eh, just lurk. Look, don't stress it. There's no business model here. We don't need growth. It's nice, it's cool, it makes it all worthwhile, but somewhere a greybeard sysadmin (sup Ruud) is running a server for the fuckin lols at his own expense and THAT is the fediverse. It's just all those people chained together, and we need to spread that load across as many people as possible.

This Fediverse thing does NOT require, but it does accept that someday you might want to bite some hosting fees and do your own little part, just one more instance, one more server, picking up your load and that of a few of your friends. If somebody is hosting an open server, they're already okay with you freeloading, so freeload to your heart's content.

For every one person who is willing to nerd down and host something, we need like 100 people or more to fuck around in the thing being hosted and make it worth doing. It's all set up so that if the person who is paying to host gets exhausted, well, those 100 people aren't screwed. It's set up so hosters can drop in and out at will. The Fediverse expects and plans for the person who is hosting your nonsense on their own dime to say fuck this, and drop out, and yet you have a setup that leaves you whole, you might not even notice. You can at least migrate elsewhere with minimum friction.

Just engage with shit. Updoot it or whatever. Fuck around and be here. Login and poke around. None of us will see it but the person hosting the instance (waddup Ruud) will see it, and that's enough. Your engagement is not the difference between life or death. An exponential growth in users is a requirement for commercial socials to thrive but here? That just makes it more expensive for your gracious host to host you. If another 50,000 people show up tomorrow that will probably kill the whole damn thing, it's why Beehaw is having problems, they were planning on 200 users a month and got 3000 because Reddit.

This whole Fediverse thing is what is left of the Old Way, where places to be online existed because some normal person wanted to put up a server for a forum or whatever and it was running out of a box in their bathroom.

The good news is that all those people are pushing 50 now, they have spouses and children, they aren't crazy people. The deranged bastards who ran a box in the bathroom like they were the Emperor of Fuck Town have all died from probably substance abuse and what is left is sane people running servers out of their bathroom (for cooling purposes) on a remarkably high level because that's their job. They run servers for like, Amazon Web Services or some shit, so running a Fediverse instance is child's play. That is what you're enjoying right now.

Or they've paid cloud hosting fees so that even though they have no idea what the fuck they're doing some greybeard sysadmin is handling every thing that matters. That's the situation. That's why this clown show runs a lot better than it should.

So don't stress lurking. If you were a lurker on Reddit, lurk here. Just hang. We already have a Shitposting subLemmy or whatever, so go post shit, or don't. Don't worry about it. If you don't personally contribute to the exponential growth needed for a commercial social to thrive, nothing bad will happen. You could be here for a year just lurking and then get inspired to post your ass off, that works too. You got options.

Don't worry about working for it. It's not necessary. Welcome to nonprofit social media.

Today you’re planting the roses instead of smelling them.

Don't forget that all of these services are rough around the edges when they start out. As a developer, I can tell you from experience that it is 100% impossible to predict how a large group of people will use your software. It always has growing pains as real humans come in and tell you what they need from it. Reddit has had a long time to gather a community and to not only implement but to polish the behavior and performance of its features.

My point is that you're probably not wrong to not love lemmy or kbin yet. But that things will get better eventually, given continued community and developer investment.

It'll get easier. We all had issues when we first got here. Now it's as simple as browsing...well...reddit. Lol.

What exactly are you looking for? Its easier to look for something specific than search in the dark.

Still, here's a list to get you started. Awesome that you contribute!

Old Redditor here and I remember when Reddit was much smaller and for lack of st better term cooler. It was easier to comment, meaning add to the discussion, contributing to the community. As Reddit got bigger and bigger I lurked more. Top comments buried by stupid puns and comments trying for quick and easy laughs.

Don't sweat it. Lurk as much as you like. Comment and post if you want. It's all okay.

Remember, you can join kbin communities through lemmy too! Find magazines (what they call communities) through kbin.social and join them through your lemmy instance/server.

Use lemmyverse.net to look for lemmy comms (I find that browse.feddit.de doesn't show some comms, not sure why it became the most recommended one)

And remember not to join beehaw comms through a lemmy.world acc, because they'll be empty on your end soon (they've defederated lemmy.world). Join alternate comms in other instances instead.

Edit: Very useful post for finding communities to join

Fwiw there's these two communities for shitposts in this community:

https://lemmy.world/c/196/
https://lemmy.world/c/lemmyshitpost/

And similar to 196 here is 196 but blahaj.zone:
https://lemmy.world/c/196@lemmy.blahaj.zone

I had the same feeling. Then I realise that we don’t have shitpost but quality post.

There is less, but more valuable. As a consequence as well there is way less toxicity, which is quite nice.

It makes looking at Lemmy more relaxing that scrolling Reddit, imo.

Eh, you do you. All the posts asking people not to lurk sounds like extroverted people telling introverted people "Just be social!". All they're doing is pushing people away.

If people cant do what the want to do, be who they want to be, they won't stay.

I think you'll find the more you use lemmy the better the experience becomes. Better start shit posting (;

I haven't seen it posted yet so here's another place for memes if that's what you're looking for: https://lemmy.world/c/memes@lemmy.ml

I was having similar problems but recently installed jerboa for lemmy and my experience is way better. Try it out, it really made the difference for me.

This or any of these not shitpost-y enough for you?

I had the same feeling. Then I realise that we don’t have shitpost but quality post.

There is less, but more valuable. As a consequence as well there is way less toxicity, which is quite nice.

It makes looking at Lemmy more relaxing that scrolling Reddit, imo.

there's no pressure my dude, ultimately it's just an internet forum. Everyone adding their own content, even shit posting, helps the verse get better. Don't be afraid to start your own mag and spread your ideal. build and they shall come.

It's not big enough yet to have an endless amount of content to scroll through. It's just part of change, maybe try looking at something other than shitposts for awhile

If you can, stay patient :) if you can’t bear how it’s empty, I say it’s totally fine to go back to reddit or use both!

For me I’m usually selecting Show the feed of all communities, since I’m realizing there’s new content across the fediverse maybe every 30min to an hr, rather than like on reddit tons every second.

I find every post being made has a lot of engagement and fun convo - especially about reddit migration - so at the moment I tune into everything.
Just now there was a new post from the Memes mag, and earlier I saw some from foodporn

It will take some time for communities here to get anywhere near as big. One thing you can do if you want to get your "fix" from Reddit still, but also want contribute to this, is take any memes/shitposts or whatever you like on there and repost it to the appropriate community.

For me the sense of novelty I get on Lemmy is finding new instances and checking for communities I'm interested in. Sort of like finding a new subreddit but more like when you find r/earthporn and then discover their whole subreddit network. What I don't get though is why there's all these community stubs but hardly any content.