Ask Lemmy

I do this all the time. I see so many brainless, low-effort posts all over the internet that I don't want to add to the pollution with anything I'm not confident is either informative or funny.

But I also want Lemmy to grow and thrive, so here I've been making more of an effort to try to finish and post even comments I'm not so certain about. I figure that has to be better for the site than contributing nothing at all.

Probably 50/50. Mostly because I don’t care enough to get in an argument or have to defend what I say.

Simple throwaway comments, observations, generic opinion stuff I’ll just drop it and move on.

Anything I’m really knowledgeable in though, I’ll start and then cancel because there’s always someone who wants to challenge and argue and it’s just exhausting.

About 20% I'd say. It used to be much higher, arounx80%, but pushing through the anexity of feeling like have nothing to contribute has helped improved my writing. Perhaps it's come with age, but I feel like it's much easier to make myself and my thought process understood by others. A younger me thought that logic and just "being correct" was enough to be persuasive, but that's just not how people work.

When I start on a responce, which is rare, I finish it. I'm more a reader then writer.

Hahaha I saw this after bailing on another post. Like 80% of the time I think better of it. My comments tend to actually get posted when I'm in bed half asleep. Apparently I'm more willing to share when I'm mentally impaired from tiredness

Sometimes I react emotionally. Resting a reply is the catharsis to release, and usually by the end I’ve lost my steam by letting it out. 🍵🫖

I'd say over half. Maybe 60% ?

Ok, so well I made this several weeks ago and well, you know…

All the

It depends how long the comment is. Short comments get past the "dont post it" filter 99% of the time. But long posts give me time to realise i dont care enough to carry on.

Rarely ever

I get pretty terrified of people attacking me for saying something wrong, so I tend to delete something I was about to say. I don't exactly have the greatest way with words, so an anonymous post where no one knows I'm not trying to be a jerk can be a bit difficult to handle.

I do that often. Sometimes I stop and touch grass and realize I'm being stupid. Other times I realize I'm just wasting time, or just repeating what someone else said. Like yeah, my opinion matches up with someone else's, but it isn't helping the discussion any. Or other times I just need to chill from a heated discussion.

But usually the biggest one is when autocorrect is fucking with me and I just don't have the patience to go back and fix just about every word I just swiped. I figure, if it's that bad, then it just wasn't worth posting.

I'm bad at wording things so sometimes it comes out way worse than I intended and other people can't read my mind and know what I meant so I tend to delete most

I delete probably half of all posts/responses I start (across many accounts). Sometimes it's because I realise the answer to my question while typing it but more often than not it's because I realise what I'm saying is ambiguous/opinionated and I get too anxious about someone taking it the totally wrong way and getting offended or annoyed.

Annoyingly this gets in the way of a lot of my online communication. Either that or I realise no one cares what my opinion is... Unless they directly ask- thanks OP!

Yeah, I'd say it happens fairly often (~15% of the time). I try to stop myself from being too snarky at people when it's not warranted. I try to save that for internet assholes, not confused people or people making a small mistake.

Another instance is if I'm 2 replies into a back and forth convo with an individual, I might write a 3rd reply but often just cancel it, because most times by that point the discussion isn't worth me continuing.

PS you will find I often edit replies right after publishing to fix stuff, add stuff to fully answer the question, or change my tone if it sounds too aggressive. Sorry about that.

Rarely I will do it.

I cancel a lot more lately. As I'm writing my response I'm also thinking about what they might respond with to my response and as I'm doing this I realize this discussion is going to take more energy and engagement than I really initially cared for or than it's worth and at that point I'm like.. why even bother, nevermind

A lot of the time.

I often don't comment on things in the first place, because someone else already covered the points that I want to make. So I do an updoot and leave.

Then there are times I want to write something funny, realise it's only funny in my head and doesn't translate to text at all, then just leave it.

Then there are the many times I'm thinking of putting a lot of research and effort into a response to some really stupid take... But I realise it would just be a complete waste of time. Efforts wasted to try and educate someone on science when all they want to do is continue believing in whatever nonsense they believe in.

I'd say a third of the time. I catch myself writing and revealing too much.

I wanna say half the time. Lot of times I catch myself posting about something not worth my time and energy.

Every now and then I write a well thought out post, make sure my grammar is good and that my point is clear and that there is no context missing. Then I sometimes rewrite a 100 word section because I thought my thoughts were too jumbled up in hindsight.

Then I realise I don't care enough to finish it.

To answer your question, my ratio is around 80% send 20% delete.

This is something I started doing fairly recently and it’s really cathartic! I’d say 90% of the replies I write to people who are rude or looking for an argument, get deleted without sending.

I even do this in real life. I do this thing where I say my whole next phrase between my teeth and only then I say it out loud and almost 50% of the time I don't repeat it out loud.

More often than not, I hit publish, but I definitely hit cancel sometimes. Sometimes it's because it's not worth arguing, but sometimes, I realize I don't really have anything worthwhile to contribute and should probably just stfu

Every once in a...

9 times out of 10 I realize I'm dumb and in the wrong and stop the post.

I find people online tend to have a lot more passion for arguing than I do so I often rethink posting any responses I come up with.

For me, almost….

I... nevermind...

Something akin to 10% of unwritten comments here. 5% are shared between cases when I write it for too long and still can't see it as a complete thought, or when I get distracted half-way through and can't care to continue. Other 5% is my stupid phone optimi... pushing apps from memory when I switch to something else (even if it's for fact-checking this exact comment), so I lose whatever I wrote and the thread itself.

Maybe one in 20 or so, mostly I've realized I misread the comment, or I just don't really feel like arguing any more.

i have a pretty specific example, but i do this in the comment section on pretty much every post about EVs, because very frequently there's somebody repeating the lazy myth that oh actually EVs are just as bad as internal combustion engine vehicles because loose awareness of life cycle assessment. people state this all the time as if it's some kind of philosophical point about the impossibility of technological solutions to climate change, when in actuality it is a quantitative falsehood that is easily disproven with very cursory research, like you can pull up the relevant data from the IEA in like five minutes. ive told this to probably like fifty people, including at my job at an EV company, and it has never once changed their mind, i guess because again people are actually not looking to engage with this point quantitatively. but it still takes me a little while to disengage from my natural inclination to be helpful about something that on its surface is a math question.

My Lemmy app keeps a receipt every time I bail. So far it says I've bailed 56 times. Lmao.

I'd say I post about 1/30 responses I make.

I cancel maybe 10% of the time

Constantly.