@asklemmy What do you think it would take for people to drop Twitter & Reddit and move to the Fediverse?

  • TacoButtPlug
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    219 months ago

    People are “lazy” and only social, today. They want to log in, info dump, and not think.

    Before the nadir of social media, when reddit and twitter were coming up, the people online were predominantly young millennials and new tech was exciting. That was a time where netizens were more curious and accepting of online platform learning challenges. In fact, if it was beta or even just more hands on and generally nerdy, that often made the platform more appealing. Then everything became standardized. Mega social media squashed innovative smaller fun projects. Competition got absorbed. And with the mass standardization of the internet came the younger generations who came up just expecting shit to work as they’ve always seen. Streamlined and with an inclusion of 15 minutes of fame. But, in honesty the biggest snooze is the lack of innovation that drove the old internet drives today’s general malaise.

    Times are different. People are bored with internet tech and are therefore less curious. My younget gen z and y co-workers glaze over if I even so much as mention irc or playing around with your own web server. Gen y understands but doesn’t care because Twitter and IG governed their highschool experience. Gen z doesn’t understand and are kinda boomer-esque in terms of any software comprehension. I’ve had to teach my interns what Excel even is.

    Times are different. Everything has being standardized, monontonized, monitized, predictable, and generally boring. I think the fediverse would have to become mainstream to appeal to the mainstream. And today’s mainstream aren’t interested in new platform learning curves unless there’s something fun, compelling, and of entertainment value to them.

    Just my old millennial lady take.

    • 🕸️ Pip 🕷️
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      49 months ago

      I’m gen z :[ ouch. To be fair though yeah, not that many gen z actually have digital literacy. I need to help my friends the same age as me with things boomers would also ask me for help with. It’s kind of sad having a very surface-level consumer relationship with the wonderful world of the internet and tech

      • TacoButtPlug
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        19 months ago

        Yea… and I realize how harsh it sounds but like, I put “lazy” in quotes because I don’t think it’s really laziness. Maybe more boredom? The environments’ just been designed to not invite exploration. Everything is just automatic and instant now. Innovation is driven by need. The need has been engineered away, for the most part.

    • @[email protected]
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      39 months ago

      Irc is probably a nice way to see how chatting was back in the 90s im a gen z and i think its quite fun to just load up a irc client then log on to random irc servers to have some fun

    • @[email protected]
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      29 months ago

      I’m in that demographic (born in the 90s), and my friends are definitely apathetic/uninterested in trying new platforms. I am trying to convince them of alternatives 🫡, wish me luck.

    • @[email protected]
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      29 months ago

      Gen z here, there are still nerds in our generation

      Think part of what you’re seeing might be that previously when it was all new and niche the only people using these sites were nerds, nowadays everyone’s using it so by comparison it looks like there are less of us around

      I hear Lemmy is very reminiscent of the old internet because it aggregates all the techies together like the internet in general used to