I left the shitposts and it's been much more fun. I'm there with you, I deal with anxiety. I'm an informed voter, I keep up with things, but when I'm scrolling and wasting time I don't want to be bombarded with how terrible the world is. I just want to see cats and chuckle a bit.
Keyword filters are helpful for this, especially when people feel the need to post about a topic to every single community they can find. Boost has this as a feature, and I'm pretty sure several other apps do, too.
Sometimes I have to just block certain people, though.
Same I avoided news stuff back on reddit too. RSS fills that role anyways of headlines, and I don't really need the world is ending and everyone sucks so be depressed and anxious input to add to that.
I had to not just leave lemmyshitpost, but block it. I want to appreciate people making an effort to put up content, but that content is so cringy and annoying that I couldn’t take it anymore and it shows up under All if you don’t block it.
I've been active. Any time I share an opinion that isn't in-step with the crowd, I get bombarded by people defending the status quo, insulting me, and telling me that I'm wrong because "just look at the downvotes" which is a hilarious metric.
I got banned from the Vegan community for suggesting that meat was deeply ingrained in our behavior from a cultural perspective, and simply messaging to other people that animals were alive and conscious wasn't going to cut it if they wanted to reduce meat consumption.
I also tried to convince people that rubbing BLM/anti-"all lives matter" rhetoric in conservatives faces wasn't going to convince them to support our movements, and the whole thing devolved into everyone throwing insults out, and not one person could ever explain why I was wrong.
Maybe becoming active on Lemmy isn't a great thing lmao
That's normal "movement" people behavior. And that's why most people never get anywhere near a movement.
I think you're right. Just gonna have to keep fighting the good fight. I guess lol
This is generally my experience too
I hope I start seeing my hobbyist community come to life.
Me too. There's nothing to really replicate the D&D scene from reddit. Most smaller spaces are dead on Lemmy. That was pretty much all I did on reddit towards my later years but it's not doable here. And if it doesn't change soon I'll probably be done with Lemmy. There isn't enough engagement even with All/Hot sorting.
I recognize it's not the same, but you might try posting some D&D related stuff in the games communities that are open to tabletop games. Also looking into it again, I remembered there's ttrpg.network as a whole, and !rpg@ttrpg.network in particular for tabletop RPGs, and !dndnext@ttrpg.network for D&D 5th edition specifically.
With /c/RPG it at least appears there's some engagement when people post, albeit admittedly the last post was a couple days ago (as of this comment).
Edit:
Me being a dense pattern of neural activity: you can try to find your peers in this community as well. My mind went straight to the larger specific interest communities as I'm thinking you may find others more easily there.
However, feel free to make a thread or threads here to try to find likeminded folks until you can get smaller communities going. Whether as simple as, "hey anyone else into D&D" or say cross-posting from a smaller community to here of things like organizing games or whathaveyou.
This isn't strictly to D&D btw, it includes other hobbyists trying to gauge interest in forming, or grow existing, communities. Basically feel free to post (or cross post) about your hobbies here, whatever you may have recently done related to them, and see if anyone else is also into your hobby and if you all might want to make a community of your own (if one doesn't exist yet).
The hobby communities really need someone to bootstrap them, posting content, even if it doesn't initially get much engagement.
The problem is that that's actually quite hard work, and can't be rushed, it requires posting a little over a long period of time - and may never get going!
Which are the 'core' D&D communities you are aware of? (so I can subscribe to them all)
The core d&d communities on lemmy? I'm not sure there are any. Rpgmemes gets the most traffic.
Bigger hobby/fan content is dead. The smaller stuff doesn't even exist. My most active subs on Reddit were NFL, Final Fantasy, Morrowind, and DnD memes. The new movie discussion threads were great too.
Now I'm just in News and Gaming mostly. But on the bright side, I don't spend nearly as much time on here. So it's a net positive.
I dropped political and news communities, feels better
As suggestions
Thanks for the recommendations. I subscribed to all of them.
Happy to help!
