[Outdated, please look at pinned post] Casual Conversation

I like a few of these communities, and I've had some nice conversations on some things I'm passionate about. But it seems like the population outside my small communities is dominated by violent wanna-be political activists competing for who can express the most outrageous sentiment.

Advocating against violence against one's parents in a hypothetical situation where a parent developed the wrong US politics not only got me downvoted, but also replied to by some asshole from Australia who wanted to rub it in that I was clearly in the out-group.

I don't normally reply when I see things like that, but after seeing so much vitriol I felt the need to leave a comment. I won't be doing it again.

I first felt like I was missing on news for my niche hobbies but just started going sites directly for news (testing an rss reader this week for the first time in over a decade so that might change). Besides that just looking at the default hot or rising threads hit a lot of what I'm looking for with good discussions.

Seeing quite a few comparisons to reddit.

As someone who went to reddit when digg shit the bed all those years ago and in turn came here after the api debacle, this is how it always goes no?

-> Social site has cool features for awhile but is unheard of

-> social site gets adopted by more tech literate people (we are here)

-> social site gets noticed by corps, receives investment and becomes able to handle more people (threads is an attempt at this and what is next)

-> social site gets adopted by millions of average joes

-> enshitification begins as social site/corporations begin to extract money

-> other social sites form from people tired of the diluted content

-> tech literate people leave for smaller social site with cool features

-> cycle continues

I'm settling in just fine here. The people can be a little more on the tankie side in some places, but it's better overall.

I've already started to see posts like "People of Lemmy, blah blah" and posts about username meanings, so it's becoming Reddit. Get off my lawn.

When browsing the home page (this is just my subjective experience) I have to be more active in blocking political based communities (just not my thing, I like being happy) but if there happens to be a community for some niche topic that I'm interested in (it was pretty much guaranteed that there was one for everything on Reddit) the posts and comments are generally higher quality. Less reposts, less bots, etc.

Overall, a more enjoyable experience if I tailor it, but still too small for it to satisfy all of my niche fandom based needs. I'm choosing to stick with it and share it in the hope that it grows enough to do that.

lots of people viewing and few posting so posts get more attention but there's less stuff

also less complaining

I do like it here, but would like to see more activity in specific communities like automechanic help or RV repair.

I never had a reddit account so I used it's implosion as a push off to set me free from 4chan but also not going to that overly policed place.

I think Lemmy is a nice middle ground.