Been thinking of making a post like this for some time, apologies if some of this is not completely relevant: this community seems more like it’s about Reddit the platform/product than Reddit the social “thing”, but I’m sure a lot of people have similar experiences to mine. Maybe on some instances more than others.
Here’s the one of the last comments I wrote as a regular Reddit user, on the eve of the blackout (almost a year ago to the day), under a post titled “Will your participation in Reddit change”:
My comment
I will keep searching Google for Reddit help threads, but as a cultural and news aggregator I think this is the end for me. Maybe I will check it every so often. On desktop. On the old site. Until they sunset that too.
I wouldn’t be against using the first party app if it wasn’t so awful to use.
It’s a massive shame that we’ve all collectively agreed that Reddit is the de facto way to create open communities online. There were so many forums that could fill the void left by Reddit for things like tech and art and they’ve all shut down in the past decade.
I try not to be too negative about the evolution and constant growth of the userbase of the site and of the internet as a whole, but I’ve really felt like things are moving in a direction I can’t even be cautiously optimistic about lately.
I think of all the mod tools that will be defunct. The commonly cited example is that people who comment excessively on adult subs are automatically barred from commenting on the teenagers subreddit. Sure the admins can whip up functionality to do this, but this site was built on custom tools and custom CSS and all that. I think the API was one among the many secret sauces that give Reddit this staying power. These sites and forums I talked about - I used to hop from one to the next year after year. Until I found Reddit a decade ago.
I like that I choose my subs and that I don’t get algorithmically ordered sludge designed to game the algorithm on my homepage. Yes the sensibilities of the lowest common denominator redditors are gamed by people posting, but that’s (in my opinion) acceptable.
Frankly if they kept the old Reddit Gold pricing (4 bucks per month/30 annual) and gated unrestricted API access behind it I would have been inclined to finally give Reddit money. I use it a lot, I don’t mind paying now that I can afford it. But something about how it’s all going down really doesn’t fill me with confidence.
I’ve been trying to write a post about this for a while now, but I haven’t felt like it was relevant. Thanks for asking here
Reading through this is a bit funny, in retrospect, seeing how Reddit-centric my understanding of the internet had become at the time. I am happy to report that I have checked the home page maybe a half dozen times since the blackout, instead of once or twice a week like I expected. I suppose the disgusting state of the heavily astroturfed worldnews sub was a big part of it as well: for me Reddit was the one big online platform where the average visible user didn’t seem to be very misinformed about Palestine (at least not by default), and it was frankly very sad to see where it got in the past few months.
I do miss Reddit, I haven’t been able to replace it outright. I’m from Lebanon, and Lebanese Twitter is (if you can imagine it) even more of a toxic cesspool than regular Twitter. I’m not on Facebook (also cesspool here), I’m not on Instagram - my point is I don’t get anything about my country on ostensibly user-curated social media. /r/Lebanon was very far from perfect, but it was nice to get a trickle of local news with users who were more in line with my own politics. The local news outlets focus on a lot of irrelevant crap, the sub’s news feed was a bit more interesting.
One thing I loved about that subreddit was that users with more mainstream views in my country (eg. transphobia-as-default) were allowed to spout their bullshit in the subreddit with little mod pushback (if it’s just JAQing off etc, not harrassing people obviously). Then the regulars would dogpile on that user’s post - very refreshing! And very validating I would imagine for anyone who is used to hearing this shit everyday.
I was applying to be a mod to help keep the sub moving, at one point, but hey. Maybe that headache was never worth it. Still, I felt like I lost one of my online homes.
More generally, I have enjoyed my first year on Lemmy, although the experience has been lacking in many ways. For one, while Reddit has a reputation as a meme cemetery, the memes here are generally a bit moldier. But that’s okay. The fact that there’s fewer posts I think isn’t necessarily a bad thing either, I think we all preferred Reddit’s slightly slower homepage in 2013 than the one we left in 2023, that would regurgitate more and more from the bottom of the barrel if you were willing to keep scrolling.
