Posts like this 👌

All social platforms get worse all around us. Fedi isn’t perfect or drama-free but around here every third post isn’t a targeted ad that knows too much about me trying to make me feel guilty or inadequate.

It mostly works well.

Plenty of good and garbage content. I want both.

I don’t get the feeling there is a “motive” behind what I see when I am browsing content. It feels organic, like the old internet.

Because fuck Reddit

I can’t say I’ve noticed any issues. What’s broken for you?

Bumps and difficulties - I haven’t noticed any such thing.

I stay on Lemmy because it’s similar to Reddit (topics based) without the need to follow anyone. I can’t stand social sites where I need to follow people - Mastodon, Bluesky, and Twitter (always did) suck imho.

I don’t find that commercial social services are free of bumps and difficulties; they’re just different bumps and difficulties. They variously want me to:

• Log in to view this content
• Complete a captcha to view this content
• LOOK AT THIS AD
• Look at this other thing instead of reading through the rest of the comments on the post I opened
• Look at this other content instead of the people I chose to follow
• Consent to 237 different forms of tracking
• Pay for a premium account
• Don’t post anything too spicy for the advertisers
• Install an app

And people think picking a server to sign up or using an unpolished UI is a hassle? It’s a small price to pay to avoid that load of crap.

I use Lemmy and Mastodon because independent services that interoperate are how I want the internet to work. I still use some of the big commercial services because people or communities I value are there. It’s not all-or-nothing.

To be honest, after some initial difficulty in grasping the concept of federation (which I certainly don’t claim to fully understand even now) this place feels just as easy to use as Reddit.

I think that’s partly because I almost exclusively used Reddit via the Sync app, and I now use Lemmy almost exclusively through Sync as well. The experience is basically the same, except that it’s a bit quieter, but as someone else alluded to, that’s maybe no bad thing as it means I spend less time here. Instead I just dip in and out, and that’s fine.

My anger for the destruction of the old internet. My hatred of those who profit from aforementioned destruction. My pettiness for going against the current.

Joined Lemmy because of the whole r€ddit API thing. I was only on there maybe a couple years at the end, so I had no real super attachment like people who have been there for years. Not much else to say.

Lack of real alternatives, I guess? This is the alternative to the other site, but I’d love it if there were similar sites with different focus and different people.

It’s a quiet life.

This is actually my third attempt at trying to stick to Lemmy since Reddit changed their API rules and gutted third party apps. My problem with Lemmy is pretty simple: it just doesn’t generate content as fast.

But Reddit, Reddit I have really come to loathe, but after spending what’s probably over a decade on it, it’s hard to leave.

I hate that the most upvoted posts on Reddit are lowest common denominator jokes that can often be predicted at a glance. It used to be there was a good chance you could get something informative at the top, or a source if showing someone else’s skill/talent.

I hate that the most common response to skill/talent being displayed is often a declaration of normalcy rather than praise for the skill/talent on display. For example, someone pulls off a skateboard trick, then you get a mini-thread of people saying variations of “I walked up the stairs this week,” or I “tripped and fell leaving my house today.”

I hate that Reddit has repeatedly narrowed what can show up in /all over the years.

I hate that Reddit does not allow me to block communities that show up in all.

I hate Reddit’s algorithm, it is complete ass at predicting what I want to see.

I hate Reddit ads.

I hate that Reddit now has politics make up a huge chunk of /all these days.

I hate shitpost, circlejerk, and buddy subs. Subs where people encourage one another to just be stupid and asanine for fun. It is my firm belief that they played a major roll in the dumbing down of reddit comments over the years, as idiots were given the space to be idiots, normalized that behavior, and then it spread outside those subs to the other serious ones. And there’s so many people that participate in it, and it caught on. I would put these subs to the torch if I had my way.

I hate the proliferation of certain cultural media fanboys. An example is EldenRing and FromSoftware fanboys. I have some 80 hours in Elden Ring, and played the first Dark Souls. They’re not bad games. They’re not great, either. And for whatever reason, they just seem to have a massive fanbase within Reddit, that the games genuinely do not deserve, leaking out of their sub and constantly posting elsewhere about the game or showing up in my /all since, to reiterate a previous point, Reddit won’t just let me block that shit and save me the headache. For a while, Jujutsu Kaisen Fans and memes were the same as well, but it has since died down. But the point being that this kind of thing happens in the first place.

I hate how Reddit community has latched on hard with image replies, leading to a proliferation of non-comments that are nothing more than passing memes around. This is also something that I believe was fostered and encouraged within the shitpost/circlejerk/buddy subs.

So, when you ask why I still hang on to Lemmy, that’s why. Because I fucking detest what Reddit has become. It is a shithole and a shell of its former self, and I desperately want Lemmy to be something better.

I’m not here despite what it is, I’m here because of what it is.

I feel comfortable here. Fediverse overall gives me an earlier Internet feel. Organic, but better. Maybe it feeds my nostalgia…