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.

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!

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

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.

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’m on an instance that only federates upvotes so I don’t really think about downvotes or know if I am getting them.

I only care when I’m making a post, to help judge how people liked it. I don’t pay attention to points inside threads really.

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.

Yes, but actually no. Upvotes are are similar to seeing someone’s smile or nodding in agreement. Downvotes are like a dead stare or shaking their head in disagreement.

If someone else is downvoted but seems to have posted in good faith or as a joke it means there is probably something I am missing. Maybe they are serious when I think it is a joke, or there is some context that is news to me.

If I have a commwnt that is downvoted significantly (like ten or more down than up, or only down) then I double check to see if I was unclear or maybe a joke didn’t land. Mostly to make sure my intent came though.

If I clarify something and people just don’t agree with it because they don’t see the same nuance then I do think about it a but and come back later to see if maybe I was wrong or everyone else is a dumbass. Most of the time it is me not being clear enough. If they are dumbasses, oh well.

I also feel happy when a good comment gets upvoted to double digits. That is a nice feeling.

I use my post/comment history (and saves) as a way to know what threads to go check in on later. And I get a kick out of seeing a lot of upvotes and dislike seeing anything in negative territory. But I don’t have votes in mind when I post.

Yes. It tells me if there’s any engagement.

To me, it’s a way to quantify how other people feel about my own positions. It’s neither good nor bad to be upvoted or downvoted. People have unpopular takes sometimes and you shouldn’t stake your identity on the amount of upvotes or downvotes you have.

Instead, upvotes and downvotes are most useful for other people to guage comments. Generally speaking, if a comment is universally downvoted, that likely means the position is unpopular enough that it adds no value to a discussion, and is therefore not worth engaging with.

I consider it to be a system built upon mutual understanding - that you don’t have to seriously engage with everyone’s viewpoints, and conversely, that nobody has to seriously engage with yours.

It becomes a problem when upvotes and downvotes are gamified like on Reddit, because Goodhart’s Law demands that it stops serving its purpose when people are only attempting to optimize their upvote/downvote ratio.

I dont think it changes my pov, but it def does for other people on a large scale

you could say the same message in different parts of the same thread, and by chance one will accumulate more downvotes and one will accumulate more upvotes

for example: https://sh.itjust.works/post/39444493/18993947 and https://sh.itjust.works/post/39444493/18993522 say the same thing, but one has 42 updates and 8 downvotes and one has 120 downvotes to 23 upvotes

people need to stop looking at these numbers

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.

uuuuh, yeah. I usually assume that if I get a lot of downvotes or a comment I agree with gets a lot of downvotes, then my opinion must be wrong.
On the other hand, if something I am not sure about gets upvoted, then it’s probably good. I trust others more.

Probably not a good thing, but I don’t trust myself with opinions. Though it’s not completely black and white either. It depends on where it is, who’s giving majority of replies*, and some bit of reconsideration (e.g.: is it logical, is it harmful).
But in the end, it does shape my opinions into what I believe is “more correct”.

Certain (more serious) decision-making for opinions may however take me 24 hours or even more. This helps me to balance out the effects of morning vs night-time emotional state**, which differs more with lack of sleep. If even then I am undecided, the upvotes win it and I take it as my own opinion.