I’ve toyed with opening a Lebanon community here on dbzer0, having opened one on FMHY that nobody used. But it wouldn’t be the same, and I wouldn’t know how to populate it. I posted maybe 2 non-question posts on Reddit in my decade+ of being a regular user, but I wrote tons of comments. It also helped keep my English sharper, I think.
I’ve reactivated my old Instagram account and it’s pretty ass out there. The ad/post ratio is just egregious, and they’ll just serve you random posts from random pages. I want to see my friends goddamn it, isn’t this what your platform is supposed to be for? For those of you who don’t know, the app will also send you a notification once or twice a day suggesting you look at “today’s top reels”. I have never watched a reel of my own will, fuck off.
Point being, the main platforms people use online haven’t been up my alley. I can only hope the zoomer dumbphone pushback keeps expanding, and that social media starts being seen as something for older generations. Wishful thinking?
This is just a post about enshittification, everyone’s favorite word, but every time I think about it for more than 2 minutes I can’t help but miss a simpler internet. Some part of me was hoping it would kickstart me “growing out” of spending this much time online per day (not everyone spends a ton of time online), but it hasn’t.
Also every time I ask something longer than 20 words on Discord some middle schooler will reply “yap”, even in the channels designated for questions. Discord has had its uses (yes I know there’s privacy concerns), but it’s hardly a replacement for Reddit, or forums. Both of which are/were searchable. But enough yapping from me.
Thoughts? How has the exodus been for you? Is this how Digg users felt?
Honestly I spend less time on it and that’s a good thing. I read more news, blogs, use other sites etc
If I want to see stuff from my own country I’ll read the local news
I don’t treat Lemmy like some Omni platform like reddit was, but more of a niche platform like all the others. I don’t use Twitter, Instagram kr anything either.
I much prefer the people on reddit, but hate the company, admins, and most mods. Ads and bots are getting worse, more and more communities are getting banned because advertisers don’t like them, it’s getting enshittified.
I love the software here, the whole open source federated system is genius, but the users are so awful. Everything is fucking star trek, linux, and communism. The only women here are trans women. People say shit like “just ssh the root config distro” or whatever the fuck like it’s just everyday conversation. Literally every joke has to be explained. Everyone here is either mentally a know it all teenager, or literally a know it all teenager. Don’t you dare say any one thing that could be taken slightly the wrong way or some asshole will start attacking you over it, no matter how irrelevant it is to your main point. And don’t even get me started on tankies.
I’m hanging around in hopes that there will be a wave of normal people at some point.
Just wanted to back you up on this. I’m also very outside the techy core of people on here and have been hoping for more diversity to join as well. There’s at least two of us!
Three and I agree with another user about the people being sanctimonious, though I would use preachy.
I am a very “techy person” (in fact Y-Combinator’s Hacker News has been a partial Reddit replacement for me), but like you, I too cringe at Lemmy’s constant stream of shitty star trek memes, repetitive “this is what living with ADHD is like”, and posts with days-old news items from 3rd rate wannabe-journalism sites. I mean a quarter of this site is literally screenshots of Twitter posts.
The obvious answer to the shitty content here would be to stop complaining and just start posting the things I’d want to see. But there’s a sense of futility in throwing good things into what feels like a giant pool of detritus.
Anyway one of the great things about old reddit was that, overall, the site (or rather the reddit hive brain) did a decent job at pushing the good stuff to the top. For reasons I don’t entirely understand, that doesn’t seem to be happening as much here on Lemmy.
Anyway one of the great things about old reddit was that, overall, the site (or rather the reddit hive brain) did a decent job at pushing the good stuff to the top. For reasons I don’t entirely understand, that doesn’t seem to be happening as much here on Lemmy.
Discoverability of niche communities is pretty lacking. And I guess some people browsing All by New are turned off by the amount of news / memes content and don’t vote the good stuff
Fee free to join on !casualconversation@lemm.ee.
I’ve been trying to get a few “non tech/memes/news” communities lately, and this is by far the most successful
Thanks, I’ll check it out.
