I just remember, in the very early days of these kinds of online communities, that people would actually try and organize to do shit. Like, you'd have folks on /r/Houston talking about a bunch of redditors going down to the Houston Food Bank to volunteer. Or you'd have some serious fucking shit out about a landlord with folks offering to come down and help out. I even caught a "my car is broken, I don't know what to do" with a "don't worry, I can help out" and a final "omg, its fixed, thank you so much!"

Now its all talk. Nothing is real, its all just fucking ads and Mr. Beast style stunts. Nobody has any kind of trust or empathy for anyone else online. The closest you get to a material social network is people on Nextdoor screaming about how a strange car drove down the street and desperately asking everyone on the block to call the police and report it at once.

Shit fucking sucks.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The closest I've seen on Lemmy is Hexbear's Mutual Aid community, where users help each other out financially when in need.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

It works, in no small part, because the community is small and people have known each other by handles for years now.

But the flip side is that a few of the mods on Hexbear can be just as draconian in their administration policy as anyone on old-school Reddit. So you periodically see otherwise friendly and active members vanish from the site.