I’d rather be new and decent than experienced and dismissive - thank you for the perspective.

That’s why I’m saying it. I often feel like I’m in the minority of people willing to speak up and get dogpiled for it. I posted this for the handful of people who upvote those comments.

I agree. I didn’t quite mean it as “you can just ignore it” but rather that “understand it’s just words and you can learn to not take it personally”

I say plenty of unpopular things here myself and though I have downvotes disabled I can still feel the pain when being dogpiled on despite having years of experience with it. No one is immune to it - we just have different levels of tolerance.

For the past 10 years or so I’ve pretty much assumed that at some point a superintelligent AI or similar will be able to find everyone’s online profiles and link them to the actual person behind them. Then we’ll all be held accountable for the things we’ve said in the past. That’s why I never lie or say something I don’t actually believe in. I’m not proud of every comment I’ve posted but those are my actual beliefs and what ever people will be able to dig up I can stand behind and explain reasoning.

Sure, but this is true about being online in general and not only relevant to the people saying unpopular things.

It’s also the reason I keep making new accounts when ever I reach 1k comments. Better not have all the eggs in one basket.

I wish Lemmy would have this feature as default. I’d rather give people few chances rather than immediately blocking them when they say something utterly moronic as I do now.

No, there are separate settings for up- and downvotes. I don’t see downvotes myself but I see upvotes.

Individual users blocking other users isn’t what I mean by being ostracized. If the majority of users did then maybe so but that basically never happens no matter what you say. Being blocked by someone comes at no cost to the person getting blocked. They won’t even know.

Or the same instance. You can also import your settings and continue from where you left.

Freedom to speak doesn’t imply freedom to be heard. People are free to ignore you even when you’re saying popular things. If you don’t want to speak unless everyone is listening, then don’t.

That’s the spirit!

Downvotes can also be disabled in the settings.

Absolutely. In-fact I’d say most people aren’t blocking enough. If someone thinks of free speech as freedom to be an asshole then they should be blocked by everyone and left to shout into the void. However, I don’t think the unpopularity follows you outside the thread you were saying unpopular things at. The vast majority of people wont remember you.

Just like you’re free to say it, others are free to not listen. If an user blocks you then so be it - I’m sure you’ve blocked people as well. Downvotes on the other hand are equivalent to mean comments; it can just be ignored. Getting banned is a real risk though, I’ll give you that, but then again, you can just make a new account.

Well, sure if you’re posting with your own name but not when you’re posting as MrPoopbutt.