Similar reason to why I’ve backed way off to mostly lurking. That and most of the subs I was on in like aviation, space, other technology and engineering things don’t exist here. But I’m happy to give it time. Reddit took a long while to build those communities too.
Isn’t !space@lemmy.world a thing? Probably still in the early beginning, but hopefully it will indeed come
I do feel like a lot of people here are on guard and that doesn’t make for the best vibes.
My wife was asking me the other day how my “shitty Reddit” was doing. I told her it was like someone rounded up all the little twerps that require you to add fine print to everything you say on Reddit.
Also if you post more casual things to a specific sub then you’re almost guaranteed to get downvotes from people just browsing the ‘all’ feed. Like who gives a shit about downvotes but it does make it harder to gauge if they’re from people in the community not interested or just randos.
I agree with a lot of this sentiment. My goal is to try to “be the change I want to see in the world”.
So I occasionally challenge the dumb group think I see on here. Sometimes it well received but not always.
One thing Ive noticed is how reactionary and un-nuanced a lot of posts are. I guess it makes sense since a majority of the users here self-selected to leave a site in protest. There is a bias towards being “reactionary”.
But the vibe feels off on Lemmy and I can’t put my finger on exactly why, but I certainly don’t feel like a lot of my people are here. Don’t get me wrong, I love hearing different opinions and viewpoints but the way a lot of them are presented here feel very “well ackshually!” or sanctimonious. It’s less like that on mastodon, but still there. Maybe less “fun” and hearted. It’s almost too serious, but even the less serious stuff isn’t as fun/funny.
Hacker news feels better. Almost reminds me of old school reddit or even forums.
I think the fediverse and Lemmy would have been better if it was designed where each “subreddit”/channel was an instance. Basically federate the small communities but don’t make a bunch of small “reddits” where it’s fragmented and watered down.
There could be hubs with curated channels or apps that let you curate channels but each channel is effectively independent.
Anyway, I don’t know that that would even fix the vibe problem with the fediverse but I think it would help communities grow, evolve, and mature better.
Another normal person checking in. Sadly I don’t comment much for all the reasons you mentioned. It is some comfort to know there are a few of us around.
Another normal person checking in. Sadly I don’t comment much for all the reasons you mentioned. It is some comfort to know there are a few of us around.
Smart. Commenting here on anything tends to get you harassed. Not threatened at least.
Happy you’re hanging around. As one of the post-capitalist space hippies, I’m probably awful, but I do value diversity.
Thanks. I’m glad to have you guys in the discussion, I just wish you didn’t dominate it so much.
Fair cop.
this is hands down one of the best things I ever read.
Yeah, it feels quite petulant and deconstructive at times.
But a lot of what you wrote is just a feature of any small online community. Then you end up with these bitter types who, if you rubbed them slightly the wrong way, get up at 6 a.m., downvote everything you ever wrote and report as many of your contributions as they can get away with.
I mean, downvotes and upvotes could be capped at -1 and +5, respectively, like on /. which has been going strong for more than 20 years with this concept, or there could be enforcement of some sort of netiquette, but that would put additional strain on the mods.But a lot of what you wrote is just a feature of any small online community. Then you end up with these bitter types who, if you rubbed them slightly the wrong way, get up at 6 a.m., downvote everything you ever wrote and report as many of your contributions as they can get away with.
I mean, this is what got me to leave reddit, apart from the corporate stuff. I remember when I got sitewide banned for saying I let my cat go outdoors, and I was reported repeatedly for violence across many comments by some anti-cat nutbag who thinks I’m personally causing an Avian holocaust. My cat has never caught a bird… he mostly sits on the porch and lays in the garden and lets people pet him.
I was on reddit within their first year. It was very much like you just described the lemmy community. The posts were all linux, communism, libertarians, lgbtq, typical nerd media discussion (star trek/wars, dr who, etc), and fringe communities. However, when I started, there was no commenting. That changed a few months later, and there were no sub reddits so it was just like /all and that is it.
This type of community was exactly what I was expecting. Early 4chan was this too. It just seems that these are the people that adopt new social media, and websites, early.
