Sorry, I know this is somewhat off-topic, but I feel like it is important to engage on a human level for a minute. I’m genuinely sorry to hear that you feel un

Sorry, I know this is somewhat off-topic, but I feel like it is important to engage on a human level for a minute. I’m genuinely sorry to hear that you feel uncomfortable voicing your opinions. I know from personal experience how hard it is to feel like you have to keep yourself closed off to the world. As a species generally, and as technologists specifically, we have some way to go to create non-toxic spaces for people to share ideas. Still, you are engaging in fortune telling[0]—you really can’t know that your comments will be downvoted before you make them. Feeling compelled to add notes to the end of your posts encouraging others to downvote is your brain tricking you into tilting the scales to “confirm” what you “knew” to be true. It may feel like a helpful strategy to blunt the emotional pain of discovering that people don’t agree with you all the time, but from what little you’ve said, it sure seems like it’s just reinforcing your negative outlook. I don’t want you to feel bad all the time, and I suspect it is not actually true that most people here are going to disagree and downvote you to oblivion all the time so long as you avoid self-sabotaging. I know it can be incredibly hard not to take downvotes personally, and, I hope you are able to try to reframe them as what they are: some random people, some of whom are thoughtful and some of whom are not, pushing a button. It’s not a personal attack, even though our brains can make it feel very much like it is. If you truly are getting downvoted a lot, it may be a signal that some of your opinions aren’t fully thought through and need to be re-evaluated, or perhaps that you just didn’t present your ideas well. On the other hand, your brain can and will exaggerate the negative experiences, make them seem like they are happening a lot more than they are, and make you feel bad even though you’re actually doing just fine. Anyway, while I’m sure it happens (I don’t think there’s any space that is totally immune to bandwagons), I don’t get the sense that genuine and thoughtful comments regularly get downvoted to oblivion here. It’s trickier than ever these days since there is a lot of bad-faith argumentation going on everywhere online under the guise of innocently “just asking questions”[1], and I think it’s fair to say that there is an growing immune-like reaction which is sometimes attacking genuine posters because it’s just impossible to tell who’s being honest and who’s being a shitty troll. So just keep doing your best, anonymous internet commenter. :-) If you feel like you can’t, I hope you can find a counsellor or friend who will listen and help you into a more positive head space. At the least, your post has generated some reasonable and civil discussion, and that’s what we’re here for, right? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_to_conclusions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_to_conclusions [1] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions