Every time I see that little red number in my inbox, my first thought is: Did I mess up? My brain jumps to the worst-case scenario—maybe I said something controversial, and now everyone’s correcting me and downvoting my stupid comments. Even though, most of the time, the messages are actually helpful and fun, that number still triggers some sort of insecurity and anxiety. The bigger it gets, the louder my worries grow.
Logically, I know I don’t screw up that often, and most feedback is neutral or even positive. But deep down, my insecure monkey brain panics at the thought of being wrong—or worse, publicly called out. Even when I’m right, the number still makes my stress levels spike up. What if people disagree with me? What if they don’t like what I wrote?
And yes, I see the irony in posting this. Writing about it is basically asking for it and feeding the very anxiety I’m trying to ignore. Maybe it’s my version of exposure therapy.
I only clear my inbox every few months, I like to see how big I can get the number
That is very interesting. Talking to people about weird things like this shows me that we use the same tools in very different ways. For example, many people prefer to look at the “all” feed and filter it with an ever expanding black list. I do the exact opposite, which is to use a reasonably short white list. Just ignore the “all” feed for the most part, focus more on the “subscribed” feed, and you get what you want.
Now I can see that people don’t even use the notification inbox the same way. If there’s an alternate way to do things, some people are going to do it that way.
More like a resigned sigh and wondering which comment pissed off the tankies this time.
At least one of those notifications will be calling you a liberal.
Its funny when you get called “fascist” by tankies, but also get called “communist” by the conservatives.
Then Reactionary by jai.lu
Yeah, but you don’t respect those pissed off commenters, so it’s easier to distance yourself from them. Maybe that’s my problem. I don’t usually try to be abrasive enough to cause such reactions, so I take each comment more seriously than I should.
Sometimes I’ll be super active commenting and posting on lemmy and it actually grains traction and the next day I’m like “what have I done?!”
Yeah, that’s a familiar feeling. One evening, you find interesting things to write about, and the next morning you have a stack of replies from the other side of the world.
Nah, I like seeing big numbers in the notification box. Monkey brain likes big numbers going up. And it feeds my validation, that my comment is important enough for people to respond to.
Yes, but what if they’re also infuriating enough. I have very mixed feelings about that number.
I get this a little bit too, like “oh god, did I just kick a hornet’s nest?” but at the end of the day it’s just people on a forum giving their takes while having a dump, if I say the wrong shit I’ll stand corrected and otherwise if it’s trolls, fuck em.
Yep. That’s like the rational side of my brain talking. The emotional monkey side just panics anyway even though there’s nothing to worry about.
No.
Unless it’s going to be full of assholes with shitty replies for me to block from, then it’s a chore.
No. It means I made the imaginary internet points number that no one cares for go up.
132 updoots! I feel so validated for 90 seconds!
Hi, I just wanted to make your inbox go bling. You didn’t mess up and I hope you have a nice day.
Thanks. The number is already a bit overwhelming. Hopefully, I’ll get better at handling that feeling.
God, so much this, and thinking you are crazy for thinking that while also knowing on surface level, a lot of other people feel the same way
It tingles my nervea
Yep. Although for me it’s not the fear of screwing up, but knowing that I’ll be infuriated when I check them.
Usually it’s politics in that case and you already know a bunch of people will dogpile onto you despite you being right. You’ll get the same stupid liberal misconception multiple times from different people.
It’s infuriating and something no platform can fix. A fix would require the overton window to move.
No
Nope. I just go in periodically and click the button to mark all as read. The button doesn’t actually verify that I’ve read them, basically just takes my word for it and then makes the number go away … kind of in the Lemmy way where it might go away for a second, come back a minute later, go away again for awhile, then come back again for a bit, and then finally truly go away long term, permanently.
Joking aside, I get way too much hostility here on Lemmy for what amounts to making stupid boomer-style jokes and sharing personal anecdotes, so I don’t even bother reading replies in my inbox anymore. I find my time on Lemmy is much more cathartic and enjoyable this way. Sadly, that does mean I probably miss out on some discussions or responses to questions I’ve asked, but at least I don’t generally ever even see the nastiness and negativity towards me when I’m just here for a mostly light-hearted break from reality. And that works for me. After all, haters gonna hate, don’t mean I gotta participate.
No, because I don’t give a shit if people don’t like what I have to say and decide to be petulant about it.
At 324 and going, I don’t think I care much. I just don’t interact with many, and don’t mark read without interacting. So they remain
I’ve never experienced that. I can’t imagine it would worry me either way though. The internet isn’t real life. It literally doesn’t matter. I’d have as much concern as if I saw unread notifications in a video game.