The internet was such a different place back then I don’t even know if you can compare the two periods.
nerds who want to be away from the normies, yep.
i started commetning on reddit in 2009. I was a evil normie invading their fun little space. left reddit because i’m not angry/lazy enough to enjoy it anymore.
there are a few of us here.
but 100% agree on the vibe here being angry teenager who is angry about Linux for some reason and loves white knighting on internet comments.
I don’t notice the Linux stuff, but I find commenters to be fairly toxic generally.
There’s no respectful discourse. It’s all snarky “ima tell you how wrong you are” stuff.
I’m generally progressive, but I’m old enough to find the young, idealist progressives irritating.
I do not mind idealist progressives. It is nice to be reminded.
That said, it can be hard to get past all the “death to the investor class” hate for everybody that has saved up to buy a house for their kids to grow up in.
“landlords are evil!”
yeah, the little old lady who i rented from for 5 years and who never raised my rent before I bought… she was so evil. and not at all a wonderful person who i still help out from time to time.
same. i love discussion. and the ability to acknowledge the merit of someone’s differing opinion and ideas.
that doesn’t exist here. it’s all insults and emotional dimwits who think zeal and ideological purity are what matters.
Everything is fucking star trek, linux, and communism. The only women here are trans women.
100% agree on this, and I guess it’s because nerds are the first ones to discover and use new tech. It also gives a sense of real community since everyone speaks the same language. But of course this means that people outside the circle will wonder what the fuck is going on. :)
About teenagers and people attacking you, yeah, that’s how some of them are. I get comments where they intentionally misunderstand something just to be able to copy/paste some default snarky response, because that’s how they have fun feeling superior. :).
It’s never original because they are not very bright, it’s just quotes and oneliners they saw online and now they use them because they like them. Doesn’t bother me, I just don’t respond and continue in other threads instead. I honestly just smile about it and move on. You should try it.
You have to realize that lemmy is just entertainment and some people get entertained if they can make you upset and angry.
Fee free to join on !casualconversation@lemm.ee.
I’ve been trying to get a few “non tech/memes/news” communities lately, and this is by far the most successful
Reddit is dead and buried, what’s left are bots and teenagers. Those yappy discordians now run the show, most of us 10+ reddit veterans either came to lemmy, or gave up on “the internet”. I’m pretty sure you’re not the only one who considered reddit to be the internet at that point.
Most power users, myself included, spent 5+ hours per day there, at times more so than at their paid careers. Especially the mods (I’ve been moderating 6 subs, two of which had over 1M and 5M users).
I do miss some of those communities. I don’t miss modding. Leaving reddit showed me what ungodly amounts of time I sunk into that platform, now that I had to fill other means to close the gap. With Lemmy it’s 20-30 min a day, often spread out over 5+ sessions since there’s not much to say or see that takes me more than 5 min at a time.
I’ve stayed on some of the moderator discord channels since those are fine folks, and chat with them in the off-topic rooms. Which shows me that reddit has gone off the deep end once and for all. With many decent folks leaving, ads and bots exploding all over the place, only the die hard shitposters and radical opinion leaders stuck around. They might not have had a digg moment, but are going the way of tumblr, which is arguably worse.
What I’m trying to say is that while Lemmy isn’t the arch we wanted it to be, going back isn’t possible either since the harbor burned down.
Personally, I’ve started a PhD just about a year ago at the time I left, and it does plenty of filling the gap in my daily calendar…
on which topic you are doing PhD. just curious cuz I want to do it too.
Faculty of Business, and I’m doing it on Clinical Trial Protocol Development since I work in the medical device industry.
I wish I could be like some of the other commenters here and say that leaving Reddit has been good because of the time suck that it was, or that I’m self-hosting xyz, but I can’t. And I am truly jealous.
I’m still looking to scratch that itch and there’s…nothing. I’m just very bored now but I haven’t gone back because I’m so angry at the way it ended. I do like Lemmy a lot, and Mastodon since I also gave up Twitter, but for better or worse they were a big part of my life and I’m not doing amazing things and coming to wonderful realizations now that they’re gone. It’s just depressing all around.
