Recently an online game I play revealed much of their changes for the next patch. For the specific content that I like to interact with, it seems like theres a rather large (and probably not intended) change to this content that is not only a big "nerf", but also seems to go against the studio's design philosphy. I've made posts and comments talking about it, but the thing I keep running into is people just downvoting what I'm saying into obscurity. I have people interact and with people that are dismissive I iterate exactly why, which very specific information, its not just some small change... and what I get back is a downvote, and really nothing else. I literally upvote everyone that responds, no matter how antagonistic, simply because I want to talk about it and appreciate the interaction, but it seems like people when confronted with information that makes them feel like they had it wrong just reflexively downvote.
Its incredibly infuritating. So yeah, thanks hexbear for doing away with fucking downvotes, this shit seems so toxic and I'm glad I've always relegated reddit into mostly a space where I look up relevant info for whatever hobby, or information about products that I need.
The fact that downvoting is anonymous compounds the problem. If you post or comment, you can be suspended, banned, mocked, shunned, targeted, etc., but you can downvote whatever you want for whatever reason you want and no one will even know it was you. Reddit makes it a thousand times easier to shit on someone else’s opinion than to share one of your own. It’s amazing that anyone uses it at all.
Reddit has consistently made me miss the old web1.0 decentralized forums from the olden days (which honestly had plenty of its own negatives, so thats saying something), and I'm glad that hexbear is part of a project to kind of bring some of that energy back.