It is a shame that the news communities have filled out better than the more hobby-level stuff. I think that will come with time and hopefully some more users
It’s just a lot easier to find and share that type of content than stuff around a niche hobby. That takes a full community which takes time to grow. I think we’ll get there eventually.
Yeah I comment a lot but I really should try to post more
I tried to make an effort to post more since I joined here. It's easier once you get the habit of it.
Habit is key.
OP if you have a relative interest in seeing a community function better do try to post more yourself.
Find some dnd sites, even if its the biggest most well known ones, and post things you find interesting from there. Use the 'Body' to add your own perspective.
Start small, maybe try to Post one article every Wednesday night, and one article every Sunday night. Once you start a habit you'll naturally begin exploring forr new and interetsting resources.
I dunno, good luck! :)
Replied to someone else with a similar comment a moment ago, but I'll reiterate here: if you want to post about your hobbies/hobby activities here either to gauge interest in making a community or until the existing communities get more traction, feel free to.
This is an in-between community as-is, so I think it's as good a place as any to find likeminded people to build and grow other, more focused communities.
News is general interest, so it's more likely to get engagement and grow. The more the news communities grow, the more engagement will happen with more niche communities. It's the same network effect that reddit and Facebook benefitted from.
I just wish the political threads here were better. I'll read the headlines and some articles, but I feel the comment sections are largely either the same anti-corprorate or anarchist things over and over again or just bad takes in general. Not that Reddit was any better, but as I don't see the country giving up on capitalism in the next few generations, so I feel a lot of the opinions just aren't constructive.
What my solution has been was to find a dead community I liked and now I just post. I try to research and write good articles and curate cool pics. When people comment, I try to reply to everyone to build the community. By the time I'm done all the work, I'm mostly ready to wrap up being on here, so I'll quick browse All - Top 6 Hours to get the headlines, then All - New and try to find 1 or 2 posts that I can add a comment to, even if it just "Thanks for posting this, I never knew about this" to break the ice for other commenters.
Plus even if nobody else comments, the poster knows at least someone read it and their effort was worth it at least a little bit. As someone who is primarily a poster now, that's what inspires me to continue posting. If I'm doing the work and no one participates, the upvotes are ok, but I'd rather hear some feedback from a real person.
With this approach, I'm mainly focusing on what I DO want to see, because the bulk of the time is now spent on a community of my choosing, and it's building it up and it encourages me to read and learn more about that topic when I'm not on Lemmy.
The rest of my time is expanding my horizons and helping others build up other corners of Lemmy. It's a win for them and me.
So I guess basically, instead of being a consumer, try making what you want. If you make a post, you're at least going to see one thing that makes you happy. You may even make someone else happy with it. Then when you get in that kinda feedback loop, you notice you've created exactly what it is you wanted.
It doesn't have to be complicated. Find a pic or article you enjoy. Post it. Write a sentence or 2 why you liked it. I often try to end with a question to encourage comments, and hit post. People will say "I agree" or "nice" or "how does that work" and you reply. It's easy and gets easier the more you do it. I'm introverted, yet now I love sharing things on here.
It may take a while for people to find you and develop a little following, so start in an established place if that bothers you. Something like Birding is good. Everyone can find a bird they think is pretty. Google pretty bird pics, find one you like, and post it with a blurb like "Yo, I just learned about the Long Legged Purple Tit. It lives in the jungles of Grand Yolanistan and eats toads. I think that's awesome!"
This is about 5x longer than I planned to tie so I'm stopping now. Go be the change you want to see. Leave a comment on !superbowl@lemmy.world if this was helpful while you're at it. 😁
What this user said.
Be the Post maker of your own subject. Sometimes i spend so long on aussiezone, (my local server, represent!!), i forget the rest of lemmy is there.
I get a pretty cold hard slap when i jump into a political chat and some of the more extreme lemmy elements are settin up camp. Those guys be crazy. And i'm here for it!!!!
I'm in the same situation. What has worked for me to make me engage more is the opposite, I subscribed to a bunch of smaller communities about my interests and then I feel more compelled to comment something on a post that I know about.