I volunteer in disaster response, and hurricane season started today and Reddit and Twitter were huge resources for us. Do you know how much of a loss that is? That can’t be replaced…entire communities, regions, parishes, counties, cities, states…they aren’t going to magically swap from one service to another because spez and Space Karen are assholes.
I’m sorry for the rant but enshittification sucks and I am sad.
TLDR I agree with you, OP.
In terms of boredom, it’s a healthy thing! Boredom is what pushes people to learn new skills, find new hobbies, and just generally do things. I think the demonization of boredom is very bad for society.
In terms of disaster relief, that sucks. If you have to use Reddit for that, then so be it. People getting the help they need in an emergency is more important than sticking it to spez.
It was the one thing that consistently relieved some of my ADHD boredom though, which is priceless lol
Haha ya, I totally get that. For me: I’ve been doing more little projects on my phone (designing games on my off time, researching work problems, etc), started carrying around a journal to write in on my bag, I downloaded the Shonen Jump app and started reading manga for anime I’ve wanted to watch but haven’t gotten around to, and I listen to podcasts not just when I’m driving. Hope some of those suggestions help or kickstart your own idea.
I also want to start carrying a book around with me like I did when I was a kid, because I have such a big list to get through and I have lots of pdfs for rpg books I’ve downloaded but haven’t read. I’ve tried to read them on my phone, and I succeeded with one book but the screen is so small lol. Maybe I need to look for a good e-reader that reads pdfs without straining my eyes, like I heard e-ink readers or something like that do, but apparently not with pdfs, I guess?
Thanks for the suggestions, I appreciate it! I can only listen to podcasts when I drive really, it’s the only time I’m able to focus on them. I can’t turn one on at home and just…listen. Maybe if I’m cleaning or something but I prefer music to do that for motivation.
I have a Kindle Oasis and I LOVE it! It’s the perfect size to slip in my purse, it’s thin, and I have multiple books with me at all times. I highly recommend it!
Thanks! I’ll look for that one! And you can tell, I really want to avoid returning to my reddit level of online addiction I was at previously. I’m close with Lemmy, but there’s not enough content for me to get there yet lol.
Makes perfect sense…good luck in your journey :)
12+ years on Reddit. Walked away in disgust after the API fiasco and killing Apollo. Found Voyager here and that really helped the transition.
I miss the local subs, especially related to current events, and game day threads of local baseball team. Haven’t found a good replacement (the Athletic has them but they’re harder to navigate). On current events, unless it’s a really big national news story, not much.
Between the loss of Reddit and Twitter, I feel like I’m getting less realtime news. But in retrospect, it didn’t really matter. I’m actually fine reading about something two days later once the outrage has died down.
My daily usage definitely dropped, which is a good thing. I’ve been reading digital and physical books more instead of mostly a diet of audiobooks and podcasts. If there’s some idle time, I dip into a book instead of reflexively checking social media.
FWIW, Lemmy has the same vibe as Reddit 10 years ago. I’m planning on sticking around and contributing more.
More like Reddit 15 years ago, but it’s getting there and I think if we maintain a healthy core the next big thing will send another wave here. It’s exactly how Digg died.
100% this. Reddit wasn’t always what a lot of people know it as. Lemmy has extremely early Reddit vibes. And that is a good thing. We just need to keep growing and diversifying.
100% this. Reddit wasn’t always what a lot of people know it as. Lemmy has extremely early Reddit vibes. And that is a good thing. We just need to keep growing and diversifying.
Yeah but let’s hope that doesn’t just repeat the cycle and bring in more malignant/militant types who just want to cause internet drama to feel good about themselves.
I actually miss Reddit, I miss it when it was actually a useful site where you can engage with users on specific topics that barely anyone in my country gives a shit about. I left Reddit on 1 July 2023 (the day API access for third party apps got shut down), and after 11 months, I’m still not looking back. Lemmy really is my new home now, I’m called “Resol van Lemmy” for a reason. Let’s be honest, Reddit nowadays is basically some buffalo trying to take a huge dump on a birthday cake, an incredible website that ended up being ruined by a bunch of shitty business decisions. I’m gonna say it again, fuck spez. He is not was Reddit is about, we Redditors are what Reddit is about. I don’t even care anymore, fuck him. Lemmy might potentially be as good as Reddit one day, but I suspect that this day is quite far away from today, but I (and my fellow Lemminos/Lemmings/Lemurs/whatever) am working to make that day closer than ever.
