I get confused about if I'm dumbing it down for others, or for myself

I almost don't want to. If you can't handle honesty, truths or straightforward and shoot-straight kind of opinions. Then engaging in communication is simply not for you and nobody should have to walk on eggshells all of the time to appease someone's incapable sense of getting the point.

Not often. Certainly not when I'm shouting into the void.

When I'm answering a question or responding to a statement, I'll generally match the level of the existing discussion. I still try to say what I mean, but I'll try to avoid concepts with a lot of missing prerequisites. Target audience matters too, if you ask me how orbital rendezvous works, you'll get a different answer depending on where you ask the question. For example, I'd probably skip explaining how orbits themselves work if you asked in a community dedicated to kerbal space program or children of a dead earth, focusing instead on what the person asking is probably trying to do. Similarly, a comment in a community dedicated to real life space exploration is getting a more detailed answer than the same question in a community for the general public. Basically different assumptions about what the person already knows, and what the person wants to find out.

Simplified writing is good writing.

Yes and no.

I think that there is a fine line between dumbing something down and sounding condescending. In time, I found that not treating people like morons is the best approach, i.e. accessible language and simple explanations must be used to aid in the speed and understanding of the information you are disseminating.

Because nobody wants to sit there and brainstorm something they don't understand, they'll just move on. But if you treat them like babies, people will just be annoyed and stop paying attention.

So its quite the nuanced subject, communication is an art-form.

only after the downvotes.

Never assume your audience are idiots unless proven otherwise.

As my favorite philosopher, Natalie Wynn, said

I think it's heartwarming gibberish but there is also, I think, a legitimate role in the discourse for heartwarming gibberish. Sometimes you have to explain what being trans is to a person who believes that dogs go to heaven and, in most circumstances, saying "I'm a female soul in a male body" gets the point across.

As a disabled, trans, vegan, anarchist my life and beliefs are far more complicated than I could express in a comment section. So I tend not to lead with any of those labels and instead focus on quippy one liners about personal liberty from goverment or religious institutions.

No random person wants to read my nuanced memoirs, but they will read and remember pithy snark. I'm an anarchist that sounds like a libertarian fool, but it's the language that more people in mixed company relate to.

Nah, I'm just this dumb.

Sup bro?

I try to be as simple as I can be without compromising the integrity of the points I make.

I think everybody should "dumb themselves down" on social media. Since you can only assume other people's background on a given topic and their grasp of (for example) English, you should write in a way that's understandable to as many people as possible while still getting your point across. That's just how good communication works.

I do so less here than I would other places.

Not really but I do know my audience and I will alter the presentation of information

Closest things I use that's social media adjacent was Reddit and now here. I would say the two sites after years helped me dumb things down. Which was a real problem for me before hand. In college I was told, I was brilliant and had all the answers but I had a real problem communicating with most people.

Dumbing things down is a sign of respectlessness towards the audience. So no. I am not doing this. I sometimes write things in a shorter way due to the nature of the medium, though.

But my Mastodon instance is configured to allow up to 5000 character per message, so there is plenty of space if I feel like.

I do when I'm arguing with conservatives on Reddit. Otherwise I strive for clarity and simplicity but not dumbness

Nah

I almost never do. It's actually a bit weird, I tend to ramble more in writing than I ever would while speaking and usually end up with mini-essays even for relatively straightforward ideas.

This is two-pronged, partly because I enjoy writing and expressing myself through it more than I do speaking, but it's mostly because I'm obsessive about conveying nuances with as much precision as I can, especially in a medium as restrictive to conveyance as writing is (thinking about not having non-verbal and other purely contextual cues at my disposal).

It's not like I intentionally bring out the expensive words just to flaunt my vocabulary (I even have issues with being perceived as pretentious), it's just that some things simply require the extra precision when expressing their full complexity.

P.S.: Jesus Christ...

not at all

All the fucking time because it's not worth the effort and time

Not really dumbing it down so much as framing in accessible language.

A little bit. If I offer too specific expert knowledge I could be doxxing myself, so I make a version that sounds like I just picked it out from the top search engine result, but works well enough as an answer.

I try and use less words to get a point across, but in no way do I blunt or soften the point I am trying to make.