I really love community-driven social media like Reddit. Lemmy feels… too small. I really loved that Reddit let me jump into any niche hobby, and instantly I had a community.

Please note: you only ever had something like that with Reddit when it had already several years of operation. Even today, you can't jump instantly and find there a community for any niche hobby.

As with all these things: be the change you want to see. Add content, or else it won't be there when you or someone else comes in.

(There's also a feel that Lemmy is "small" becaue it's not only one place and all that)

Yet, it feels like an uphill battle.

In a way, it is. It's also much further uphill if you consider it a solo task. These are absolutely valid things to vent about, even if they are solvable.

(I felt a lot more like this before the reddit API exodus)

Post the content and you'll get some engagement. I've posted in niche subs here like Begleris, lockpicking, Balisongs and got engagement. So I don't know what to tell you but to post whatever.

I only used Reddit for two years, but I’m now really happy I made the jump to Lemmy.

Sadly, I can only agree that some niche content is difficult to find.

But I can’t complain because I’m not creating any of that content and moderating some community.

The thing I like about Lemmy is that they're not banning you over stupid shit.

It may not be for everyone. Lemmys growth has stalled out and barring musk buying reddit and turning it to shit i don't see another influx coming. So we're kinda stuck with the community that exists now. Its a pretty good and sustainable community which can provide a lot of general interest posts like news, memes and cats lately. But for other more specific topics if if it's not already a large community here it probably won't be. It's not even just niche interests, professional sports for example has very little presence on here as a whole much less individual sports or teams, and I don't see, for example, a baseball community taking off here no matter how much effort you put in since the current lemmy community isn't much interested in it and your average baseball fan probably won't be coming to lemmy to discuss things.

My recommendation would be to use lemmy for some of those general interest topics, and maybe some of the more popular niche communities if your into them, And go to other places, preferably independent forums or rss feeds, for other things. We don't need one unified scrolling app, it may be a bit more convenient, but the internet is better off if you spread your traffic around.

The internet has been mostly enshittified. The corporations are guaranteed to continue sucking in predictable ways. It'll never get better or good enough.

The fediverse is something new. It is, at the very least, immune to being reddited and twittered. If the internet has a future, it's on the fediverse, or on something like it that doesn't exist yet. Going back to shitty corporate stuff just delays the future.

Your real issue is that spez, musk, etc all suck. That's what you hate. This is the place where we are free of them, and it can only get better.

I believe in Lemmy and the fediverse. But the subreddits with content I like aren't here yet. So I still have to go back for that stuff.

But I always check here first.

It's still a tiny echo chamber like it was a couple months ago when I cut back on Lemmy use. It can get pretty repetitive and boring to read. I came back to Reddit because the user base was larger and there were more perspectives I could hear from.

Reading the comments here made me realize something.

It’s nice to have good content for niche communities that you enjoy but that’s always been a tall order. As in, a lot of things have to go right to get that organic community feeling and I’ve honestly always thought of it as a privilege and not a right.

I’ve seen plenty of communities die for various reasons or just been in a position where I didn’t have passion to go and talk about my niche interests.

So what’s my point? Niche communities are the icing on the cake of a good platform. When we mostly have for profit platforms and little main stream interest in standardized alternatives, you got to be more realistic.

Browse by "subscribed", and subscribe to a lot of communities. Only do it by "all" when you can't find good stuff in the subscribed view.

I do this and, while I do see a few intrusive US politics posts, it's far less than when browsing by "all".

Post what you want, comment on everything, make your own community, etc etc etc

I see this all the time like some kind of catch-all for complaints about how effectively dead this platform is.

Not everyone is cutout to pioneer any kind of community, let's just assume that OP takes this advice to heart, if their interest/hobby is niche enough, what's even the likelihood of someone else tumbling upon it? Let alone contributing. Maybe this hypothetical other person wants to contribute but they see that it's only one other person posting anything and they figure, "what's the point?" Maybe they don't agree with OP's opinions and would rather find another "community" where their opinions won't be contested even if it doesn't exist. There are a myriad of reasons why, this is going to happen with every channel, fandom, interest group, etc. it's a natural part of the process. The problem lies in the simple fact that there's fucking no one here, there are enough bodies to come and stay and go and continue the cycle until a community is established.

Yes, there are plenty of channels or w/e they're called here, but most of them are effectively islands in a sea of shit you don't care about (or bots.) They're not managed, and there's nothing going on in them. Why is it up to you the user to stop what you're doing and make something out of nothing? When there are already communities that do exist on other platforms, even if said platforms are trash like Reddit or Xitter are. The majority of users in large communities are lurkers, they might not actively contribute, but they do share content with their own friends or interest groups and that is what's more likely to bring people in, those people might be people that do end up contributing, or they might be more lurkers. But it feeds into the growth of the community either way.

Most of Lemmy doesn't have any of that though, because there's no one here.

Post the kind of content you’d like to see.

Is there a way to 'view all images' like RES has a button for?

Block FlyingSquid, it improves the community a huge amount.

Yeah I want to get off Reddit but this place is small and is very political. It's a tiny echo chamber. A very very small one.

Jokes on you the political content here is from the redditors who pretended to quit their award fueled addiction by also joining lemmy.

Seriously though, compare c/Politics to c/Worldnews or c/News. There is a very large dissonance between the comments shared despite both communities posting the same news info..

I know I can post and be the change I seek.

Imo, this is your answer. I'm not sure exactly what other solution you want. Content will not appear on Lemmy without someone first posting it. Advertising the platform to help draw people in is also important.