I don’t care about the rating on other people’s content. On my own I only care so far as to use it as a guideline for whether I actually was interesting.

On reddit I was a trolling karma whore, but here? Here I’m much more about engaging with people and getting 3 upvotes tells me that I gave the community something meaningful.

When in comes to my own posts and comments, my trust in vague negative reactions is long gone.

Some things that made me more suspicious of Lemmy users:

• Most criticism of one thing was vague and often mentioned my mental health. And the only non-vague comment was targeted at the involved Catholic beliefs/values and my unusual sense of humor.
• I banned someone for 1 day for saying “So, am I right in assuming that OP has untreated schizophrenia? Wtf is this word vomit?” and someone described this as “banned a guy because he said you write poorly” which is a very weird interpretation. I obviously would not have gived a ban if the comment just said “you write poorly”.

For me, taking online feedback less seriously was a big part of growing up.

Yes and no. The same comment on different communities can have vastly different results, so I think it’s too easy to just “justify” why the ratios you don’t agree with are there, while the ones you do are obviously “fair”

I check my downvotes every so often to see if I’ve made an ass of myself.

Edit: Good point. Warning added.

Yes and I’m trying to stop it from happening.

There are only two things I think about when it comes to vote count:

1. if I make a joke, and it’s not being replied to but being downvoted I want to know if people understood the joke, understood it even was a joke, or if the joke was just not funny.

2. If I see a question being asked that doesn’t appear to be in bad faith being downvoted, and not answered, it pisses me off.

No, not at all. When you get a ton of downvotes but zero responses, assuming you didn’t just post literal nonsense, I consider it proof I’m correct and it’s just a truth people don’t like. When you’re wrong people will downvote you and tell you why, which should be a learning experience that a person should be humble enough to accept but just downvotes or responses only attacking you not you points is pure validation you’re speaking an uncomfortable truth

The intention behind most downvotes is

Yes. Downvotes allow a well educated community to bury misinformation

It depends, once I got like 20 upvotes and it was amazing to think them at 70% of Lemmy users read and agreed with my post!

I pretty much always win with votes. If I get upvotes, I think someone appreciated it. If someone downvotes, I think they’re a hater.

I won’t lie though; my adhd ass checks way too often in a desperate search for dopamine.

It lets me feel like my time here is being useful if I get the upvotes. I try to limit myself to positive/fun/helpful posts or adding additional facts from other articles to someone’s post of I feel more info is needed to get a full story, so if people reply or at least upvote, it feels like it was worth adding my contribution. If my humor/help isn’t needed or wanted in a place, I don’t want to both waste my time and annoy people.

Not really. Someone will disagree with me eventually, but that doesn’t mean I’m interested in debating or earning their approval somehow.

They’re helpful to determine the general community’s take on something, even if there is little other engagement.

And if I’m being honest, getting upvotes is a sweet hit of dopamine. But I try to keep things in perspective.

I like to say it doesn’t change my view, but it probably does more than I realize. Everyone likes to think they’re immune to stuff like that, but we really aren’t.