OK, let's try this again. My post got auto-filtered. Maybe the image triggered something? Anyways, apologies if this isn't the right sub for this. I wanted to get an outsider's perspective on my experience on Lemmy.
Every. Single. Thread. has the word “capitalism” or “Trump” in it somewhere. I’m sick to death of it. Even though I agree with a lot of the sentiment, the erosion of the middle class, the concentration of wealth, the consolidation of media, the “you will own nothing and be happy” mentality permeating the consumer space. In many ways that’s why I joined Lemmy, but dang it that doesn’t mean I want to talk about absolutely nothing else. Someone once defined a fanatic as "Someone who won't change their mind and won't change the subject" and that fits the average Lemming to a T.
And the only communities devoid of politics are also devoid of content. I do a lot of worldbuilding stuff, and I’ve tried to make the worldbuilding community there more active, but sometimes I feel like I’m the only poster. Then I look at r/worldbuilding, and there’s a glut of really interesting posts showcasing people’s imagination and creativity, and nary a mention of Musk or Epstein in sight.
I understand that people's political opinions are bound to show up obliquely in even unrelated communities, but I can't overstate how monomaniacal Lemmings are about it. The pic I originally tried to post was a screenshot of a completely non sequitur post in an unrelated community (sorry for the vagueness I think the specifics may have also tripped the auto filter). And Lemmings are always "on". If you go to mildlyinteresting on lemmy.world right now, you'll see maybe one or two posts about things like yellow stop signs or three-chambered peanuts, you know, stuff that's actually mildly interesting, and every other post is stuff like "French president explains the political consequences of AI". Is that important and worth discussing? Absolutely. What it isn't is mildly interesting.
When I bring this up on Lemmy, the response is always "Politics is everything and we should never shut up ever!" But even Anne Frank wrote about other stuff in her diary sometimes.
And then there’s the tech side of things. Hope you like Linux, cuz that’s all you’re going to see. And if you dare suggest that Linux may not be the right choice for your blind grandmother, you get eviscerated in the comments.
Granted, Reddit itself used to have a similar problem. It attracted a very specific type of user (neckbeards) and the experience wasn’t great if you weren’t one, but ironically the same popularization of Reddit that lead to its platform decay also solved this homogeneity problem. Similarly, Tankies and their ilk seem to flock to Lemmy, explaining the tone of the discourse.
Others have pointed out that Reddit alternatives tend to attract people who were banned from Reddit (remember Voat?) and I think that explains a lot.
In summary, Lemmy seems great if you're a Marxist who uses Linux, but pretty much nobody else. Am I crazy? Should I try to stick with it in the hope it gets better?
so how do we get this guy on Linux? lol
A lot of the issues you have with Lemmy is in large part because there’s less people here than Reddit. You really have to curate your subscriptions page to get that kind of algorithm treatment you’re used to from Reddit. There’s a lot of communities here that don’t hit the top posts in all but are still active.
You also kinda have to be the change you want to see and be stubborn about it. Keep posting things you find interesting, throw out those comments on posts even if there’s no other comments or motion. A new community isn’t going to get built up overnight.
lemmy lacks the niche content that reddit has, and people on reddit are unlikely to subscribe to here anytime soon, since most dont even known lemmy exist. often time when they get banned they look for ways to evade those bans instead.