This is a sequel to this rant. I came to the realization that Lemmy and the broader fediverse aren’t really fun for me. The constant ragebait and politics shoehorned into everything was dragging me down, and the only communities without ragebait are also without content in general.
So I caved and made a Reddit account after 3 years and it’s gotten so, so much worse. First is probably the “gamification” of everything. Reddit already had karma, which had its own problems, but it was simple. Monkey brain like number go up. Now they show you analytics on your posts and comments, and encourage you to improve them, as though you’re meeting a metric rather than trying to connect with other people. It’s gross and cynical.
Then there’s the notifications. I get a notification every time a post is upvoted, not just for replies. It feels engineered to squeeze every drop of dopamine out of you and keep you feeding the content machine.
This one’s more subtle. The simple Reddit gold awards that existed when I first joined in 2012 had already ballooned into a myriad of different little trophies when I left in 2023, but they’ve redesigned them and now they look like assets from a free to play mobile game, with the way the awards shine when you mouse over them to that particular bright plasticky round art style. It’s not damning on its own, but combined with the above points it’s another nail in the coffin.
Sponsored posts I think were already a thing when I left, but now there are ads in the comments as well. There used to be one ad on a specific dedicated spot off to the side. It was unobtrusive without being hard to find. I felt that was fair. But it’s not about keeping the lights on anymore, now the whole things screams “You’re the product!”
But worst of all are the bots, AI masquerading as real users that make superficially genuine posts and comments. Discriminating between AI and human content is probably a skill that I could hone with time, but I shouldn’t have to go on a witch hunt every time someone compliments me. I’ve even been tricked into wasting my empathy on them, all so they can farm me for content.
So yeah, maybe I should just throw away my router and go outside.
This is a very lemmy.world take.
That last thing you said.
the only communities without ragebait are also without content in general
This is bizarre and hasn’t been my experience at all. I block “meme subs” and find the rest of lemmy quite normal.
Looking at your previous rant, I see that you describe “rage bait” as:
Every. Single. Thread. has the word “capitalism” or “Trump” in it somewhere.
I don’t see that much. Block political subs if you don’t want to see Trump.
You probably want to check oddsrabbit , they doesn’t allowed political discussion because they tired politics too
But it’s smaller than lemmy, yeah and also new from 3 months ago
So they’re ad-supported but also say they want to avoid enshittification. I’m not saying that couldn’t work, but it’s a hard line to walk. Also, banning politics platform-wide isn’t really what I meant. I suppose there’s no harm in lurking.
What the fediverse needs is a more diverse user base. What Reddit had (and perhaps still has) is gun nuts who like pokemon, socialists who like pokemon, libertarians who like pokemon, conservatives who like pokemon, etc who can all get together and talk about their interest in pokemon because pokemon is the only thing they have in common. So the discussion stays about pokemon. What Lemmy has is tankies and other Marxists who like pokemon, and that’s pretty much it.
I think having a common watering hole where people who wouldn’t normally rub elbows can come together about common interests has value, even political value, as it helps opposing groups to humanize each other.
When the first wave of reddit users migrated, lemmy had a much more diverse user base. Now half of them realize lemmy sucks and quietly returned to reddit, and what’s left is the hardcore lemmy user.
You’re on to something. I think it started out like a lot of Reddit clones (anyone remember voat?) where a huge chunk of the user base are people who got banned from Reddit or were otherwise on the fringe. This core of crazies repels anyone else who just wants to chill and talk about shared interests, making the user base even crazier overtime.
I just hope niche communities comes here
I’m hoping for more niche instances with their own distinct identities and quirks. The threadiverse could really be the best of the old PhPBB universe and reddit.
I post this a lot, so apologies if you’ve read it before. Reddit and its clones differ from traditional forums in that the default post and comment sorting behavior favors new content rather than old but still relevant content. On phpBB, threads are sorted by last comment (aka bumping), meaning threads with lively discussions stay at the top of the list no matter how old the thread itself is. This allows discussions to continue for years under a single thread if desired.