I was on Reddit for almost ten years, still feels weird to leave it. But it’s like leaving a marriage or long term relationship - you are not leaving that person you were first with, you are leaving the person they became. Reddit today isn’t the Reddit it was even a year ago.
The place got infested with Boomers reporting people non-stop, the major Karma accounts that contributed so much almost all left. There are niche subs like the fountain pen subs, tipofmyjoystick, and a few others that I wish would move here. Sadly I think those places will be lost.
This is exactly how I feel.
I haven’t even bothered to subscribe to many communities. I almost exclusively browse all because there just aren’t any niche interests of mine being talked about. In that sense, the gap that leaving reddit left has not yet been filled. That said, I don’t particularly miss it.
The only thing that really sucks is the loss of game communities. I no longer get updates and spoilers for games I’m interested in on a forum. I’ve had to join like 30 different discord servers and have them all send updates to my own private server, but I no longer have a community to discuss these things with because I don’t care for chatting with strangers in real time like you do on Discord. This has led me to become less interested in many games and, in some scenerios where the game is held up by an awesome community (Deep Rock Galactic for example), I’ve just completey stopped playing them.
With that in mind, I think I would consider my switch from Reddit to Lemmy somewhat negative, but at no fault of Lemmy. I realize I’m not exactly doing anything to help my problem, especially by only browsing all.
We’re rich!
We’re rich!
Lemmy is great for general shit… News, memes, generic hobbies like cooking that most people might do, etc.
I miss being able to go to /r/Game_Name and being able to talk specifically about that one title. The generic “Gaming/Games” communities are mostly just news about the industry as a whole, which doesn’t really get discussion about the games themselves.
IDGAF though if nobody else uses it, come June 21st, I definitely will be practically spamming the only Elden Ring community on Lemmy with stuff from the DLC as I play through it. Add “Lemmy” to the online group keyword thing in-game :P
Basically reddit stole a huge amount of soul from many communities that were convinced of its good intentions. It was just gathering and still is gathering data to train AI to then use it against us later. There’s no room in my mind to ever go back to that shit hole.
This is literally the only reason I’ve kept using reddit. I hate reddit, but I love the communities I’m involved in and I want to give back to them. As someone that’s at least a little recognizable, I can’t do that on the fediverse, and that sucks. I’m doing my best to encourage people to move over to this side of the fediverse, as well as continuing to use it myself (granted, more mastodon than lemmy, given more of the communities I’m a part of congregate there – anime fans, namely) but it sucks that the exodus wasn’t as big as I’d hope. But i’m doing my best to contribute to the trickle of users over to a part of the internet that does actively feel more joyful than the wastelands of other services. It’s a slow process, I just wish it wasn’t so slow-going
I definitely will be practically spamming the only Elden Ring community on Lemmy
Please do! I try to keep !baldurs_gate_3@lemmy.world alive, not an easy task he he
I just realized the reason I don’t see much activity in the one I was thinking of is because it’s on lemmy.ml and I blocked that instance. I wonder if I could get mod access to the lemmy.world one and fix it up… 🤔
Edit: I did 😃
I miss the niche communities from reddit. Things like emulation, datahoarding, discussions of my local sports teams, etc just aren’t as common here. Conversations are fewer and more far between.
With that said, the conversations here are generally higher quality and I haven’t really seen many bots which is nice.
There are some pain points. The sorting could be improved, I feel like maybe they could have multiple post sort orders like a primary and a secondary. I want to prioritize the top daily posts with the most points, but that makes some smaller communities unusable because they only have one post every few days and all the discussion happens in there. Or, maybe per-community versus home page having different sort orders, something like that. When there’s less content, it’s important for it to be more discoverable. I tried out “Hot” sorting but I didn’t really like it, so then I switched to “Active” sorting and that’s what I’ve been using for the past week.
