174
Does anyone else feel worried when you see a big number in the Lemmy notification inbox?
(futurology.today)
this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2025
174 points (96.3% liked)
Ask Lemmy
34926 readers
954 users here now
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That's really interesting, because a surprising number of people here ignore the number or just mark all as read every month. It's like treating comment replies as spam. I guess that's what you have to do if you're a drive-by shooter and never wish to face any consequences, but I'm not that kind of a psychopath.
BTW that could be a great post for !unpopularopinion@lemmy.world. If you end up posting it there, I'm really curious to see why people disagree with that... or more importantly, how many actually agree. Based on the small sample here, I think the latter group is not a tiny minority.
Of course if someone never wants to read comments they can just do that, but I think that's a bit of a different thing because it seems that would indicate disinterest in back and forth engagement here overall instead of just a specific kind.
I wonder though why you feel that you should "face consequences" for expressing an opinion you expect will be unpopular, while at the same time expressing anxiety about the possibility of it happening (when you have conviction you're right even), because that's honestly confusing to me. Why would it necessarily mean you 'screwed up' just because what you have to say triggered hostility? Wouldn't it be better just to be able to worry about it less, and express yourself more freely without chilling effects? People might say this could be abused, but I guess the way I see it is that letting others have the last word is what it amounts to externally, and what you choose to read or feel yourself is private and something you have broad license to make your own choices about.
For me the most common situation on Reddit where I use this feature is if I have something to say in disagreement with someone who is already talking aggressively about something. Where I have good reason to think they're likely to leave a nasty response, and that there likely won't be anything productive left to say, I'll probably have to hold myself back from responding further anyway, so there's no point feeling anxious in the meantime worrying about getting the inbox notification.
I also disable vote scores, though fortunately that's something Lemmy does have now afaik.
When I've faced the consequences, I've learned a lot.
For example, I thought I knew something about a particular topic, wrote an ignorant comment based on my misguided perceptions, and got called out—rightfully so. Having banged my head against that wall a few times, I've learned to do a little more fact checking before writing about something I think I saw in a documentary many years ago.
So, let's say you write something about the blood circulation of giraffes, there's a pretty good chance that an actual biologist will read the comment and point out the obvious mistakes.
These situations are a good opportunity to learn about biology, but probably not my favorite way. You know, posting something wrong is the fastest way to find out what the real answer is, because people love to correct other people. Posting the same thing as a question just won't be so effective. :D
There are also other types of situations where facing consequences is useful. If you're intentionally insulting people, and they react accordingly, you might want to consider how sensible that style really is. If you never read the responses, you might not even think about these things. That's sort of like maintaining a drive-by shooter lifestyle with no intention to change.
As you pointed out, there are also lots of other situations, where the consequences are not useful or even justified. Expressing an unpopular opinion or insulting people who deserve it may cause some dogpiling. Treating those comments like spam is fine by me, but it's not something that happens very often to me though. Maybe this highlights the fact that people use Lemmy in a variety of different ways, and my experiences are not as universal as I would like to imagine.
This is a good point, there are definitely plenty of times I've gotten a response and ended up embarrassed and rethinking a bit how I approach things, and I'm certainly not advocating to avoid that. And maybe "disable inbox replies" is more something with niche uses and not a general solution here. I guess the main reason I mention it is, most of the time I have felt a similar kind of anxiety about responses has been over some specific comment I believed really should be said but knew was likely to get a hostile reaction, and being able to rule out worries over those specific comments helped a lot on Reddit.
The larger point I want to make though is that the anxiety you are describing in the OP post should be overcome, and shouldn't be a struggle people face alone without help. I want to hear from more perspectives, and it's not great to think it's likely many are deterred entirely by this sort of fear of social disapproval. IMO learning from mistakes is harder if it's considered as and feels like a punishment or enforcement of some external will.