Posing this on a whim since I tend to be a lurker on Reddit, but I am really struggling to get into Lemmy. Part of it is that I’m used to lurking but now we all have to put a little more work into not lurking in order to start to get the content we want, but also I have yet to find the sort of shitposting content I guess I’m looking for. Maybe that’s for the best, not really sure. I’m sure I will get used to it if I commit, but I really need some more communities that’ll really capture me
Sorry for the rambly post, really just putting this out there in a communal spirit
eh, just lurk. Look, don’t stress it. There’s no business model here. We don’t need growth. It’s nice, it’s cool, it makes it all worthwhile, but somewhere a greybeard sysadmin (sup Ruud) is running a server for the fuckin lols at his own expense and THAT is the fediverse. It’s just all those people chained together, and we need to spread that load across as many people as possible.
This Fediverse thing does NOT require, but it does accept that someday you might want to bite some hosting fees and do your own little part, just one more instance, one more server, picking up your load and that of a few of your friends. If somebody is hosting an open server, they’re already okay with you freeloading, so freeload to your heart’s content.
For every one person who is willing to nerd down and host something, we need like 100 people or more to fuck around in the thing being hosted and make it worth doing. It’s all set up so that if the person who is paying to host gets exhausted, well, those 100 people aren’t screwed. It’s set up so hosters can drop in and out at will. The Fediverse expects and plans for the person who is hosting your nonsense on their own dime to say fuck this, and drop out, and yet you have a setup that leaves you whole, you might not even notice. You can at least migrate elsewhere with minimum friction.
Just engage with shit. Updoot it or whatever. Fuck around and be here. Login and poke around. None of us will see it but the person hosting the instance (waddup Ruud) will see it, and that’s enough. Your engagement is not the difference between life or death. An exponential growth in users is a requirement for commercial socials to thrive but here? That just makes it more expensive for your gracious host to host you. If another 50,000 people show up tomorrow that will probably kill the whole damn thing, it’s why Beehaw is having problems, they were planning on 200 users a month and got 3000 because Reddit.
This whole Fediverse thing is what is left of the Old Way, where places to be online existed because some normal person wanted to put up a server for a forum or whatever and it was running out of a box in their bathroom.
The good news is that all those people are pushing 50 now, they have spouses and children, they aren’t crazy people. The deranged bastards who ran a box in the bathroom like they were the Emperor of Fuck Town have all died from probably substance abuse and what is left is sane people running servers out of their bathroom (for cooling purposes) on a remarkably high level because that’s their job. They run servers for like, Amazon Web Services or some shit, so running a Fediverse instance is child’s play. That is what you’re enjoying right now.
Or they’ve paid cloud hosting fees so that even though they have no idea what the fuck they’re doing some greybeard sysadmin is handling every thing that matters. That’s the situation. That’s why this clown show runs a lot better than it should.
So don’t stress lurking. If you were a lurker on Reddit, lurk here. Just hang. We already have a Shitposting subLemmy or whatever, so go post shit, or don’t. Don’t worry about it. If you don’t personally contribute to the exponential growth needed for a commercial social to thrive, nothing bad will happen. You could be here for a year just lurking and then get inspired to post your ass off, that works too. You got options.
Don’t worry about working for it. It’s not necessary. Welcome to nonprofit social media.
I’m the guy with access to a small corner of a big server. And just host for fun. Explore ideas.
Hopeful it brings some value to the community. I just created some of the communities I’m involved in and enjoy. Hopefully others do too.
My biggest concern, is cause I’m literally hosting this myself, not some big cloud server, someone’s gonna hack me 😥. And I don’t have a massive amount of knowledge to protect myself from that.
I can hear your username.
It’s called slack tune okay
Today you’re planting the roses instead of smelling them.
What exactly are you looking for? Its easier to look for something specific than search in the dark.
Still, here’s a list to get you started. Awesome that you contribute!
I had the same feeling. Then I realise that we don’t have shitpost but quality post.
There is less, but more valuable. As a consequence as well there is way less toxicity, which is quite nice.
It makes looking at Lemmy more relaxing that scrolling Reddit, imo.
I was having similar problems but recently installed jerboa for lemmy and my experience is way better. Try it out, it really made the difference for me.
I haven’t seen it posted yet so here’s another place for memes if that’s what you’re looking for: https://lemmy.world/c/memes@lemmy.ml
Eh, you do you. All the posts asking people not to lurk sounds like extroverted people telling introverted people “Just be social!”. All they’re doing is pushing people away.
If people cant do what the want to do, be who they want to be, they won’t stay.
Lurkers are important too!
Lurkers are the best crew.
For me the sense of novelty I get on Lemmy is finding new instances and checking for communities I’m interested in. Sort of like finding a new subreddit but more like when you find r/earthporn and then discover their whole subreddit network. What I don’t get though is why there’s all these community stubs but hardly any content.
people get too eager making communities and then forget to actually post stuff in them.
Turns out quality OC is actually pretty hard to make, plus the numbers of lemmings is still pretty low, even after all the Reddit shit went down.
Don’t forget that all of these services are rough around the edges when they start out. As a developer, I can tell you from experience that it is 100% impossible to predict how a large group of people will use your software. It always has growing pains as real humans come in and tell you what they need from it. Reddit has had a long time to gather a community and to not only implement but to polish the behavior and performance of its features.
My point is that you’re probably not wrong to not love lemmy or kbin yet. But that things will get better eventually, given continued community and developer investment.
I remember finding out about Reddit in 2009, and I thought the interface was horrific, clunky, and hard to navigate. It was like walls of text. No avatars or fancy awards available yet. Didn’t really warm up to it until 2011.