There is a huge emphasis I see on just growing community size and creating an alternative to reddit.
Back in the day we used to hang out in irc chats with 5-10 active users or forums with few thousand users max. I made friends there I visted across countries. Years after Id log in and people would ask how you’ve been.
I had a reddit account for over 10 years and I dont think a single person would recognize my username. Its always felt like people aren’t talking to you but trying to appeal to the whole audience for points. Reddit exploits our psychology for attention but nothing humane is gained there. The super massive “community” ends up as a void where 99% of posts go completely unseen and any discussions suffer heavily from mod mentalities.
If this a place where even just ten people call home but feel good doing so, that is more good than a million being miserable. Maybe the best alternative is not to be reddit altogether.
Besides, good things have a natural tendency to spread, we don’t need to focus on it.
You and andobando make good points. It’s fun because I noticed myself paying a lot more to usernames since I’ve started using Lemmy. Maybe it’s because of how people are engaging with it, I’m not sure, but it totally does feel like I’m actually engaging with multiple individuals here as opposed to some vague entity.
It is something I have noticed too, the feeling that I am engaging with people not something. Also for the first time I am starting to pay attention to usernames, I can even recognise a few commenter. It’s amazing