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
Seems right, except I don't think that it's mostly people who were banned from Reddit.
There's too few users here to keep the niche communities alive. That's why only politics gets discussed, because that's something affecting everyone regardless of interest.
We also don't 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 it's existence. It turned out that their AMAs was basically a one person job anyway. I don't think they've 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 don't 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 that's 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 it's really funny.
I'm pretty sure Lemmy does have potential to use these communities better. It's 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 shouldn't 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 they're 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 they're banned or not from Reddit, and of they still want to be on Reddit or not.