It’s a quiet life.

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.

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.

I ate a ban for “instigating violence”

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.

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.

My reddit account age was in the double digits before I closed it down to come here during the 3rd party apps/api fiasco.

It was a little difficult at first, but honestly it was really good for me to break away from so much phone usage and doom scrolling especially. My mental health improved a noticable amount. That first year or so here on Lemmy felt a little empty, but I think a lot of the people that migrated from Reddit realized that to have content one must make content. Personally, I’m far far more active here than I ever was on Reddit.

It’s a cozy community 90% of the time, and it feels like a good home that’s only getting better and richer with time.

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

People like you. Love your posts on !eurographicnovels@piefed.social

Fear of the unknown

Here because its a great experiment and a reminder of the old internet that is otherwise mostly lost.

It was pretty rough for the first 2 years, but I feel like the overall popularity is growing, and in general it’s attracting more of the type of person I’m interested in talking with.

Sure, even highly intelligent people can be jerks at times, and I’m no exception. But despite the friction that all discussion forum have, overall the community is just better for me.

I can talk about all kinds of different types of technical and artistic interests and when I do, people pop out of the woodwork to share connect and share their experiences. I am frequently informed by others here and I in turn can share my knowledge. That makes it worth it.

I’m still browsing and participating on reddit once in a while, and let me tell you the atmosphere there is dank and vile. You get attacked for the smallest things, people are cynical and sarcastic and heinous… this agression will not stand, man. Nothing in common with the reddit from 15 years ago. That would be Lemmy. Lemmy feels essentially like Reddit used to. With less people. I like most interactions here, the smaller scale helps and probably the fact that we’re -actually mostly- humans. If and when my instance votes on the move to Piefed, I’ll go there. It’s still the threadiverse, free and diverse

Because I’m a dirty commie who believes in the adage “give a brick, get a house”.

Something that is built by a community will always survive longer than a corporate profit-motive alternative.

If one instance turns to crap, there will always be others to fill the gap. It’s the same reason most FOSS software exists, because the community wants it too. As long as there are people that are enthusiastic about something, they’ll keep it around as long as they have the tools to do so (source code). That is the ultimate power of Federation and of FOSS in general; it was built by humans, for humans for motives that are separate from profit.

If Gimp went away tomorrow, someone would fork it the very next day because they want to keep using it. If a Fediverse instance gets filled with nazis tomorrow, someone will create a new instance the very next day and people will move to that and then defederate from the hateful one.

I firmly believe that if humanity is to have a future, this is the way that it has to be, and I’m going to champion that mentality everywhere I can.

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