Yesterday me and Blaze had a bit of a back and forth and upon review I had some thoughts.
Let me state first and foremost, I adore Blaze and his contributions to the threadiverse. I think he makes the threadiverse a better place with his presence alone.
That said, when we were arguing I had a few problems. But the biggest and most pertinent was that I felt he was chasing Redditors.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I chose Lemmy. Since I got here, I have put my fair share into making this place everything I want it to be. Whether that’s conducting myself properly or whether it’s trying to engage or provide a platform for engagement.
One thing I really don’t want Lemmy to be is Reddit. I engage on here far more than I ever did on Reddit. I have a perfectly curated timeline which is the perfect mix of news, entertainment, enlightenment and conversation. I want Lemmy to remain Lemmy.
Lemmy works for me and my mental health. The way Lemmy is set-up, I relish the fact that I can discuss popular topics away from the general populus. In general, I have zero interest in participating in the biggest communities with, what is inevitably the bottom of the barrel posters. So for my peace of mind, I stick to strongly moderated instances and away from the catch-all communities.
That’s not to say those communities don’t have their place. They do! In fact they have a special place in my heart because they filter the bad actors away from me.
And ultimately that’s what makes Lemmy beautiful. That there’s different instances, different crowds and different discussions.
One thing that Blaze said yesterday was that, “people from Reddit say it’s a ghost town.” and I said that doesn’t matter. He felt that we need to rectify that to ensure growth, but at what cost? Becoming Reddit? I don’t want to be Reddit. Even at the software level, Lemmy has tried hard to not be Reddit, hence no karma.
I don’t want Lemmy to sell its soul to attract the very people I don’t want to be around. I’m not saying there’s not room to grow or improve, I’m just saying we have to grow and improve while holding on to our values and having some integrity about it.
Thank you for this. The thread and subsequent insight is invaluable. I’m getting the feeling that it’s the niche/topic-specific instances that have the easiest and subsequently beat time.
Seems so, yeah. Just wish that was what I was going for myself :/
But why don’t you lean into the West Virginia thing in the same way that lemmy.ca does the Canadian thing?
Honest answer? It’s too depressing. I’ve been considering a full re-brand for a while now just haven’t gotten around to it.
Do you know why it took me so long to reply to you? Because I wanted to give your effort what it deserves. You come across as a great person, but at the same time there’s that red flag where you say your interest in waining.
General purpose instances are an inordinate amount of work, but that’s what you want and you literally have the instance that makes it feasible. When Lemmy.ca started it was tiny, but it grew and now it’s huge. Same with feddit.uk, there’s others too.
Now here’s the thing, West Virginia to you may seem boring, but to me, it’s interesting on the merit of you and how you conduct yourself. So if there’s an instance where good people post about the general things that interest them, who wouldn’t want to see that as a success. Use that as your lighthouse.
Also get rid of Tesseract. It’s dark and feels claustrophobic. The only people that like dark websites are the people that know how to switch a website to dark mode.