Have you tried “Scaled” sorting? It was added to lemmy a couple (?) months ago and tries to solve the problem you’ve described of big communities drowning out the smaller ones in a subscription feed.
I tried it just now, and it seems to kind of have the opposite problem. With scaled, I’m having trouble finding the most popular posts of the day/past couple days.
I feel like sorting is probably going to be something that will take years to get it to be quite right. Active does seem to provide a pretty good browsing experience though.
Bummer. It’d be cool if there was customization available on how exactly the sorting parameters work. I imagine, for example, if the weighting for a user’s own sorting could be adjusted at their end, you could get Scaled (or something like it) to get you what you’re after. Probably a pretty niche thing compared to just making sure most users are happy with the sorting most of the time though.
I like to switch between different sorts, because like you I haven’t found the perfect one yet. I do think you should try scaled every now and then, though, just to help boost the smaller communities. It’s fine way to find newer ones when I’m out of content from active or hot.
I’ve been preferring it actually! There’s a sense of calm I get from scrolling through my frontpage and being out of posts at some point, usually like 20mins. I used to spend hours and hours on Reddit, just because it was so easy to keep scrolling infinitely.
At first I thought I should subscribe to more communities to have more content but it’s actually kinda nice to be limited.
I also found a great female weightlifting guide over on hexbear, so I’ve been building muscle since November. Someone must really care to post guides here, so my confidence in it has been a lot better from the start.
And I recently took the plunge and opened a community for posts about Royal Pythons. I’m still the only poster, but it will catch on eventually, and I’ll cultivate it to be better than r/ballpythons from the start. Some of the posts on that subreddit are simply scary haha
I miss some Reddit communities, to be honest. There are no communities here for most of my hobbies and that brings down my enjoyment of the platform. Most things that spark joy in my life are not here.
Another thing that has been bumming me out is that people are way more aggressive now. Lemmy was a very friendly and welcoming environment, even in the most toxic topics you could think of. Lately I find a lot of elitist comments where anyone that doesn’t have the same opinion or needs is objectively an idiot.
On the positive side, I switched to Linux because of Lemmy! And I’m (still) learning Rust!
Make sure you dye your hair a fun color when you get to a comfy point with Rust, that way people know you’re a serious Rust dev (/s).
There are no communities here for most of my hobbies and that brings down my enjoyment of the platform. Most things that spark joy in my life are not here.
Which kind of hobbies do you have? There might be other people interested in them too
I lucked out in this regard.
I was able to join up on sopuli, a local Finnish instance with a small but active number of users, who post about and occasionally comment on local things in !suomi@sopuli.xyz. It’s still quieter that reddit in that regard, but I do at least get some local news.
I’ve also made a huge effort to bootstrap an active anime community here on lemmy, and luckily I’ve not been alone in that. !anime@ani.social has been growing steadily. Instead of getting my anime fanart on reddit like I used to, I upped my usage of pixiv significantly, and then translated that into several communities and activity on lemmy.
If you can, try and get your news from local outlets, and if you actually get into that habit, set up a community for your local area, and start curating articles worth sharing, and posting them there.
Anime and TV discussion threads are what I miss most about reddit.
So long as the anime sub doesn’t overly gatekeep shit near to anime but refuses due to arbitrary FetchFrosh reasons then I’m good.
Stopping shit like Thunderbolt Fantasy or near Chinese /Korean anime from being discussed was absolutely ludicrous. But then they have anime best girl competitions constantly like wtf.
The amount of sidebar bullshittery just gets stupid.
Like animemes and animeirl should really all be combined for now until there’s enough people here.
There has been some drama around anime because the largest communities used to be on .ml. But they made the bonkers decision to defederate ani.social, which then caused people to make new communities on ani.social in order move away from .ml entirely, in response.
The discussions over on !dungeonmeshi@ani.social are likely some of the most active, but the anime community also has them, though not every series has enough watchers to get comments.
