenZedong. I used to browse latestagecapitalism and antiwork on reddit and kept seeing people shitting on “those authoritarian tankies over at GenZedong” which made me look it up out of curiosity. I think this is a net positive. Many people already have the right mindset but just need a lead to follow. And some may find their lead here.

        Personally I’m not bothered by people/bots/feds coming here to downvote us. On reddit downvotes are terrible because not only does “the algorithm” take the voting scores into account and tends to “hide” posts with a low score, but if your user’s score is too low you’re unable to post and comment in some subs. But on lemmy none of these things are true. Lemmy doesn’t even keep track of a user’s total voting score.

    • CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      There’s a Lemmy bug that pushes 3yo posts from here all the way to the top of the “all” queue, and they get absolutely obliterated by downvotes from regular Lemmy users.

      No no comrade, they don’t obliterate them. We obliterate them; we’re so powerful even our 3 year old posts are still making them seethe and getting traction.

  • comradebanan@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    leave the reddit mindset imo. be brave and share ur opinions even if they might not be well received at this point. every day is different.

    • ColonelRevolution@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      Absolutely, I agree with you. Being a communist alone taught me that popularity of certain view is not a good indication of whether it is correct or not. 🙂

  • Addfwyn@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    As long as there is no system of autohiding/removing posts that receive too many downvotes, it is ultimately meaningless. Anytime certain topics like China would come up on reddit, outside a couple specific communities, I got ready to get massively downvoted for disagreeing with the “china bad” circlejerk.

    No real reason to let it bother you, and if anything I find it amusing when I notice I got an extra downvote on every post in my post history after I post something about communism. Like guy has nothing better to do than to go through my post history downvoting me.

    It is always pretty funny when you post something that gets 20+ downvotes and not a single person replying about the actual content of what you said. Which tends to not happen here. You will usually get people at least engaging you even if you are parroting mainstream liberal talking points.

  • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    The only problem with the upvote/downvote thing is when a post gets brigaded by libs and all the nonsense they spew gets upvoted while corrections get downvoted. They take this mob mentality as “proof” they don’t need to listen to the “obviously wrong downvoted tankie” so they don’t learn anything or challenge their preconceived notions.

    So the worst thing that could happen is something who has no idea what they are talking about doesn’t ever stop to think if they are actually wrong. Their loss basically.

  • Red Wizard 🪄@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    I bet it wouldnt be hard to perform a db query that finds accounts who ONLY downvote local posts from the grad.

    No idea what the next steps would be, if any.