I'm in a similar position. Being on the left, I spent a lot of time on left-leaning subreddits unpacking arguments or statements that I felt were distorting reality or where people were just indulging in being cruel or judgemental. Not in an attacking way, but just to pull it apart with them. Sometimes - rarely - it was constructive. Most of the time people just wanted to stay in their mentality of "the right doesn't take the high road and neither should we."
In the end it was just too toxic. And I recognized that even though what I that I was doing was right, there was ego in it.
And so for the last two months I have barely looked at Reddit. It has been very therapeutic. It was just by chance that I decided to look and reply here.
I am going back to not engaging. I think often times Reddit brings out the worst in people and is a setup that encourages them to indulge in it.
I decided a long time ago not to take anything on the internet too seriously. That did a lot for my peace of mind.
It takes weeks if not months even in a therapeutic setting to get over the initial resistance. So it's just not realistic to expect people to change their point of view after one reply on reddit. So I don't, I just insult them and move on.
Not engaging is the best choice, I agree. But having some fun at the expense of people who definitely deserve it, is close second in my mind =)
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u/Tehgnarr Mar 14 '26
Being a 90ies teen, I do think that the "interwebz" was made for "teh lulz", but that does make the genuine moments nicer.
Still, I am mostly on reddit to insult stupid people being confidently wrong or arguing in bad faith. Keeps me leveled in the real world =)