Jesus christ, dude. I’m here scrolling through posts at 2 AM in a dark room because I’m having trouble sleeping, and this picture scared the shit out of me. RIP my chances of going to sleep any time soon.

Yep. Certified non-tech nerd here. And not quite 30, either.

I was awfully close to not figuring out Lemmy enough to make an account and participate.

I still don’t understand exactly what’s going on, but I can confirm that my first time visiting was extremely confusing. So many terms I was completely unfamiliar with, and no clear way for me to jump in easily (like you were describing with having to make important decisions before signing up/understanding). Truly the only reason I ended up successfully making it here was that I saw a post on the instance I ended up joining, welcoming reddit refugees so I figured - well, I guess I could try this one. And that was after I had searched around online to figure out what the heck the fediverse, instances, etc, were.

The barrier to entry is really high for those of us with little to no tech knowledge. And I was really motivated, I reeeeally wanted to commit to leaving reddit. I imagine those who are considering joining but aren’t quite as motivated just won’t make it. :(

Yeah they’re great! I got a super long flat white one and those little white plastic staple things you can lightly hammer into the wall, and ran it along the baseboard of the walls, makes it nearly invisible! It was a bit tedious to do (which is why I haven’t yet redone it in the place I live now, although I will), but honestly I super recommend it. My partner wanted to try and run cords through the walls but I was way too nervous about what might go wrong, so found this solution instead lol

OMG. And this is how I learned that there is a button to view only my subscribed communities. I can’t believe I didn’t realize that before. I was confused why so few of my subscribed communities were showing up on my front page, while communities I wasn’t interested in were, but I didn’t stop to think about it enough to realize there was another option I hadn’t tried.

Lord. Anyway, thank you for mentioning that, otherwise who knows how long it would’ve been before I finally realized lol.

I have summers off from work (am a teacher), which I COULD be using to get tons of errands done, renovating the house, working out, etcetc. However, I am currently spending it sleeping in, playing too many video games, staying up late, crafting, reading, etc, which is exactly what I did during summer as a kid as well. It’s been nice :)

But, I think part of the issue is that communities that folks are interested in being a part of, about certain topics/etc, just aren’t active enough here yet. I’m glad to see some are growing, and my personal experience is improving over time, but I keep finding communities that look like something I’d love but have zero activity ir content in them. So I do understand folks wanting to fill parts of this with content in general, even if it’s content similar to what they would’ve gotten on Reddit, because content and activity is what will help build those cool communities over time.

I only wish I had interesting or important things to contribute to the communities I’m interested in, I never know what to say or do to help build a community that’s nonexistent or essentially so. 😥 so far I’ve just been commenting wherever I can, for the most part, hoping that helps.

No, I agree with you on this also. I am not the original commenter here, but I was just scrolling through “all” and I do agree that it’s a little annoying to see ~90% of the page filled with posts about reddit. But I’m also someone willing to participate in discussions about reddit still, at least a little, so I imagine it’s way more annoying to those who just want to forget about it.

I didn’t even notice what community or instance this post was in when I opened it to participate in lol

Not sure there’s really a good solution though, and comments/posts from people complaining about everything being about reddit is also adding to the total number of things about reddit. I assume the constant reddit focus will fade out over time as other communities slowly build up more activity.

Same! I went to check it out earlier and the frontpage had a couple of subreddits I recognized but am not interested in, and the rest were all subreddits I had never heard of before. I also thought the scores seemed weirdly low, but not 100% sure about that since I dont usually pay super close attention. At least the weird vibe was pretty helpful in getting me to hop off, versus getting sucked in to browsing around more.

I don’t know anything about the number of users they’re expecting to have with this, but I’ll be very surprised if it’s a significant number. I just don’t get why anyone would want to join it, not only for what it is, but also for the whole facebook/meta nonsense. But I suppose some folks still actively and frequently use Facebook, so what do I know!

I can’t see any reason for me to ever try it. I’ve got plenty of social media to deal with already, and this doesn’t seem to be offering anything new or interesting for me. Plus the creepy permissions even keep me away from joining temporarily out of any curiosity I might have.

Wtf. That’s so weird. It already looks silly and somehow that makes it seem even more silly.

I am so sad that Mindhunter hasn’t had another season yet, I loved that show!

I disagree from what I’ve seen so far. Most of the discussions I’ve seen lately about newly migrated reddit users have been folks who were lurkers or mostly lurkers. I myself used to be active on reddit years ago, but have been a lurker for a good 6-7+ years now or so. I think you’re correct as of a few weeks ago when powerusers may have migrated earlier, but I think the migration post-API implementation has been a large amount of non-powerusers. Of course, users that are 100% casual, and don’t have accounts at all or only rarely used Reddit, and might not even be aware of what’s going on, those folks I’m sure didn’t really move.

Great idea! I haven’t seen any others mentioning this in all the protest discussions I saw. Hopefully others did similarly, that seems like something that could really help.

To add to this, I think people often underestimate how “easy” it can be to function in society without being able to read well. I know that some folks who either don’t read at all or read at a very low level have just gotten used to interpreting the world around them without the language part. For example, visually recognizing a username and password field on a website and knowing what they’re for, or recognizing the symbols and colors used for certain objects or meanings, all without the actual words needing to mean anything to them for them to understand what it is and what to do with it. And for those who can read at a 5th or 4th grade level (and would thus be included in the stat mentioned in this post), they’re likely then very capable of reading and understanding the majority of text they’re going to come across in their day-to-day lives.

Of course, I don’t want this to sound like I’m saying being illiterate is easy, I’m sure it creates MANY barriers and difficulties for the person, but I do think humans are also flexible and resilient, and are able to survive using other cues.

I was scrolling through “all” and thought this was a legit ad at first 😅

Forreal, what’s going on? Why does it seem like so many separate sites are suddenly so much worse/going downhill quickly?