I had been feeling a bit drawn in to reddit for the past few months before the divorce. I feel like the slower pace at which content comes out on Lemmy is good for me in that way. I can’t just scroll and scroll and scroll my entire day away.
Does anyone else feel similar?
For the popular communities, yes. For the smaller niche communities it just feels empty and sad. Hope this platform catches on so the “there’s a subreddit for everything” quote could be a thing here too.
I think you need to move to medium-sized communities for a little bit. like /android instead of /myspecificphonemodel, or /electriccars instead of /myspecificelectriccarmodel.
The great thing about small communities is that you only need to convince a handful of people to jump ship to get them started again.
To me, the problem is that usually only a small percentage of people in the small-medium subs were actually content submitters. Personally, I would comment on things often (or lurk), but not submit news and articles. I honestly still jump to reddit once a day to check major news, which will be much harder when my 3rd party app is gone.
I feel that. I’m finding myself gravitate back to going directly to individual blogs. Just in the past couple of weeks, I’ve been introduced to new blogs on these smaller, more slower-paced niche communities. So it feels reminiscent of how I used to use the Internet 10-15 years ago before Reddit and monetization of everything. I had a handful of places I’d rotate through. It was just enough that there was usually something new everyday, but not an infinite sea of content. And I’m finding now that I’m actually reading the links being posted instead of just reading the comments. It kind of makes me think of how people used to watch TV. A show would release one episode a week and you had to wait for next week’s show. And there was a limited number of shows. Now with all the content on all the streaming platforms plus YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, etc. there’s an endless amount of content to consume and no built-in breaks so you can literally binge non-stop.
With Reddit or other fill-in-the-blank service where your attention is the end goal to sell ads, the incentive is to get you to never pause, never take a break, never leave. It was exhausting. Here, it feels more relaxed.
Yes, I get that. I have a few fond memories of old old forums. With that said, Reddit’s ease of discovery for niche communities and my ability to instantly join the discussion without signing up to yet another website is something I will miss.