sometimes it’s not the question that is stupid, but the OP and the OPs intent in asking it.

like when they give combative replies or are otherwise mentally ill/incoherent.

or they have a repeated pattern of asking the same thing over and over.

A lot of the time i see stuff downvoted it’s because it’s more bait or someone’s weird rant turned into a question. It may not be a stupid question, but the asker doesn’t seem actually curious. They often come packed with weird assumptions, that have to be dealt with first, which would be cool if the asker was interested in being walked through it.

It’s the sincerity that’s missing! If someone asks why they have to wipe their asshole when everyone has a butler to hose them down after shitting, and it turns out they’re genuine and post a pic of their sad butler- oh. i thought of another reason why stuff gets downvoted. If it’s about bodily functions, I think people get grossed out and downvote. And there have been some that seemed like fetish material.

Lots of reasons, I guess? I think other than the bodily function one, the rest boil down to the perception of sincerity.

It’s the difference between curiosity and trolling.

A question can be both not stupid and not appropriate.

It’s either a troll question, bait, not a question, or, alternatively, people are downvoting your legitimate question because they remember you trolling elsewhere.

You’re probably asking meta or leading questions that border on trolling.

Some people take “No Stupid Questions” to mean, it’s ok to ask a genuine question in a safe space where you won’t be made to feel like an idiot for the asking.

Others take it as a challenge. “Oh yeah? I’ll show you a stupid question.”

I think that a majority of users on the internet down vote if they see content that is not relevant, breaks the community rules, or simply not very nice.

p.s. “no stupid questions” is a play on the phrase “There are no stupid questions, Timmy!”, but of course you still need to be polite and follow the rules

Down votes don’t equal stupid, I imagine you already know that there’s lots of reasons a post could get downvoted.

In general, I think people run into confusing exactly what is and isn’t the kind of stupid that’s right for this place.

Questions can be perfectly valid, but not really something you couldn’t ask anyone, any time, and get a deciding decent answer, so those get down voted a good bit.

Then you run into posts that are really more shittyasklemmy territory. They’re essentially jokes that neither deserve nor can be answered in a useful way.

There’s also the ones that are word salad that get down voted because nobody knows what the fuck is being asked.

Your most recent one fell afoul of not really being a question as much as it was a rant in question form. Which never goes over well here (I always down vote those, personally). Still answered in that case, but it really wasn’t in the spirit of the C/, so I felt it worth the vote down.

You had previous questions that were great, btw. It was just that one that rang funky.

I can’t speak for everyone, obviously, but thats my take on the trends of heavily down voted posts.

The ones that are genuine questions that wouldn’t be easy to ask and get answered irl or in most online spaces, those are the ones that tend to get up votes and plenty of responses

People say there’s no stupid questions, but my 6the grade science teacher begged to differ. I think your down votes are not in the spirit of the sub, as far it being a safe space to ask stupid questions, but should by no means feel bad about it. Remember that most of the internet is pretty dumb, and we can’t be expected to know it all.

It’s hard to fucking tell anymore.