memes

It’s worth noting that some users might be attracted to Lemmy due to its smaller, more niche communities and the sense of belonging that comes with being part of a smaller, specialized group. Others might be drawn to Lemmy’s technical aspects, such as its use of ActivityPub and its potential for customization and modification.

Some users might also be deterred from Lemmy, but please do not let this distract you from the fact that in 1998, The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16 ft through an announcer's table.

most of the toxicity I've experienced on lemmy has been from established users so idk.. but I should add that it's way less toxic than reddit so far

Hey, we left cause of the enshitification of Reddit itself, toxicity of the users was always part of the package deal.

Bro I’m not toxic fuck you

Fight me

Yea no. Try having a nuanced discussion on any (insert heated topic here) on Lemmy and watch the labels fly out faster than the ejaculate of a post pubescent 15 year old.

We often talk about toxic newbies, but sometimes we don't pay enough attention to how we ourselves changed as a result. Make them feel welcome, and see how much Lemmy changes back.

If you (yes, you, reader) are new to Lemmy, have my wholehearted "Welcome"! Hugs on demand, cookies right there, make yourself comfy :)

Avoid politics-oriented communities unless toxicity is your thing. Start with any instance (most likely you chose lemmy.world as your starting point?), but explore others and what they have to offer. You can even be on several of them if that's your thing! Enjoy!

You'll find that anywhere. Not just on the Internet, either. Literally, everywhere.

Hopefully the absence of an algorithm pushing engagement at all costs will dispel some of it.

Block instance and block community buttons are your friends.

It's easy to forget how bad it can get.

One day I wandered into /r/kotakuinaction over some linked comment on the Tomb Raider animation, and the Fallout TV series, and... yeah. I remembered.

And that's a pretty mild example.

It took me a couple months to fully leave years of bad reddit habits behind. I didn’t realize how deeply ingrained they’d become. The toxicity had gradually snuck up on me.

A lot of users here are not Reddit refugees, they are Reddit rejects.

I think any real user from Reddit that isn’t a bot is an asset these days. I hate Reddit as much as the next person, but giving people shit for coming from there to here feels hypocritical.

I ended up getting permabanned from reddit for saying that Lebanese people don't blame all their problems on Israel, just the the problems they do deserve blame for.

tfw somewhere between the sacred silence and sleep

All I have to say is fuck Reddit mods.

Head over.to Hexbear and say you like south park or something. You're welcome.

People will be toxic no matter what. I don't think making prospective new users feel unwelcome is a good idea when we'd like to see some growth.

Are we growing though?

https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/stats shows MAU (monthly active users) decreasing - we are now at 43k, last month was 45k, the month before 47k, etc. Total servers also decreasing - now 540, was 552, 579, etc. Overall posts and comments are slightly up though - so we're seeing increased activity from fewer users, rather than an increase in actual users. One could argue whether we're truly "decreasing" vs. merely flat, but either way I don't see us increasing.

And 3 of those users are myself, all active and only 2 of which I had a week ago, speaking to how alts are most definitely a thing. Also, federation issues especially staying in sync with Lemmy.World may be causing people to shift instances (or to leave entirely?). If so that would be a good thing bc 0.19.6 promises to help address that. (Although in my case, I wanted an instance that allows custom blocks of any instance I choose without needing to rely on an admin team, and that isn't dependent upon the Lemmy codebase.)

For one thing, people might be turning away due to the upcoming USA election, in which case depending on who survives that, they could return? But every person I've ever recommended to check out Lemmy has looked at me in disgust and actively chided me for having recommended it when they see some of the political extremism here. e.g.:

Whenever I go looking for examples of such I usually find it in 0-60 seconds, by going to Lemmy.ml and browsing by Local.

Your instance is doing wonderful work keeping such out - I wonder if that image will even render for you:-). But overall, across the wide Fediverse, people are not willing to put up with such, and seem to be leaving us overall rather than find some other way to deal with whatever it is that was bugging them.

And with such trends, and the way we treat normies, I don't see us ever going mainstream. Maybe PieFed and Sublinks, along with Mbin and ofc Tesseract on e.g. dubvee.org will help turn that around? That would be so nice?:-)

Btw what will we call ourselves then, if it does - will we still be "Lemmy"/Lemmings, or just general Fedizens? Either way there's great hope for the future, but also a lot of work to do to reach that point.

As an ex-Reddit I get it, I was a refugee of Apollo.

Still have that legend on my phone and is now a memorial of what used to be.