Lemmy doesn't have the niche communities that Reddit did, and those come with a larger user base.

Lemmy has plenty of memes, politics, Linux, and anime, but there are many small communities which do not (yet) have active equivalents here.

Here are a few of my own examples, but everyone will have their own unique list: r/wheresthebeef, r/Penderwicks, r/twistypuzzles, r/Cubers, r/fusion, r/legoRockets, r/HarryPotteronHBO, r/anarchycubing, r/deextinction, r/cubinggore.

I would welcome more users if it means more niche communities.

I understand what are you saying but forget about overall size of the community for a second, what lemmy would really benefit from is more niche subreddits with active users. That will only come from more people on lemmy and that is the real reason to desire lemmy growth besides a basic wish for other people to not be stuck in a shitty corporate silo.

There's still a ton of niche subreddits that there's no viable replacement for here.

Well it's not really just about making you happy, the project is about displacing corporate controlled media so that community projects and social movements can flourish allowing us up create a better world for all.

I myself have very elitist and isolationist tendencies but I think it's important to set them aside somewhat for the common good.

I'd like some niche communities to be more active, and realistically speaking that's only going to happen with a bigger userbase.

We can always crawl further in to hide from scary normal people, but the normal people need this type of platform too. We can just subscribe to our nerdy communities and stop browsing all or everything once there is too much stuff to browse that way anyway.

Isn't that good enough?