Truck to avoiding that is to never get gold. Took me 10 years to never get gold once. I'm good at what I don't do.

I've been being a bit more lax with what I'd ask compared to Reddit and what others have been asking too, I can't exactly google especially kbin questions and people have been helpful, and I've tried to be helpful back where I can.
Unless I hear otherwise I'm going to try to engage way more on here than I'm used to, adds content and starts conversations. I may make a cheese ball or bad joke here and there, maybe get an answer wrong but hey you miss all the omelettes you don't swing at.

I quit when rif went down. I've never used an official app, desktop site, mobile site etc. Rif was Reddit to me for 10 years. Maybe leaving as a collective will make some difference, maybe not, but I'm going to start being more firm on how much I'll let companies try to push me around expecting me to just take it. They built it on our backs, then just took it away so a literal select few can cash in, when they are already filthy rich and had other options.

I've been explaining it to others as if you broke your phone. Now it's frustrating getting used to a new phone, but it has lots of new features you never even thought of that make up for the inconveniences. Sure I could go back to my old phone, it's comfortable to use, but the screen is broken and it cuts me now and again, and over time it'll cut me more often. I'd rather get used to the new phone.

This past year I've dealt with food going up, gas, utilities, rent, hell cigarettes and even beer, my fishing license went up. Every single nook and cranny they can pull a cent from you they will.
I'm done choosing to let them. If they want my data, my attention, my content, they can pull it from my cold dead hands damnit.

Ok weird ass Braveheart speech over and out.

Looks like English to me, but I'm no expert.

Time will tell if there's any difference due to people leaving. I think the reason I find it interesting and others do as well is because we aren't given any hard data on the actual amount of users left, how many decided to stay and only lurk going forward, how much of the user base were heavy contributors etc. The pushback also was adamant that there would be zero change, and if they're right then they're right, not going to hurt my feelings.
While I think it sucks that they chose to go the direction they went, which with how much I hate ads forced my hand to walk away, I'm not upset and deeply affected to my core, I know Reddit will keep chugging along without me.
Whole point of this post was to discuss the changes that happened due to us leaving and if they were noticeable.

I don't expect anything positive to come out of Reddit after the direction they chose to go. Spez has proven who he is and what's important to him and that won't change. I was just curious as to what effect no 3rd party apps was having on the user experience, since they kept saying it's only 10% and that they didn't care and wouldn't be noticed.

Thanks, you said it better than I could.

That's kinda what I figured, didn't expect it to be a ghost town, so that makes sense.
I could tell by the loud users declaring that Reddit is gonna be better and everyone else were just whiners that content would slow down quite a bit. Didn't get a vibe of those types putting out engaging content haha.

You better tell the mods to delete a good portion of the posts and this entire magazine then... I think it's perfectly normal question to ask and be curious about, if you don't want to hear about Reddit maybe don't sub to this magazine and contribute to the conversation about it?

I don't think that your experience is the standard norm. I've never heard of swing dancing in my city, let alone friends that are all off swing dancing at night. Not sure if you're in a much older demographic but the younger generations are not into that sort of stuff? I think COVID may have also affected a lot of group socializing growth in general too.
But if I had to guess it would be one of two things, one: people just aren't really into it, socially or culturally. Two: you may have meant well but it comes across very negative, and I'd assume many people don't dance because of people like you and your opinions and judgements in regards to gatekeeping what is dancing and what isn't. If I went out on a dancefloor and looked over and saw disapproval and judgement from your eyes I'd feel pretty uncomfortable and remove myself from that situation.

I think it maybe important for us to all collectively shift our views on commenting on "old" posts. I'm going to give myself a 2 week window on commenting on threads. If everyone had this kinda attitude it may help with engagement short term til things start picking up long term.

Reddit was something unique and personal to each user. Some it was new, some it was the only place to find specific tech or other advice that wasn't corrupted by ads and algorithms on goggle and other big corporations.
Reddit was my way of disengaging from world news before I knew about anxiety, and how things could affect me and become personal even though I had no way to help world events. So I used it to personalize my mental diet, if I was creative I could sub to many craft subs like leather or metal etc, it's where I went to get other perspectives on movies and content that I didn't fully understand.
End of the day, is all that possible still on Reddit, kinda, but it's going away, and they pushed me personally to leave as I could see it was becoming google/Facebook, ad algorithms to push what people pay for or get paid for. So time to reset.
Become involved, I'm way more involved and adding to discussions on the new sites I'm on. Everyone adding comments and posts and perspectives and opinions are building this up from bottom up.
You are the future, make your perspective part of the future by helping guide these new sites to something we can be proud of.