So what's the solution to blow this joint and start a new paradigm? Television killed radio. Blogs and streaming killed television. Current social media killed blogs. If the fediverse isn't the solution, then what's going to kill and replace current 2010s era social media? And don't say short form video, because that was cool for maybe a decade before the big corpos started pushing it and it was no longer cool.

Generally I agree with you, but let me steelman a different argument. It feels to me like we are in the early stages of another digital renaissance like the one that happened during the rise of Reddit & Facebook. I remember that time well as I was just starting high school, and Reddit opened an entirely new world for me after leaving Digg. It felt like where all the cool kids hung out if you will. There was this wealth of information, discussion, political discourse, and it scratched the itch that ultimately formed a lot of who I am today.

It has always been the visionaries who are then backed by the early adopters that form internet culture. Lemmy is, again, where the cool kids (and technically inclined) are choosing to hang out. There is an exclusivity to it, and that feeling of breaking from the herd. That is an exciting and addicting feeling for content creators and users alike. This is all happening as major players like Meta & Twitter are warring with each other over users, and while Reddit allowed itself to succumb to the narcissistic ambitions of one moron (fuck u/spez) who never cared about the spirit of what used to make Reddit truly great.

I think a lot of us (me included) got complacent, and bogged down in the feeling that there would never be a time where the internet felt new, and alive again. It is a failure of imagination really, and I hope this can be one shot across the bow to the major power structures behind the previous generation of social media that blind corporatism rarely if ever can capture the magic or lightning in a bottle that has been the bedrock of culture in the information age. Only time will tell how this project will evolve and change or if it can become something truly great that stands the test of time. But I, for one, am sincerely hoping that it does....just as much for myself as for all of you!