Totally agree with you. I feel bad for the young people that didn’t get to experience the Internet before business started to take it seriously. The Fediverse is a nice taste of those days though!

I’m not sure what to make of your “helped me get through feeling much like OP”.

I’ve talked extensively with Blaze and others on the Fedigrow community about pretty much your exact set of bullet points over the past few months and the shine started to wear off Lemmy for a bit. You’re far from alone in feeling how you described in your post, as can be seen in most of the replies here.

I think it’s just taking a step back and being able to appreciate what we do have. We haven’t turned into some complete right/left hellhole, the top posts everyday add up to thousands of comments, we have some quality content providers, and some really fun commenters. I certainly wouldn’t be ashamed to show someone my Lemmy feed.

It’s good that you still have the drive to want to keep improving things around here in the ways you feel comfortable contributing to. Many initial hurdles to getting on Lemmy feel resolved, and so many in apps are equal to the Reddit apps for most use cases. Many initial accounts were probably from people trying to figure things out. I know I had like 5 accounts and only really use 1 now.

I think we’ve just hit a plateau for now. My personal feeling is working on the culture is our best way forward to be different than Reddit and to pick up more people looking to escape the toxicity. The time to set our tolerance levels for certain behaviors is now before we get too big to reign it in. We’re a pretty good group now, and I hope it stays this way or gets a little better like last summer.

I’m glad when I see people speak up like this though. It makes us all reflect on the guys and bad we see here and to think about where we stand ourselves in all of it.

You and the Fedigrow crew helped me get through feeling much like OP a while back. I think that was a really good idea, because it is tough and emotional at times doing what we do. It can be easy to feel alone when you put yourself out there every day and feel like nobody is around or like you’re doing something wrong and people are falling off.

I never set out to be anybody here, but I was done with Reddit, and wanted to keep something that made me smile continue on, so I just sucked it up and did what needed to be done. You guys make it worth it, and as long as the people that do show up are having a good time, I’ll do my part to keep the party going. I get old, pre commercialized web vibes from Lemmy, so I’m gonna stick it out here as long as I can, because this is the kind of thing you don’t just get anywhere anymore.

Appreciate the shout out as always! We have a great set of people here, and we should all be happy with this place we’ve built together, even if it’s still a humble, cozy place. I feel we have organic growth, and it will come in waves as Lemmy builds and improves. Just keep doing what we’re doing and we’ll be good!

I feel it is pretty stable here. I post every day, and it’s been a tad slower lately, much like I believe Blaze said, feels due to people going away for trips. Weekends are a decent bit slower, where usually they have been busy. That’s where I notice it the most. My subs are lower than at the start of the year, but they’re still going up slow but steady. Interactions are still steady, which is my main concern. As you’ve mentioned, people want to see that interaction. I don’t want to say my content is useless, because people don’t need owl pics and animal rescue facts every day, but I typically get 100+ likes per post, and a handful of comments.

The key I feel though, is I have the same people coming in regularly every day, or every other day, and they are also participating. They make the place look alive more than me just throwing things out there. But that is a specific thing I work on, as much as the post content itself. When people come and make comments, I give them my full attention. I talk back to them, I laugh at their jokes and puns, I take time to answer their questions, I pay attention to what content they like or don’t like, how I post links. I treat them like they were clients. And now in return, they see that the community is a fun place to hang, and they come back regularly, even though I’m not giving them anything they couldn’t find, but I am adding value to their days. I make them smile, I make them feel like their effort commenting matters, I make them feel like they motivate me to keep posting (because they do!), and I teach them about things they never expected to care about.

But it’s a lot of hard work! I try not to think about the time I put into this just for fun. Many of us have been here before the API exodus or before and have put in hours posting to nobody or a dozen people until we’ve built up momentum. Most people won’t even upvote, let alone comment or post, so it’s going to come in waves building up this place. You’re still in the wilderness here. We’re still pretty much the first wave of Fediverse settlers. We’re here while it is rough, setting the foundations of what will hopefully come, keeping us from fading to nothing. I don’t think new people appreciate that point. It’s not like 25% of Reddit broke off and came here with all the posters and the audience, we’re starting from scratch. I think what we have is amazing for a bunch of nobodies with no corporate cash. We’re all volunteers, building the social media we want to have. We should be proud of it, no matter what stage it’s at.

