I haven’t been here that long, but the dopamine hits are a familiar mechanism underpinning most social media these days – something I try to do as someone who has a lot of strong opinions on stuff and am pre-disposed to debate is to still give out votes to replies that disagree with me, even strongly, as long as they are thoughtful and reasoned.
I do it because I think sometimes people can recognize that gesture and it helps them check their attitude if it is getting a bit too aggressive, it can sometimes interrupt the “debate me bro” circuit that social media so often tries to reinforce. You basically give them the dopamine reward without them feeling they have to reach that extreme end of the debate to get it from someone. But, more importantly, it’s also a small action that forces me to swallow my pride and ego a tiny bit. Clicking upvote on something you disagree with is an acknowledgement that your own ego has its flaws. It’s an exercise in maintaining perspective.
I used to be against discussion-oriented social media that doesn’t have a downvote, but going from Reddit to Beehaw has made me really appreciate how downvotes can only really feed toxicity outside some very specific use cases. On reddit you’d more often get downvotes with no response or explanation, even for innocuous comments or simply content you shared with people. Which is disheartening and makes you start to behave in a paranoid way.
The way people used the downvote was not to moderate content that added nothing to the discussion, but simply to try and shutdown ideas and content that they personally didn’t like, which is a subtle but consequential difference. Removing the downvote means that the way to deal with unwanted content is now to either confront it with words or, if you have no real justification or argument you are willing to get into, take no action.
Instead of using the upvote as an ‘agree’ button I use it now as more of an acknowledgement of the person’s perspective as valid and not intentionally disrespectful, even if I disagree. It helps me reel myself back in if I feel that pull to dig my heels in to an unproductive degree.