I hate big tech controlling social media. I desperately want social media to be federated.
I really love community-driven social media like Reddit. Lemmy feels… too small. I really loved that Reddit let me jump into any niche hobby, and instantly I had a community. Lemmy, you’ll be lucky if that community even exists, and if it does, chances are nobody has posted in ages.
On the other hand, Lemmy is full of political content lately. I’ve basically been doom scrolling everything US election-related, and it’s really starting to take a toll on my mental health.
I know I can filter content. I know I can post and be the change I seek. Yet, it feels like an uphill battle.
Not sure what the point of this is, or if it’s even the right community to vent about this. I just really want to replace Reddit, but I find myself going back more and more (e.g. r/homekit is very active compared to Lemmy version).
because I didn’t try hard enough.
That would be pretty patronizing if I said that, I agree.
What I did say was, you need to start the conversation.
However, now that I’ve looked at your account… unless you have a secondary account to the one I’m replying to now, the whole 21 posts you’ve made over multiple communities, and that being your whole history for a year’s worth of account… maybe I am saying “try harder.” If you want to feel like that’s patronizing, that’s fine.
All the bigger communities on lemmy (like tenforward) happened because first one person posted a lot, every day. And then they were joined by others. And then the community they were in had drama so they moved to tenforward, but my point is, if you want people to talk to you about something, a single post once in a while doesn’t do it. You gotta pump out content, post memes, attract people who want to be part of the conversation. Reply to like, everyone. Be friendly. Be engaging.
Okay, now you literally are saying I didn’t try hard enough.
This is not my first account (it’s also not anywhere close to a year old, not sure where you got that idea). I’d tried to start a few communities over on kbin.social, but that’s gone now.
I don’t have the energy to spend several hours a day flooding threads nobody will engage with, just in the hopes that if I keep it up forever eventually one of them might get a reply or two. It’s not that easy, and it’s patronizing to act like that’s such a simple solution I should’ve thought of.
This is what I was getting at: communities don’t come from nothing. You’re welcome to stay where they’re pre-built for you but posting endless content is how communities get started.
When I was younger, I was someone who ran a few of those communities myself. If it’s patronizing to say you didn’t try hard enough (while you’re also declaring you, yourself, don’t have the energy to do it) then it should be less patronizing, but still fair, to say… if you don’t want to do it, don’t complain that someone else isn’t doing it for you.
If you don’t want to be on Lemmy, then don’t. Come check back in periodically to see if someone else had the energy to do what you didn’t. It’s fair to say you don’t want to do the work. Whining someone else isn’t doing it doesn’t get it done faster.