Sometimes there's not much conversation happening but at least I'm providing what I know or my opinion, and 'rewarding' the poster for providing interesting content, even if that has not much quantifiable value for them.
I also switched my default feed to my subscriptions instead of All, that way I see less active posts instead of the super popular ones where everything has already been said hours ago.
I'm burying my head in the sand. Only way to not get emotionally manipulated every day.
I actually don't see any politics or news in my feed at all but I guess you mean that it's showing up in the meme feeds sometimes.
I generally browse via kbin.social, with lemmy.world as my backup, but since Ernest has gone MIA, things have become quite laggy and the frequency of errors is getting to be too much, so I've been exploring other instances and apps. One of the key things I'm looking for is an alternative that provides keyword filtering, so I can block out the majority of posts on certain topics. The Thunder app has keyword filtering, so I've been using that for the past couple days, and I'm definitely enjoying myself more and engaging more.
I've had to block a lot of communities from my lemmy.world feed since they're in languages I don't understand or are porn (I don't want porn popping up while I'm killing time on the bus!), but it's like whack-a-mole, so I'm really looking forward to instance blocking!
Mbin is actively developed: https://github.com/MbinOrg/mbin?tab=readme-ov-file
Instances: https://fedidb.org/software/mbin
Piefed has keyword filtering by default, as well as a lot of other neat features.
It's very much based around subscribing to communities, so you won't see random things that are trending in random communities on the front page. For better or for worse I guess. I like it a lot, but I use it in combination with kbin where I'm more likely to stumble across random things (like this thread). :)
Boost also supports keyword filtering. It's one of my favorite features of the app. I find that browsing local on lemmy.world is sufficiently broad for my taste without needing to block thousands of meme, shitpost, or sports team specific communities.
I've noticed that a lot of the negative news posts are all posted by a few users. I usually check their profile, and if I see that is the type of content they almost exclusively post, I block them.
I'm generally pretty informed, like you said, so I don't feel like it's being willfully ignorant. A good amount of it is pretty biased as well. So I don't feel like it's the best way to be informed.
Everything is politics. Half of us are here because of reedits bad politics.
I'm going to preface that this might feel like a personal attack but it's meant for anybody who come across this response.
We didn't come over here because of political reasons. Reddit didn't all of the sudden give their views on gun rights or abortion. They changed their business model. That's not politics.
Of course you can say anything is political, but thats on YOU. Why would you want to fill your head with all the negativity of the world, constantly? Can you personally solve the world's crises? Go outside and look around at your local community and see the GOOD that is still happening right in your back yard.
I'm sorry that I'm hounding on you specifically, but you said something and I'm going to refute your statement.
Beyond that, it's still good to have you here because it's debates like this that keep lemmy thriving.
EDIT: I edited this post to be nicer. Doesnct change my view.
They changed their business model. That’s not politics.
That's literally politics.
Reddit was able to change their API and essentially do whatever they wanted because they operate under a political system that gives power to corporations over individuals.
It doesn't have to be this way. At&t used to be able to require you to use their proprietary phone. That's not much different from Reddit requiring you to use their app.
We could have a different system. A system that gives data rights to individuals. A system that would require an API that allows 3rd parties -- and therefore more competition and innovation -- to exist.
What you just stated doesn't refute anything I said previously. If you want to surround yourself with what you consider politics, be my guest. Just don't bring me into it. I'm doing my part in my community.
K
I try to comment here and there if I find the time. I definitely lurk as well.
You can tweak a lot of what you see. You can even make accounts for politics, and accounts for hobbies! That's actually what I'm planning on doing soon.
I'm almost hoping that with the upcoming IPO, Reddit will make another stupid move and make more people to leave..
Oh man... you're basically speaking directly to why I made our small community (consider this a personal invite). As I said elsewhere, I find Lemmy actively hostile.
The number of indignant replies and comment-free downvotes we get inundated with continually is… disheartening.
People want content, but actively detract from any content that doesn’t explicitly cater to them. It’s hard to take.
I've joined!
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