I’ve been using Lemmy for a couple years now, and unfortunately I’ve noticed a significant decline in the niche communities that were originally active. When I first joined I saw much more variety when browsing the All feed. But over time, the communities I liked have faded as shitposting and meme communities have come to dominate the platform.
I think this shift has changed the culture of Lemmy. There seems to be more of a herd mentality now, where people downvote reasonable opinions they disagree with. The discussions don’t feel as nuanced. Some people have even been attacked for innocuous comments that don’t align with the prevailing groupthink.
The niche communities that made Lemmy special are fading away, and the resulting monoculture makes me less inclined to participate. I want a platform that supports substantive discussions in my interests, not just memes and shitposting.
I don’t know what the solution is on a platform level, but a culture shift is needed if Lemmy wants to retain users like me who valued the diversity of opinions. I may have to move to a platform that allows better filtering and proportionality between niche interests and funny or stupid content. I want Lemmy to succeed, but right now I’m finding myself drawn back to Reddit because the niche communities there seem more active. I’ll keep checking in, but Lemmy needs to recapture its original spirit if I’m going to make it my main home.
Your account has 4 posts over a few months and one comment. Maybe you have actually been using Lemmy for longer on another account, but we can’t see that.
I’m an Elder Millennial, used to admin/mod a fandom forum around 1999-2002ish. A small percentage of active users essentially carrying the content of small niche communities on their back until ignition happens has ALWAYS been how communities work. It’s like that in real life, and it’s like that online. It was like that when niche message boards and forums reigned in the late 90s and early 2000s, it was like that on usenet, in IRC, on email groups. It was like that on World of Warcraft, when you tried to get a guild off the ground for raiding or something. It’s like that here on Lemmy, because Lemmy is a social platform too.
The only real solution to grow a community is to jump in and create content yourself, to help communities along until one or two ignite and take off. You have to participate yourself to change the culture, not just bitch in a post that it’s “changed” and that you’re going to stomp off if it doesn’t “change back”. (Although, that type of post is, admittedly, also a tradition as old as time.)
Anyway. Communities starting small and needing people to grow is just…a thing. This is how volunteer organizations work in real life–why do you think they’re constantly pleading for other people to get involved? Because you need people who actually pull on their adult pants and get in and do the work of organizing things, doing things, instead of sitting about like a lump consuming it.
You can move back to reddit of course, if you want. That’s similar to moving from a small town to a big city for the night life, which people do. Maybe you don’t have the time or energy to essentially “volunteer” your time on a small community to help it grow.
But the thing you’re complaining about is…just part of how communities work. Communities have always revolved around a few people contributing most of the content until the community takes off (or doesn’t).
So, rationally, what’s the next step? Stepping up your own contributions, or going off somewhere else?
Only you can decide because only you know your IRL time commitments. But one action is going to be more useful to helping niche subs get off the ground than the other.
(Here’s something interesting: The Frugal sub has a shit-load of people subscribed who eagerly jump in feet-first if you start a relevant topic. Why doesn’t someone here with an interest in that sub go over there and start a post?)
Yeah I’d say the only thing more regular than the 10 people maintaining the stream of content here on lemmy are the people who don’t post/comment but complaint about the lack of content.
I’m personally trying to hold up 3 niche communities right now. All of them have over 300 followers, but in each one an average of 2-3 people post. Be the change you want to be. At least jump in and comment.
And a lot of them are easy. New game update goes up? Post the new update. Are you excited about it? Plants your thing? Take a picture of it. Music subs? What are you listening to today? Just post something. It’s not like we have karma to worry about
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Tbh i thinknthroaways are a better solution. “Hiding” stuff selectively can never 100% work.
The reason i prefered reddit to all the other big socials was how easy pseudonynous activity is. No “real name policy” BS. threadiverse has the same feature so i like it too.
Agreed. It’s one of the more creepy aspects of social media that mostly leads to “gotchas” (“oh your account is only 2 months old? your opinion is invalid!”) and stalker-ish behavior – and one I wish fediverse had learned from instead of copied.