Hey folks,

For anyone who logs in directly to our instance, glad to have you here!

I'm still getting everything set up, but so you know our server is hosted at home for now, which means my availability is subject to my ISP and my power. Tonight I had a power outage that while lasting only a few minutes, caused us to go out for a couple of hours.

Tomorrow I'll be setting up high availability so if the server goes offline it should fail over to another instance. I'll also be setting up some health checks so I can respond quicker. (I was on date night and just got home)

Thanks for understanding and being here, and apologies about the outage

Lemmy is a bit different for my friends on Reddit, and it can be intimidating to wrap your mind around. Let's talk about the big differences.

This is mostly another explanation of the documentation, which is found here

Lemmy is Federated

Okay, what is "Federated". Essentially it means that it is both one giant service, and many small services at the same time. If you're a Discord user think of Discord. You join a Discord server and in there you have many channels you watch. Multiple servers may have the same channels.

Lemmy is similar, but not the same. Lemmy has multiple instances (similar to servers), and in those instances we have communities like Subreddits. Take here for example, we have the community taylorswift.

However, that community is not only available to people on this instance. That community is shared (or federated) out to other instances as well, so no matter what instance you sign up for you can access communities here, and vis-versa.

If you've used Mastadon, it's the same concept.

Signing up

Signing up for Lemmy is as easy as any platform, but you will need to choose where you want to sign in from. You can choose any instance, including this one, or you can use another instance, like lemmy.ml or beehaw.org. Any public lemmy instance will be able to access content on this instance, so pick what works for you. To be clear, you can choose any instance and view content from any other instance from it, you will not be missing out because you chose one instance or another. If you're unsure you can probably safely choose https://lemmy.ml, however they have been extremely overloaded to to the migration from Reddit and are requesting to use other instances.

Long story short, if you like pop music and plan on spending a lot of time here, go ahead and register here :)

Accessing other content

As mentioned, you are not locked into the communities on this instance, you can choose any instance and subscribe to it here. I may have even already subscribed to a community you care about, just click on "Communities" in this server and you can see the existing ones.

If you want more, simply hit the search bar in the top right and search paste in the URL of the community you'd like to join. Once loaded (and it may not show a loading screen, there's a bug where it says "no results" give it a few seconds and it should pop up), then click "Subscribe". Again may take a couple moments while everything syncs between the servers, but you'll now be able to access your subscribed content here.

A great place to look is here. Just copy and paste any of the URLs into the search bar and click subscribe as shown above. (Fair warning, there's a lot of weird ones, alt left and right, just don't be surprised. Gotta scroll through those)

After a couple seconds it should show as Joined and be available to to you under "Subscribed"!

Hello there!

Maybe you stumbled on this from other Lemmy instances, maybe this was linked to you from Reddit, either way, hello there!

tldr - This instance aims to be a fun place for all things pop music and beyond. Share your theories, hype up your favorites, talk about the latest drops, and of course, full clowning is encouraged.

For Redditors, what is this, how does this work?

For many of you, you will hit this post from a link you've seen on Reddit. I am like you, I am a fellow "Reddit Refugee".

I've been on Reddit for 12 years, I originally came over from the original Digg migration. In that time I've seen some of the best Reddit moments. I was there all the way back from the Narwhal Bacons at Midnight (we were so cool back then), to the Poop Knife, to the original /r/Place, all the way up to the most recent /r/Place. All along the way, I always felt a sense of pride and accomplishment too.

In that time though, I've seen my favorite platform go through ups and downs, but most recently I've noticed that I haven't been enjoying it. My number one stop to see memes, cat pictures, and blow off steam has slowly but steadily become one of my main sources of anxiety. From cat scrolling to doom scrolling, and no matter how many subs I removed, it got worse. It's undeniable to me now, while Reddit is still mostly user-content, the most "engaging" content is promoted in a way to keep you engaged, even if that damaging to our mental health.

So why now? Well Reddit, as many of you have probably seen, is starting to charge for API access. For those who don't know, the API is the way applications talk to each other, and so Reddit is starting to charge for other programs to talk to Reddit. You may think "but how does this affect me, the average user", and for many of you it won't, but for a large chunk of us users it means that we are losing how we interact with Reddit. Apps like Apollo, Reddit Sync, BaconReader, RedditIsFun - all will be rendered useless. A lot of you will say "Sure, but you can use the Reddit app", and you're absolutely right, but for us it feels like the official end of the Reddit we used to know. It's something that Reddit promised us will never change, and by it changing now it shows the Reddit we used to know is gone.

On top of just our personal wants, some groups depend on these apps. The official Reddit app is not ADA compliant, and is unusable to those with disabilities. Most people can only interact with Reddit through 3rd party apps, and when asked about including more support in the official Reddit app it has fallen on (for lack of a better term) deaf ears.

Some helpful links from other people, in case anyone has missed them:

• Apollo Developer explaining how it effects his app
• Mod post on how these changes will effect Reddit communities
• Hour long interview with Apollo Dev for more detail
• Apollo will be closing on June 30th due to Reddit's changes
• 3rd Party App infographic

The writing has been on the wall for a while, but now that it's happening - well to me, a long standing Reddit user, means it's time to look for (or at least prepare) alternatives.

That sounds arrogant because "We still enjoy Reddit, just because it's different", and I don't have a comeback for that, but for me, I'm tired of Reddit constantly changing things for what I see as the worse. I want the platform where we carefree send cat pictures, memes, and have stupid phrases.

And now we're here!

Okay, but why PopTalk?

Good question! Undoubtedly some of you will be coming from Lemmy and see this instance, roll your eyes, and make fun of it - and hey that's okay, we're on the internet! (Just please don't do it here)

However, the most fun and engaging community for me personally, out of all of the years on Reddit, was /r/TaylorSwift. I've loved most of the posts there, I love the Swifties, even the ones with the most outrageous theories, even the ones who claim that 1989 (Taylor's Version) is coming out soon. (It totally is though, right, right?). The swifties have been a great community, I've loved hyping the tour, the music, it's been so much fun.

If Reddit is going to shrink, one thing I'd like to have is a landing place for those friends I've made. At the very least, if anyone is going to have their app removed and are looking for alternatives, I'd like to make sure there's a good place for their content (beyond other celebrity places that devolve into NSFW-ish image spamming).

Of course I don't aim this to be limited to just the Swifties, but any and all pop music. I frequented /r/PopHeads a lot, I'm a fan of Carly Rae Jepsen, LadyGaga, Ed Sheeran, and Lana Del Rey. (And Lana fans, while I agree she's still alternative, she was featured on Taylor's album and she sold out her show in Mexico in 4 hours, so I'd say her fans are welcome here ;)

Community Creation is currently open so feel free to start communities you may enjoy, even memes (YouBelongWithMemes reborn?) and circle jerk style communities are welcome. I don't want just straight up hate, I'll be moderating that, but I also know ribbing is cathartic.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading through my mantra. I have no idea if this will be successful, maybe it'll only be a few people who are excited about a few shows, and for those few people I'll say thanks for dropping by, I hope we'll have a good time!

Next Steps

Check out my other post on "Lemmy for Redditors" I wrote up here, I hope that will help most people through the known pain points of Lemmy. Once your logged in please comment here if you have any questions for me.