On day one, I joined and had no communities. So I just started browsing, and being like "Oh, join this, and join that, and join this, and this, and this and this and this one too"

Then about a year later after the dust had settled, and I had fallen into my habits, and such, I noticed that I was subscribed to about 100 communities. But I only ever saw content from about 15 or so of the bigger ones. So I decided to revisit each community individually that I had joined. A few of them still had "Join Pending" in yellow. A year later, with no content in that year, and my join was still pending. A vast number of these communities were abandoned. I hadn't considered to check for activity as I was joining these. I just said "A community for SNES? Uhhh, yes please!" But nobody posts there.

So I decided to start posting in these abandoned communities. I got some upvotes. So people were seeing the content I was posting. But I didn't get any replies, or see any further activity of other people posting new topics. Which I really don't understand the concept of "I'll join a community, but I won't contribute". Especially when it's a dead community, and you could reply to the ONLY guy posting there.

I also tried posting in the three different Cleveland communities I saw. I live here, and I loved the Cleveland subreddit over on the other site. I won't explain all the little localisms that we would discuss there. If you're not from here, you're not going to understand the idea of seeing a billboard on the side of a highway, which is nothing more than a closeup of a bald mans eyebrows. No product. No text. Just an extreme closeup of a bald mans eyebrows. Out of towners would see that and be like "What the hell???" but if you know, you know.

But here, even though there's three different Cleveland communities, none of them are active. There's a few people who post. I'm still on all three of the front pages of those communities for posts I had about 2 years ago. And only one of the three communitys would actually reply.

My point in all of this is, you can and should join niche communities, but also.....the rest of you need to pull your fucking weight around here, and engage these communities! I can't be the ONLY one posting. That's not how being social works! Typically, with online conversations, I will say one thing, and then you respond back with something like "SHUT THE FUCK UP LOSER!!!". At least, that's what I've found to be historically how these things go. It doesn't work without the replies!