Moderation is an area I feel could be stronger. Most threads are pretty good, but some could use a bit more reigning in. Part of the problem I see with that though, is the vocal part of the community is already hating on “heavy handed mods”, and you missed all the trashing of Beehaw for doing what I considered to be appropriate moderation. The Fed is full of a pretty diverse group of people. I talk to people from multiple countries, and the amount of LGBT I’ve gotten to get insight from has been amazing. It’s really helped me grow in my understanding of some things just being around all these people. But we need to ensure everyone is treated equally and respectfully, and there are many that want to bring Reddit behavior over here, and it’s up to the mods and commenters to decide if that’s what we want or not. I don’t want it, but many see no issue. I’m glad when people comment on it, because if people just accept it without speaking up, no one will know.

There is a lot of good here, and even with 50k users, there’s going to be much more mid and crap than gold, but it’s here. Your comments look good, and you seem to stick to things you enjoy and avoid some that drag you down, and it’s important to notice your own behavior if you click stuff that is going to annoy you. I hit delete on a lot of comments when I wade into some of these topics. Some stuff I just don’t want to get involved in, especially as someone that is at least somewhat “known” around here now and is too lazy to make an alt. But I remind myself I’m here to have fun, and if I want news without the potential drama, I’ll leave here and go to AP or whatever. I’d hope posters would make stuff to help you have a good time, but it’s our job to cultivate our own experience ultimately.

I could go on forever talking about this stuff, but I’ll stop for now. Just give it time and explore more, and since you seem to comment, keep doing that. It’s the best thing for this place. Post, comment, give feedback, repeat.

Summit kicks so much butt! I’ve tried about a dozen apps, but this is the only one I use, though Connect was good too.

The dev is great, and I’ve gotten lots of help and same or next day fixes whenever I’ve reported issues.

It’s beautiful, versatile, and powerful, with a great person backing it up.

I try to put a lot of emphasis on encouraging new posters and commenters. I don’t get why you’d come to the “wild west” of social media to just be solely a lurker. You should want to be an explorer and a settler, forging that new frontier. I won’t hate on the lurkers, they will always be the majority, but why deal with the quirk, less ease of use, and less content to not want to help shape what it becomes?

I came over intending to lurk, hence my crap username, but what I wanted wasn’t here, but I didnt want to crawl back to Reddit, so I started building, and it’s great. People are friendly, you have less competition for attention, and the userbase is largely supportive of whatever you do because you’re doing something.

But ultimately, as long as we arent on an extended downswing, we’re doing well. I’ll keep making posts and giving positive feedback, so hopefully it keeps catching new people with the bug to interact.

The increase in monthly is just mainly replacing users leaving as the active 6 month seems to be going down the same rate as active monthly is going up. Am I reading that correctly?

Total users doesn’t concern me too badly, as I’m more happy to see daily post and comment counts going up. I feel activity needs to be our focus rather than headcount. A packed stadium is kinda pointless if nobody is on stage putting on the show! 😁

Hah, this goes to show everyone’s creep factor works differently. The witch fingers to me are more creepy than the hand because the thought of removing a fingernail makes me wince inside. I get over it enough to enjoy the cookie because it’s just a cookie, but you can see i did not opt to make the onion fingernails on my meat hand! 😂

Ooo those marshmallows sound like they could catch someone by surprise! That’s a cool idea I never heard of though.

Right?! And it’s not even enough to change the flavor or make it cheesy, it’s more aesthetic than anything else, but it’s the key to the whole thing!

It’s healthy to be a little twisted now and then!

It was! I’m not normally a meatloaf person, but this kinda works like one of those All Edges brownie pans and made it crispier and therefore a texture I enjoyed more than a regular shaped loaf.

Yes, but only some you can eat with witnesses! 🧟‍♂️

Nice, I second guessed myself after posting and checking the rules, but the photo quality seemed ok for a mobile pic from 10 years ago, it came out “beautiful” based on what the intent was, and it’s the right season, it’s not like I posted this at Christmas. It also looked to be the biggest food related group, so I figured the most people could have fun with this since it’s awesome in context and anyone can make it with things they probably have on hand.

If anyone took any offense, it wasn’t intended to be crude or to diminish what you guys normally post, it was just for the fun of the season.

Lol credit to him for making his dreams come true!

The falafel one sounds like it has potential though, somewhat of an inside out wrap, or a vegan version of the KFC Double Down.

Come to think if it, why can we not get frozen falafel in shapes like the dino chicken nuggets?!