I have had a tendency since my earliest days on social media where I will get halfway or more through a response, and end up just cancelling it. Sometimes I feel like I’m just being to over the top with snark or otherwise don’t want to be that kind of person, but a lot of the time I’ll decide I just really don’t care enough to finish it. Sometimes I just know it’ll be an argument and I know what the person is going to say, and just have no interest in continuing the discussion. I did it on Reddit, I did it on bulletin boards, I even did it in my teens and twenties on Usenet - and I’ll probably go on doing it for as long as I continue using this medium. I probably do it a bit more than half the time. I know that lemmy benefits from more content and I have had some great discussions, but sometimes it’s just not worth it for me.
How about you? Do you hit publish or cancel more often?
Far less than on the other site. I’ve been trying to commit in order to grow the Fediverse, even if I’ve got a few garbage hot takes. I will say, my shit comments seem to get way more responses than my good ones.
Similar situation with me. Although I don’t complete my comments just to help Fediverse have more in it, because I don’t think the shit stuff even I wouldn’t like to be a part of it. Not saying you do it, cuz shit differs.
The times I hit cancel are usually when I can’t conclude my arguments satisfactorily. Sometimes my argument isn’t as contributive to the discussion, whether by sounding stretched or irrelevant, or by simply sounding incorrect or incoherent in the end. I bet a lot of people realize this as well when they put their thoughts into words and hit cancel. Nevertheless, it is a commendable action to both try to form the argument and send it to trash when you realize it isn’t reasonable in forms of communication.
Mostly the reason I complete my comments and hit submit is that Fediverse feels way less toxic, has a lot wider views, actually discusses a lot different takes, and generally less hivemind about upvotes/downvotes, although they matter less here.