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.

Downvoting bad typos is so weird.

An example of something that makes personality less visible is social anxiety. Changing that kind of stuff doesn’t mean that one is wrongly “forcing it” or being less genuine.

Some advice mentioned in these comments are examples of criticizing the intention of finding a romantic partner (“intention” might have been too vague): https://www.reddit.com/r/CatholicDating/comments/1h0gy5r/what_is_some_advice_christian_people_swear_is/

Alternative phrasing of my observation: … they confuse personality with the box surrounding it, and they take their own box’s transparency for granted