Fluffy (they/them)
First comment!
I have always felt exactly the same way. I almost never posted or commented on Reddit for the same reason, constantly worried about negative or aggressive responses. Didn’t have to spoons to always spend ages typing and re-typing a comment to make sure it came across exactly as I wanted it to and add something of as much value as possible x___x
I like the philosophy of beehaw and hope that it will help me start getting over this mental blocker. :)
Thank you for letting us know! I understand that it’s a difficult and nuanced decision to have to make. For what it’s worth, I really appreciate this call. Most of the reason I chose beehaw was to have a safe place where I felt able to open up more and actually participate in a community without fear of hostile or aggressive interactions, and having bad actors infiltrate would probably have sent me back into my online shell again.
I know not everyone will be able to understand fully, but especially if you’re neurospicy and have difficulty regulating emotion, rock-bottom self esteem, executive functioning issues, etc. it is exponentially harder to deal with, process and compartmentalise (if possible at all) negative experiences online. I know for myself I need space and time to be able to build up resilience and internal processes to handle it, and bring thrown in the deep end is more destructive than helpful (I’m 36 and had it tried on me multiple times with people using the ‘cruel to be kind’ approach. All it does is dismantle what little self esteem I scrape together).
Tl;DR, thank you for making this decision and keeping beehaw a safe place to be until you get the tools and resources you need to open up again. 🥰 I know that if I do want to go and check out the other instances, I can just make a new account over there and still have my cosy place here to retreat to if needed for wholesome discussions. <3
OK, third time trying to post this comment after my previous two never went through 🥲
I’ve seen a lot of people predict that this would be their next move if the blackouts continued. It’s sad to see them actually begin with the threats though :/
I’m wondering if this is a sort of desperation move because of advertisers looking at removing spending from reddit if things continue. Particularly where they say they would start thinking about that if things stayed dark for a couple of weeks.
I don’t know, I’m heading to bed, rewritten this three times and I’m not a good speaker, so apologies for it not being very coherent! 😅
Anyway, still many shames on reddit. I hope the blackouts continue so that advertisers leave. Booooo reddit booooo.