OK, letās try this again. My post got auto-filtered. Maybe the image triggered something? Anyways, apologies if this isnāt the right sub for this. I wanted to get an outsiderās perspective on my experience on Lemmy.
Every. Single. Thread. has the word ācapitalismā or āTrumpā in it somewhere. Iām sick to death of it. Even though I agree with a lot of the sentiment, the erosion of the middle class, the concentration of wealth, the consolidation of media, the āyou will own nothing and be happyā mentality permeating the consumer space. In many ways thatās why I joined Lemmy, but dang it that doesnāt mean I want to talk about absolutely nothing else. Someone once defined a fanatic as āSomeone who wonāt change their mind and wonāt change the subjectā and that fits the average Lemming to a T.
And the only communities devoid of politics are also devoid of content. I do a lot of worldbuilding stuff, and Iāve tried to make the worldbuilding community there more active, but sometimes I feel like Iām the only poster. Then I look at r/worldbuilding, and thereās a glut of really interesting posts showcasing peopleās imagination and creativity, and nary a mention of Musk or Epstein in sight.
I understand that peopleās political opinions are bound to show up obliquely in even unrelated communities, but I canāt overstate how monomaniacal Lemmings are about it. The pic I originally tried to post was a screenshot of a completely non sequitur post in an unrelated community (sorry for the vagueness I think the specifics may have also tripped the auto filter). And Lemmings are always āonā. If you go to mildlyinteresting on lemmy.world right now, youāll see maybe one or two posts about things like yellow stop signs or three-chambered peanuts, you know, stuff thatās actually mildly interesting, and every other post is stuff like āFrench president explains the political consequences of AIā. Is that important and worth discussing? Absolutely. What it isnāt is mildly interesting.
When I bring this up on Lemmy, the response is always āPolitics is everything and we should never shut up ever!ā But even Anne Frank wrote about other stuff in her diary sometimes.
And then thereās the tech side of things. Hope you like Linux, cuz thatās all youāre going to see. And if you dare suggest that Linux may not be the right choice for your blind grandmother, you get eviscerated in the comments.
Granted, Reddit itself used to have a similar problem. It attracted a very specific type of user (neckbeards) and the experience wasnāt great if you werenāt one, but ironically the same popularization of Reddit that lead to its platform decay also solved this homogeneity problem. Similarly, Tankies and their ilk seem to flock to Lemmy, explaining the tone of the discourse.
Others have pointed out that Reddit alternatives tend to attract people who were banned from Reddit (remember Voat?) and I think that explains a lot.
In summary, Lemmy seems great if youāre a Marxist who uses Linux, but pretty much nobody else. Am I crazy? Should I try to stick with it in the hope it gets better?
so how do we get this guy on Linux? lol
Seems right, except I donāt think that itās mostly people who were banned from Reddit.
Thereās too few users here to keep the niche communities alive. Thatās why only politics gets discussed, because thatās something affecting everyone regardless of interest.
We also donāt have a lot of original content. Neither did Reddit originally, but they managed to get a massive userbase through the AMA subreddit giving users the possibility to ask celebrities questions. This often got picked up by the tabloid news which spread the word of itās existence. It turned out that their AMAs was basically a one person job anyway. I donāt think theyāve done anything remotely useful since that to justify their userbase.
Anyway. I kind of like the slower pace here. I went to Reddit the other day after years of hiatus. I donāt know why anyone would want to sign up for that site anymore. Everything there seems to drown in advertising and generic shit. Even if Lemmy should shut down for some reason, I would not go back to the garbage piles on Reddit.
I use a local instance and I think they do a good job of facilitating debate and local insights on local news. I suppose thatās the main purpose of this kind of forum. All the other larger and more international instances are just entertainment to me. I could get by just fine without seeing another Trump meme ever again. Unless itās really funny.
Iām pretty sure Lemmy does have potential to use these communities better. Itās a lot of clever people. I think if anyone can and wants to make more original content with Lemmy as a base, just for the sake of it, they should just go ahead do it. The admins and mods are too busy running the sites, so we shouldnāt expect them to it.
Understandably, artists probably want a larger market exposure for a start, but other kinds of projects might be suitable. I remember someone have tried making a group for game development on Reddit several times. It always fails, because theyāre too big and not committed. I also participated in a sub for random users writing on the same book. That was mildly succesful, and a lot easier to do. Stuff like that might make sense to try.
Lemmy is split into four categories across two criteria:
Whether theyāre banned or not from Reddit, and of they still want to be on Reddit or not.