OK, let’s try this again. My post got auto-filtered. Maybe the image triggered something? Anyways, apologies if this isn’t the right sub for this. I wanted to get an outsider’s perspective on my experience on Lemmy.
Every. Single. Thread. has the word “capitalism” or “Trump” in it somewhere. I’m 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 “you will own nothing and be happy” mentality permeating the consumer space. In many ways that’s why I joined Lemmy, but dang it that doesn’t mean I want to talk about absolutely nothing else. Someone once defined a fanatic as “Someone who won’t change their mind and won’t change the subject” 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 I’ve tried to make the worldbuilding community there more active, but sometimes I feel like I’m the only poster. Then I look at r/worldbuilding, and there’s a glut of really interesting posts showcasing people’s imagination and creativity, and nary a mention of Musk or Epstein in sight.
I understand that people’s political opinions are bound to show up obliquely in even unrelated communities, but I can’t 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 “on”. If you go to mildlyinteresting on lemmy.world right now, you’ll see maybe one or two posts about things like yellow stop signs or three-chambered peanuts, you know, stuff that’s actually mildly interesting, and every other post is stuff like “French president explains the political consequences of AI”. Is that important and worth discussing? Absolutely. What it isn’t is mildly interesting.
When I bring this up on Lemmy, the response is always “Politics is everything and we should never shut up ever!” But even Anne Frank wrote about other stuff in her diary sometimes.
And then there’s the tech side of things. Hope you like Linux, cuz that’s all you’re 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 wasn’t great if you weren’t 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 you’re 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
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In my response to this post earlier, I mentioned that one of the problems (which unfortunately reddit shares too) is hostility to other viewpoints, and this is a good example of how that is perpetuated. When a culture on a platform is too homogeneous, disagreement becomes so shocking that it’s seen as “trolling”, “bad faith”, “offensive”, etc. I think it’s partially a symptom of the reddit-like structure of voting + active moderation, but it’s also very much the culture.
You presented your points well and fairly, and even if you hadn’t, I think we all need to get comfortable with the fact that normal humans sometimes interact in a manner that doesn’t sound like an HR mediation session, and that’s ok too.
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Yeah, and it encourages self-censoring too, on top of the punishing effect of downvotes.
It’s frustrating because I really like the readable structure of Reddit-style platforms and find stuff that follows the Twitter model chaotic and disorganized. The classic forum style is fair, but it’s also hard to keep up with high activity threads unless you spend time to read the whole thing in chronological order. I don’t know what the ideal setup would look like.
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I’ve heard the name before, but unfortunately I never really used those forums back in the day. If it’s still going, I might have to check it out.
I really want to see federated, non-corporate social media succeed.
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A lot of the issues you have with Lemmy is in large part because there’s less people here than Reddit. You really have to curate your subscriptions page to get that kind of algorithm treatment you’re used to from Reddit. There’s a lot of communities here that don’t hit the top posts in all but are still active.
You also kinda have to be the change you want to see and be stubborn about it. Keep posting things you find interesting, throw out those comments on posts even if there’s no other comments or motion. A new community isn’t going to get built up overnight.
lemmy lacks the niche content that reddit has, and people on reddit are unlikely to subscribe to here anytime soon, since most dont even known lemmy exist. often time when they get banned they look for ways to evade those bans instead.
It didn’t, it just sounds like astroturfing and/or being lazy.
If a completely new person went to reddit for the first time (before all the corporate sanitization that has happened in the last couple of years) they were going to see shit they didn’t want to see. They were going to have to put in some effort telling “the system” what they like and what they don’t. After you’ve done that, it was an interesting way to spend your downtime. Without it, it was just the void yelling back. Same is pretty true for Lemmy. If you don’t put in any effort to block the stuff you don’t like and/or subscribe to the stuff you do, you aren’t going to see any value. Yes, it is smaller than reddit - that’s how social media starts. There isn’t going to be 21 years of content chilling out on a platform that is 6 years old.
Also, bitching about hearing about Linux is just lazy. You’re on FOSS social media and get surprised when people there mostly don’t use corporate slop closed source OS’s on their personal machines? Okie Dokie.
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Alas, you’re responding to something they didn’t say. You quoted something they said, then switched the topic to why you can’t use Linux instead of what was quoted.
Your complaint is totally valid, but the quote you uses add the springboard for it was not a good choice.
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My dude, I couldn’t do any of those things on Windows or MacOS either. It is not a skill I have any faith I could even remotely pull off, even if the software was perfect and fantastic.
Feels like part of the problem is exemplified here though, someone mentions Linux and you replied with a novella about why you can’t use it. Yes, there are going to be people recommending Linux here, but it is a generalization to the masses. Not every comment about Linux is an attack against you personally.
Might I offer you
an eggtrying piefed instances in these trying times?Sorry for assuming but if you don’t know Lemmy is just but one way to wrangle together the fediverse into a link aggregator style website. Piefed is another one.
What I like about piefed, and what made me stick, is the on boarding for new users. At least in the flagship instance, piefed.social, new users, up front, would have the option to choose topics you’d like to see, terms you’d like to block and then you’ll have a curated feed ready to go. And at least in piefed.social they keep updating the topics. I’ll say that in comparison, topics is llike multireddits. You can use the instance’s topics, and can make more yourself. IIRC. It works in lieu of the algorithm reddit has. Practically for me it is the algorithm for me.
Also don’t hesitate blocking communities and users. I just started blasting anything I am not interested into my block list.
Edit: another tip. I find using “Hot (Scaled)” sorting will bump up the smaller, lesser active comms’ posts more in your feed. Whether that be All, Local or Subscribed.
If you want technical niche comms, it’s dead. Or it’s overrun with people performatively whinging about AI.
In the last month I’ve just about had enough of it. I’m 3 years into the fediverse and I’m done with the drama.
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The magnifier valve developed for the steamdeck probably works ok? I am not sure if that can be ripped out though.
Screenreader you’re on your own unless you want to run everything through emacs (you should, it’s cool and can do everything they needed to get to the moon and also play tetris)