Some people will go way out of their way to be offended. Some people just want to make you feel small. But that’s not most people. Most people are good. You have to separate the wheat from the chaff. If you get stung from time to time just shake it off and don’t become cynical. All the best.

That’s the problem with pseudo-anonymous platforms, since every post is logged into a single account it becomes possible to trace completely unrelated posts on unrelated threads and in this case even communities and instances, even to the point of stalking.

And the more posts you write the more information a hostile actor has to be able to correlate information. It’s really bad for opsec, since there are no reason for two different posts on two completely unrelated threads to be linked together.

Anonymous image boards are usually much better in that regard, unfortunately chans are nazi bars, so I stopped using them years ago, my guess is that they are also difficult to moderate (though usually the mods are nazis themselves).

What I recommend doing is keep using lemmy but delete your account and make a new one from time to time, I usually do that with every website that requires a login anyway, abandon all old accounts, clear all cookies and browser data, (and apps if you use them), turn off my router overnight so I get a new IP and start anew, make a new email and register new accounts to that email.

Block those people, they aren’t worth your time. report them too, get the harassers banned

Ive been here three years, and ive been accused of being all kinds of things. You cant let it get to you. You should absolutely think about peoples comments and figure out if its about their own issues or if its genuinely a problem with your own personality though.

There are users here who had difficult upbringing because of racism or gender issues, and they will think you are a hateful person if they see a comment they dont agree with on those topics.

Hang in there. If you can make comments and posts that make people feel good (many upvotes), you are helping the community I would say.

In all honesty you should probably delete and create new accounts every 6 months to a year or so. Of course I’m lazy so I don’t.

My take - Start a new one. If you delete it any good advice you’ve given disappears.

Just block and report them. On reddit, yea i would delete it

Nah, your posts are good. Fuck the haters. I don’t even bother to look at usernames 90% of the time but I recognized a few of the posts you’ve made over the past few days in lemmy shitpost and they are genuinely good.

If Lemmy is a service you’ve enjoyed and you aren’t trying to hurt anyone, why let random jerks ruin it for you and chase you off? Just block them and forget they ever existed. This is the way.

Eh. Sure.

I was also a teenager on the internet, back when Reddit was a chill place to be. Now I’m an adult, with… responsibilities.

My advice?

Enjoy yourself, have fun, be unfiltered, be silly. The internet isn’t that big of a deal as long as you keep a degree of separation between your irl identity and online life. It’s liberating especially as someone who was a bit socially awkward.

Still, don’t forget mental hygiene. A break is good from time to time. Talk to people irl, take a walk, touch grass.

When people get angry online, I do my best to be a duck, let it wash off, respond either pleasantly or with cheer. Life is too short to be miserable, so go forth and have fun little duckling :)

I have been online since 1993 and had been taught and continue to treat everything I post as if it will never be deleted. I don’t see a point in deleting my accounts when the data has very likely been duplicated the instant I sent it and could still easily be reposted or used by whoever has access to the database it is stored on; let alone the multitude of unknown bots and agents that may have duplicated it independently.

So, no. It never even crosses my mind because I think it is rather pointless. Of course, it is also because I don’t really talk about my personal life in detail enough, or use my real name online so my online identity can be linked to my real one and don’t have any fear of something I said when I was 9 being used against me now that I am 41.

I deleted my Reddit account and made a new one after my ex messaged me, it’s a reasonable precaution and good opsec if you don’t feel comfortable with people having an easy time tracking you. I want to avoid doing that here if I can though. I don’t know to what extent a record of the things you’ve said can pseudonymously establish status as a unique person given the way AI is changing things, but the other options seem to involve trusting untrustworthy entities or giving up on the internet entirely so it seems worth trying.

Just block people.

And they can block you too.

There’s a lot of weird people on Lemmy, that’s not a bad thing, it’s normal for online spaces at this stage. But some people will dominate your time if you let them.

Most recently, someone accused me of trying to manipulate people because of my age and gender.

“Online no one knows I’m not a dog”

That type of stuff rarely comes up, so when people just constantly mention it, it gets noticed.

So just stop saying it, and problem solved

Delete your account and create a new one. Problem solved.

But also, two things. First, always be questioning yourself. Those jerks might have a point. But second, jerks are jerks and you shouldn’t listen to them or be bothered by them.

If you can balance those two ideas, you’ll do really well online, and probably in real life too.

It would be sad to see you go, your sense of humor has definitely made Lemmy more enjoyable lately. That said Lemmy isn’t worth it if your mental health would suffer. Do what’s best for you, and if that happens to be posting great shit posts then we will all benefit