For animemes !animemes@ani.social is the most active, ATM.
My problem with ani.social is that it’s full of moe, and I HATE moeshit with a passion.
That’s too bad, because I’m almost solely responsible for that particular genre of post on the threadiverse, and I don’t plan on stopping.
A “passionate loathing” of a concept sounds like a 100% “you” problem.
Also, I list literally every moe community I run in each of the sidebars of every community. It’d take you less than a minute to find and block them all.
And if you’re using “moe” to refer to anime in general, you know v19 introduced instance blocking, right?
Edit: I don’t understand why anyone would bother downvoting me or any of my posts? Do you people think anime-fans will just go away or stop being anime-fans if you disapprove hard enough?
Just to prove the point, I commit to making ten more posts for every downvote I get. I’m up to over 600, configured and ready to go. If you don’t want to see them, just block me already.
I like the idea of moe culture in theory, but on Lemmy, Moe is exclusively drawings of unrealistically busty young girls in provocative poses.
It’s gross.
I block and I block, but there’s always a new subforum on the front page.
I have no clue what you mean by “moe culture”. And please look up what “exclusively” means. Your use of the word here is a bit too far beyond hyperbole.
The word “moe” refers to the attachment people feel for fictional characters, and as different people like different characters, it can be felt towards nearly any type of character. Japanese vtuber Oozaru Subaru used the word to describe how she feels about BT, a 40-ton three-story battle-robot from Titanfall 2.
In the case of the moe communities I run, that means neat character art. Various niches of such, depending on the community and explicitly the kind that doesn’t go all the way to porn. Short of that, it includes the full range from completely platonic to full on implications.
What you think is gross could not interest me any less. The idea that arousal is off-limits in art is a view held by the narrow-minded, prudish and boring. It’s as valid a feeling for an artist to set out to evoke, as any other.
Again, I list every community I run in the sidebars of them all, and the last time I set up three new ones was two months ago, but I’m so sorry I didn’t DM the updated list to you for you to block.
Lemmy scratches the itch that reddit filled and I’m on my phone less. I left before the blackout and I won’t be back.
Since the whole API fiasco and losing reddit is fun, I wiped my reddit account, downloaded my comment history and then used a bot to wipe all my comments and posts, doing so got me banned from commenting on a lot of subs, something to do with the speed that the comments were edited at or something. Either way, I don’t really care.
I still use my reddit account for lurking, there are some niche active subs that still have good information/discussion that unfortunately haven’t been picked up elsewhere, but I have those subs opened in old reddit on Firefox and I don’t venture outside of that, and I’ll never contribute or comment again.
I get that I’m contributing to their traffic still, but I was an active member for 12+ years, and I’m still pissed they fucked the entire community to profit from our fucking content. Definitely won’t be contributing to their content again.
“downloaded my comment history”
But… Why?
Cause it’s fun to sometimes go back and see what you were like at that point in time, just like photos
I miss the sheer size of the site only because I can no longer find my niche. If I want to talk or read about a specific anime unveiling, there’s maybe a few communities on Lemmy but they’re completely dead. Reddit had the benefit of having a single sub for X thing be modestly active instead of as many communities as you like but nobody keeps up with them.
I’m very likely the only siren enthusiast on Lemmy. Even if I opened my own community about them, I doubt anyone would care enough to use it. On Reddit, there is a small but very active sub for siren enthusiasts, although lack of moderation has led to it being overrun by obnoxious kids.
I just post siren stuff on relevant communities here, but they’re not explicitly for that kind of thing and I worry sometimes that I’m annoying people with my hobbies.
You post away. Don’t stress about others not being interested. Some will be, some won’t. The more posting that happens, the more posting will happen. It’s a positive feedback loop and it’s how Reddit grew to it’s current size.
You make a very good point. The ball has to start rolling somewhere, right?
yup, if you can make just one post per day, even if it just to the void, it will be there, with recent posts, in case anyone else interested in the subject moves to lemmy
I agree. We need to grow Lemmy. Not sure how to attract more users.
Let’s take an ad out on Reddit!