If someone is asking for opinions or there’s a general discussion then surely negative opinions are just as valid as positive ones

Two reasons:

1. I value frankness above tact, discourse (what is said) over tone (how it’s said).
2. I have little to no tolerance towards some types of irrationality and bullshit, and I enjoy calling them out.

its just part of the conversation. If all these communities were just rah rah, preach to the choir, I would likely stop participating. I am in no way saying all comments should be negative or such but I expect discourse and different points of view. Positive or negative I prefer the comments and posts to be as thoughtful and informative as possible.

I really hate begged questions. You know the thing: “Why do Americans buy groceries at Walmart?” The premise is wrong, and needs to be corrected to get an accurate and representative answer. “Most Americans buy groceries at dedicated grocery stores. I never shop at Walmart at all.”

Or: “Who’s your favorite character in Final Fantasy 7?” “I don’t have one, I tried FF7 but couldn’t get into it.” followed by OP saying some bullshit like “Then I wasn’t asking you.”

A clear sign someone’s looking for confirmation, not understanding.

Depends what counts as a negative comment. I tend to swim upstream so the things I say often aren’t popular but I only say what I believe to be true. Why people who for example don’t like Elon Musk, keep posting about him and then circlejerking with all the other haters is beyond me.

Depends on how you take the situation. I’d say on one side I hope to warn others with my cautionary tale. I also feel understood when I see others reply they shared my pain through similar experiences after reading mine, so I guess you can call that cathartic? Not sure. It also helps me calibrate myself socially, as I can measure how much others agree or disagree with my hate of whatever.

Because I’m a negative nancy

It really depends on the matter at hand. I think sometimes it feels cathartic, other times it’s just questionable rambling because I feel like getting it off my chest.

If there’s a post already complaining about something I may join in on it, because who doesn’t love a good complain?

If someone is posting positive things about something they like I try to avoid being overly or only negative about it. The internet is too big for me to go around bothering everyone with conflicting tastes to mine.

If I hate something I see online I will say it and nobody should stop me. That’s it. There’s no science behind it.

Because if I only wanted to be positive, I’d be on LinkedIn.

This is a terrible post just because it is!

/s ;)

It probably started from browsing reddit and seeing the site change into every comment section being a predictable mono culture. I could read the thread header and know exactly what the first few pages of comments would be like. This is mostly because anyone who disagrees gets downvoted and no one sees the comment.

If i agreed with the post then it felt like there was no reason to add another comment to the sea of agreement. So I ended up with most of my comments being negative or disagreeing except in the smaller communities.

Then I started getting banned for comments that were unreasonably tame which pissed me off and then I started commenting with the intention of dragging people into endlessly dumb arguments where I would try get them to say something that would get then banned.

Lemmy doesn’t have this issue of comments being buried and there is no incentive not to get downvoted so I feel like I can post normally here with minimal trolling.

I think that it is healthy for a discussion or an argument to have both positive and negative points of view. I also will voice my opinion regardless of the standpoint of the initial question.

However, this also depends on the context. I won’t go into each thread and post something negative just because I don’t like the post or thread. But if someone is asking for an opinion then they should expect that the opinion of others might not be positive or align with their own opinion at all.

I always hate to see those “yes” posts in which every criticism is being downvoted or “banned” but I also hate to see those rants/vent posts just for the circlejerk of hate or negativity.

Blowing off steam.

Lovely, warm, childhood trauma steam.

If we don’t discuss the bad things in society, how can we ever hope to fix them?