I’ve been off and on with the Fediverse for sometime now. It’s a relatively friendly place full of fellow nerds, but with a few caveats…

My feeds seem very focused on hard information be it Gaza, tech companies doing bad things, or people pitchforking about the lastest big bad in digital privacy. This is all well and good, but it does get a bit tired after a while. Seeing the samey stuff post after post by academic types makes me more informed but also mentally draining.

Where’s the fun? On Facebook and Instagram I see light fluffy popcorn type posts of people reminiscing over Nintendo games or reels of cockatiels being cockatiels. It’s fun to scroll and interact. Here it feels like I’m in a classroom, and people, while friendly, do get quite hostile if you don’t like Linux or Star Trek.

As a leftist I like it here because it’s my bubble of people, but I’d like to see the fedi let its hair down a bit. It’s okay to talk about stuff other than infosec, privacy guides, distros, and Gaza.

  • MamboGator@lemmy.worldEnglish
    14·
    7 months ago

    I have the opposite problem. I see a lot of funny memes but I had to check Reddit to find out about the Baltimore bridge collapsing. It’s probably because I have a lot of communities and instances blocked because of too many crappy people on them. News communities tend to attract a lot of people with polarized opinions so I had to get rid of a lot of them for the sake of my mental health. The tradeoff is it’s harder to stay informed.

    I don’t have an account on Reddit so I just check the front page for headlines and don’t bother with the comments. Less engagement makes it easier to ignore the idiots, whereas on Lemmy I’m compelled to interact more.

    • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      6·
      7 months ago

      Also, with no built-in mechanism for embedding, say, youtube or peertube videos, Lemmy just is a primarily text-driven site like reddit used to be, and while there will be reams of text written about such a disaster… the video drastically speaks for itself. So the dearth of video on Lemmy, especially embedded video that allows you to watch without leaving Lemmy is holding it back in certain arenas.

      Video storage costs a lot, it’s not a surprise Lemmy chose not to support it, but here’s hoping maybe someday they add the ability to embed videos and have them function in-page.