I wish there were more people here, but the slower pace of posts has helped me spend less time on my phone. It's not quite as good as reddit was for me when reddit was good. But Lemmy is easily good enough for my needs and is better than any alternative including the what is left of reddit.
Well it's been 10 months since I left redis and spun up my own instance. It's been a fun little ride with a very fast surge at the start and a bit of a plato. Lemmy seems to be gaining traction again, which is good.
How has it changed me? - I guess I actuall spend more time here than I did on reddit - as I find the quality of comments far better and more enjoyable
As an admin / owner I have had to see and deal with some stuff that I wish I hadn't had to see - there are some sick fucks out there
I kinda feel like I have more of a persona here? Lemmy is a smaller community than Reddit and I recognize people more than I used to. Read: I ever look at usernames. I've bothered with an avatar, for instance.
Something I still miss is the "brain trust" that was Reddit. You could ask "experimental exo-ornithologists of Reddit" and get at least ten of them. Reddit had a culture of tracking down mysteries, I don't think we have anything like The Most Mysterious Song On The Internet or Celebrity Number Six. I miss stuff like that.
Things like that come with a larger community. However, there are certainly message boards where exo-ornithologists gather where you could likely get a better answer than reddit, and if it's not actually enough of an interest to look for, then does the answer to your question actually matter? Knowledge is great, knowledge is power, but fleeting questions on a subject you won't think about for another decade is just mental masturbation.
Lemmy is a smaller community than Reddit and I recognize people more than I used to. Read: I ever look at usernames.
That's a little terrifying for me as someone who likes using reddit-likes for the anonymity lol. Although on reddit I used to recognise some usernames in smaller subreddits where there were a few active posters.
being a smaller community, i feel like i'm actually contributing when i post something, instead of just adding to a sea of noise
it also helps that i've come up with this new "persona". i'm able to be more of the real me than i can with my main account.
it's like half way between anonimity and publicity. this account has very little connection to my meatspace existance, so i feel safe to say anything. but at the same time i'm not gonna act like some 4chan user. halfway_neko's a good girl lol
Probably because of the instance I happened to join (for entirely accidental reasons), I can feel myself being pulled in to an information bubble for sure and that is to a subtle extent influencing and perhaps hardening my pre-existing views about the world at large. I don't think that's a good thing exactly, though I'm not sure it's entirely bad as before I'd just kind of given up thinking about a lot of that stuff since my early 20s when I had to start focussing on other things and it's more like a return to form. I'm, perhaps misguidedly, okayish with this development because this bubble, this biased lens is so stark that I feel like it's hopefully less easy to end up being totally subsumed (maybe I'm just telling myself that). Of course, like everyone's favourite kind of bubbles, it's obviously one that's reinforcing of my own tendencies anyway, the folks here just take it a far greater extreme in rhetoric, to an extent seeing the kind of blind anger and mechanical doctrinaire response to even the most tangentially related of topics has kind helped me see where my stop is on that train of thought. Another way it's influenced me has been to strengthen my existing preference and respect for FOSS software and I think being here is gradually increasing this preference and will likely result in even greater adoption on my part.
I think it’s laudable to be aware of when we are only surrounding ourselves with like-minded people, but I also wouldn’t put too much stock in this Internet narrative that there is some morality to “avoiding echo chambers” or whatever.
You should always introduce yourself to a diverse range of (valid) opinions and ideas. But it is also OK to have spaces that are reserved for people that make you comfortable/are more like-minded. We do this in our daily lives too. The internet isn’t some sacrosanct space where we have to be engaged with people we disagree with constantly.
It’s the difference between a support community for LGBT people, and /r/conservative. The former is good and healthy, the latter is toxic and distorting.
Comment less, but I've enjoyed it much more. There's so much shit slinging in reddit. Every comment thread eventually devolves into one guy with an out of pocket comment or hot take, or miscommunication even, and then everyone dunking on the guy. So much negativity.
The endless trains of people responding that clearly saw the other comments but are commenting as if they didn’t was - and I imagine continues to be - maddening over at Reddit.
Spez did manage to understand something real about Reddit: that many people (not all but enough for the sake of his profits, he hoped) want to speak, rather than listen. Never mind about feeling heard or it being worthwhile by adding anything to the conversation, just simply, plainly, shouting your opinions into the void. Like Discord chat except based on topics rather than channels.
Those of us who HATE that about Reddit, and want a greater balance, enjoy it here much more.:-)
It’s a very interesting way of putting it. I’m gonna be chewing on that for a little while. I think you’re definitely hitting at something very important. I’m also loath to admit that I know I have brought some of my nasty Reddit habits here. For instance, sometimes I can get pretty combative in the comments. Not all the time, but sometimes I look back on the way I talk to people and think “jfc I am not actually that nasty of a person,” but something about being online certainly draws it out of me unfortunately, so clearly I’m capable of it.
Even toddlers learn to speak first by babbling, and only later to converse and communicate with someone rather than talk at them. Some technological platforms have even evolved to facilitate that - like instead of "^This" and "I also choose this guy's wife", what about emoji reactions that do not extend the length that you have to scroll through to find the next substantive comment? Except that - this is the enshittification part - when ads can be placed in-between comments, or even someone hopes that they could be in the future, or more likely they want to purposefully obscure the signal so that "x number of comments appear on this post", rather than "x number of comments + y number of emoji reactions", that works against their profit model. (and yeah, there was "awards", but who even used those, plus they just were not... good, especially for this purpose)
About both that and being combative: fwiw, we all are that way - the good thing is that some of us are honest about it, which gives hope for change.:-) But we all will have bad days when we are cranky and especially when we feel "attacked" we feel the need to strike back, and the feelings at least are not wrong, just how we handle them may not be so productive.
So I get you - I am the same way, though fortunately less and less over time. Leaving Reddit truly has helped me leave a lot of that behind. Over there that is just the "expectation" that people encourage you to do, but the culture is better here.:-)
For the better :)
I haven't been active in online communities for over ten years. It's been fun to contribute with comments and posts and I feel like I'm finding my voice again.
Used to be a powermod on reddit. Got banned. Kinda miss fucking with shitters but beyond that I enjoy the extra time each day to do literally anything else.
It’s made me realise there are a lot of honest-to-Darwin communists and people who believe the West is pure evil and China & Russia is a better alternative. They didn’t frequent Reddit (they were either blocked or didn’t show up, I’m not actually sure).
For a while I tried to debate them. Then I realised it’s a waste of time - we are too far apart and both are each others trigger so I’ve blocked them. There’s probably some hexbear basement dweller responding to this comment and I’ll live in blissful ignorance.
Oh they were on Reddit. Before I left, you could find them on ChapoTrapHouse. After the Ukraine War kicked off, you could see them all over world news, Ukraine, noncredibledefense, credibledefence, and the various war update subs.
I've been commenting a bit, whereas on reddit I would only post a comment a few times a year when I could be bothered dealing with the likely burst of negativity that would come as a response to it.
Kind of feels a bit more like Web 1.9 or so from about 2003 which I think was about the sweet spot for minimal rage bait and crazy and still a decent bit of user interaction and scale.
It would be about perfect if you could chop out a few of the folks trying to shoehorn in politics to every little thing.
I was very active on reddit until around the 3rd meetup year or so. Thats when I noticed a major change in what had been an amalgamation of communities and while I still visited there was no urge to interact.
when you are in a smaller community, read: when you are around a manageable amount of people and even recognize some of them, you are more likely to interact. and your comment wont be buried, and its less likely some random asshole really hates what you said and makes sure you wont bother anymore. oh and less bots and chills whats not to love.