Contrast this with Reddit and its threadiverse clones, which use a sorting algorithm based on upvotes and post age, meaning you can’t consolidate discussion under a single post because it will eventually drop off the front page, making it highly unlikely that newcomers will discover it organically and add to the discussion. This leads to the phenomenon of reposts, where the same content appears over and over because older posts on the same topic fall off with age, even if there’s stuff worth discussing still.
The reason I seem to make up half the posts on !worldbuilding@lemmy.world is because I tried consolidating work on a single project to a single post, but once the post inevitably dropped off the first page nobody would ever find it. If I wanted people to see and comment on my stuff I had to keep making whole new posts. Contrast this with the equivalent on this phpBB Forum, which is a single topic that’s been going for almost three years now.
It’s amazing to me how huge such a seemingly insignificant design choice as default sorting behavior has on an online platform’s culture, especially since Lemmy CAN replicate the old forum experience pretty faithfully by sorting posts by latest comment and selecting the “chat” sorting option for comments. But since it’s not the default nobody does that.
I was speaking moreso culturally, but that’s a great point, too.
I don’t think things are bad enough for niche communities to make the switch. For instance, I check out the Critical Role Reddit subreddit semi-frequently, and it seems quite healthy, rather like how Reddit used to feel. By comparison, Lemmy does have a CR community and it gets posts from some dedicated users, but the comment section is always quiet (which is unfortunate, because interacting with other fans in the comments is kinda the whole point).
It really takes an organized move, where the subreddit community as a whole decides to switch over. The numbers just aren’t here for most niche interests to survive organically.
Go outside
I browse feeds for about an hour a day, to get a feel for the information and mark anything I want to deep dive at my leisure. Outside is great. Creating things is great. I would highly recommend it. Even if you don’t ever make anything “worthwhile”, doing is worthwhile.
Is rather die with a pile of poor paper-mache ant heads wilting in the humidity, than 1000 karma or 1,000 people who know me as “wireheadcrawfishscissors” on socials. I’d rather waste an hour under a tree, listening to the wind, than an hour listening to others rage and whine into the void.
The world outside is beautiful. The one capitalism has created is a Frankenstenian horror of rotting thoughts posing as alive through the power of electricity. It wants to eat you. That’s its only goal. Don’t put your head in its mouth.
My brother I live deep inside a city and the heat is unbearable. The wet bulb temprature here is higher than 30c. Being outside isn’t much of an option for me
If you cannot go outside due to heat, get off of Lemmy/social media and engage in a productive hobby. Learn to craft, build, paint, SOMETHING else than sitting in a rage enducing bubble. Even Lemmy has its problems and you shouldn’t be on here all day. I have friends to hang out with, play games, miniatures assemble, exercise, cooking… Do something else.
About the fediverse, most generalist communities have rampant political agendas crossdressing as posts of whatever topic the community is about.
I recommend blocking communities that bother you, or individuals if it’s specific ones that keep filling your feed with stuff you don’t want to see.
Been doing it for years and it surely becomes serene without drying up the feed.
Also might I suggest making an account on Mbin instead of Lemmy? It connects to microblogging too so further posts to find, allows blocking posts by linked articles (you’d be surprised how much that cleans the feed), and it’s very responsive to Ublock Origin filters and Violentmonkey scripts.
About the fediverse, most generalist communities have rampant political agendas crossdressing as posts of whatever topic the community is about.
Yeah, /c/mildlyinteresting is probably the worst one I’ve come across so far. Yellow stop signs are mildly interesting, three-chambered peanuts are mildly interesting. News articles about the political consequences of AI are NOT mildly interesting. Important and worth discussing? Sure, but not here.
And then there’s stuff like this. Whenever people complain about the fediverse not growing, this right here is why. Nobody is going to want to be in a knitting or woodworking community that only ever talks about seizing the means of production.
the tankie instances are pretty much 1-sided political asf, i blocked all of them.
Lemmy has a community identity problem. People copied all the subreddit names over but basically none of the posting rules that makes them unique.
How is nostupidquestions different than asklemmy?
Why is nottheonion full of headlines not in the style of The Onion?
Why is there a whitepeopletwitter at all when microblogmemes exists?
I think the lack of guidelines leads people to post whatever wherever. I see why you feel like you can’t escape politics in every community
