Be the change you want to see.

You want a deep conversations, you never ask on what. Why pontificate on the reason Baja blast gelato is the color it is and not the fact it's only available through the app and capitalism in general. Where are you subscribed to what are you seeing and what in general are you truly looking for?

Edit: Is this the kind of depth but in text for what you're looking for?

Lemmy's format just kind of sucks for discussions and visibility. If you comment on a post from a year ago, you can expect that to not been seen by anyone ever.

Lemmy is primarily a link aggregator, just like Reddit. It also happens to somewhat work for Q&A and help forums, but fundamentally Lemmy is more oriented towards new content.

The more classic forum format is better for discussions because replies bump the thread up to bring new attention to it.

Also a lot of people just don't give a shit about random people's random thoughts, that's why I'm not on Mastodon and never really used Twitter either. I don't know why people feel the need to dump all their thoughts on the Internet, like I care that a celebrity is on a plane or enjoying a nice meal.

Lemmy is about topics, not people, that's what I like about it. I don't care about people.

Lemmy has both thoughts+observations, and links+questions+memes. It's just a lot more of the later than the former.

There are a thousand potential reasons for that. I believe that a few of the ones that you mentioned have some impact, but there are two that you didn't mention that might be extra relevant:

1. Lemmy starting out as a federated replica of a link aggregator, also mostly about links, questions, and memes; this is bound to replicate a certain culture.
2. The Zeitgeist of the internet of the 20s is considerably less kind to people who form their own thoughts.

On how to solve this: perhaps the first step could/should be to co-ordinate with other people who have the same desire, and nurture communities with that goal.

the fediverse is young, and still incorporating itself into something awesome... something more structured. in the meantime, ive found myself falling backwards into some amazing conversations with clearly very intelligent people.

im not sure why your experience is different, but im having a blast

Typing long form stuff on a smartphone sucks

This is a problem on the internet in general now. People used to have active conversations on the internet, and type multi-paragraph long replies to each other. Each new platform has shortened the attention span of people on the internet, spoon fed more nibble sized content to people, and reduced their reactions to the tap of a button. It's really sad, because I love talking to people online, and it doesn't really happen now. I think part of it is that we're almost all using phone keyboards like you said, but a lot of it is probably due to the changing internet landscape. We're not participants anymore. This isn't our Internet. It belongs to the corporations, and we're consumers.

As to your title, who says it isn't? Just because it isn't as commonly used that way doesn't mean it isn't for that. Also, my understanding is that Lemmy was created as a federated alternative to Reddit, and while I would say that Reddit did have more engagement for general discussion, it was/is probably better known for questions, links, and memes just as you're seeing on Lemmy.

What happens to your thoughts? Do you turn them all in the form of a question?

This next part is just my opinion, but regarding this quote and your title contrasting commentary to questions, in my opinion posts with questions are likely to be more engaging as they give a direct point for responses. If you're just posting your thoughts and ideas into the void, people are less likely to engage with them unless you are saying something particularly compelling or controversial.

If Lemmy had more of ourselves in this way, maybe it would be a healthier place.

Healthier in what way? Size of userbase? Number of posts/comments? Or are you referring to the quality of discourse and level of courtesy or toxicity between users?

Why is Lemmy not a place for thoughts and observations, rather than just links, questions, and memes?

First off, Lemmy isn't "a place", each instance is unique in their own way. You are quite welcome to set up an instance around this concept, it's not hard.

Have you never been to !casualconversation@lemm.ee?

Our demographics don't support uncertainty. Most of us are here because we are certain distributed is better than centralized, community run is better than corporate run, FOSS is better than proprietary, etc. The sign-up process discourages casual users, so most users have made up their minds to be here.

For better or worse, we're highly opinionated, and we've decided some things are bad and others are good. Very few topics are open to discussion because we've already decided.

And if we haven't decided on something, it's usually because we've decided it doesn't matter, so we'll ignore it.

It isn't a sustainable community, but I fit in, so I'm still here.

You either want mastodon which has a higher proportion of thoughts and conversations, or a classic forum which is entirely dedicated to long form thoughts and discussions.

Isn’t that what Mastodon is for?

I think its just down to the lack of users, and esspecially lack of creators. There just isn't many people who care enough about a subject to write multiple paragraphs on it, nonetheless to an audience of half-a-dozen users, who likely also have an extreme aversion to monitization of said content given Lemmy's culture. For most users, there isn't even karma to act as an incentive to post.

I sometimes post thoughts/questions and usually get some interesting discussion, so it is worth it. I think I also prefer seeing other posts like this. I think that the reason for seeing more posts which are links is because a) it's easier and b) most online content is somewhere on the clickbait spectrum and the result of that is manifested here on Lemmy much the same as it would be anywhere else.

Edit: Also, I'm upvoting your post because I think you are essentially calling for firsthand thoughtful discussion, which is a good thing for everyone.

When a headline or thread starts with "Why..." you can often reply to it simply by repeating the question without the first word and emphasising the new first word, eg:

Is Lemmy not a place for thoughts and observations, rather than just links, questions, and memes?

I'm not sure that's true as a starting point. So not point trying to answer "why" it might be the case.

I'm pretty much happy with conversations I see here. Plenty of quality discussion threads in AskLemmy, Gaming and Technology and Anime. Would be nice to see even more ofc, but Lemmy's not that big yet I guess. Questions is something that often starts interesting discussions.

Of course that depends where you read and post on Lemmy. I don't really agree with the premise of your question, so I can't give you a good answer except to say look around. Depending on the topic, you can find people who are going into great detail about their own thoughts and presenting arguments and facts and whatnot, all as might be appropriate to the topic at hand. I'm not really sure what you're looking for. It sounds like maybe you want to start a blog, and if you want to start a blog, go start one. You can even post the links here, for an extra touch of irony.

I don't know (or, frankly, care much) about the "why", and I like Lemmy the way it is, but if your looking for deeper discussion and longer posts I do recommend Tildes, if you can get an invite: https://tildes.net/ It's not open to the public, so the post volume is quite low, but most responses are well thought out, longer and often thought-provoking. I don't post much there, but enjoy reading it a lot.

Anecdotally I'll say I feel like I used to be in the habit of typing out responses to posts daily when I first started using the internet. It feels like that was slowly trained out of me as the content and the responses got worse and worse (especially with the advent of LLMs). Trying to change that on Lemmy.

Most of the threads I've started (on other accounts) have been about ideas rather than events or people and they've reliably made it to the front page, so there's definitely demand for it. There's probably several reasons for why threads like that are so rare, but I'd imagine a big one is fear. The reception on Lemmy to a post like that can, and usually will be quite hostile. People do have opinions and they're quick to hop in and tell you're wrong about something but at the same time they'll think twice before putting their own ideas under public scrutiny.

Because it's an echo chamber. Not a forum.

not a place for thoughts and observations

Because there are (nearly) normal people on lemmy.

Normal people are lazy, especially when it comes to using the brain for more than 2 seconds in a row.