This is a sequel to this rant. I came to the realization that Lemmy and the broader fediverse aren’t really fun for me. The constant ragebait and politics shoehorned into everything was dragging me down, and the only communities without ragebait are also without content in general.
So I caved and made a Reddit account after 3 years and it’s gotten so, so much worse. First is probably the “gamification” of everything. Reddit already had karma, which had its own problems, but it was simple. Monkey brain like number go up. Now they show you analytics on your posts and comments, and encourage you to improve them, as though you’re meeting a metric rather than trying to connect with other people. It’s gross and cynical.
Then there’s the notifications. I get a notification every time a post is upvoted, not just for replies. It feels engineered to squeeze every drop of dopamine out of you and keep you feeding the content machine.
This one’s more subtle. The simple Reddit gold awards that existed when I first joined in 2012 had already ballooned into a myriad of different little trophies when I left in 2023, but they’ve redesigned them and now they look like assets from a free to play mobile game, with the way the awards shine when you mouse over them to that particular bright plasticky round art style. It’s not damning on its own, but combined with the above points it’s another nail in the coffin.
Sponsored posts I think were already a thing when I left, but now there are ads in the comments as well. There used to be one ad on a specific dedicated spot off to the side. It was unobtrusive without being hard to find. I felt that was fair. But it’s not about keeping the lights on anymore, now the whole things screams “You’re the product!”
But worst of all are the bots, AI masquerading as real users that make superficially genuine posts and comments. Discriminating between AI and human content is probably a skill that I could hone with time, but I shouldn’t have to go on a witch hunt every time someone compliments me. I’ve even been tricked into wasting my empathy on them, all so they can farm me for content.
So yeah, maybe I should just throw away my router and go outside.
!cat@lemmy.world has been politics free afaik and full of cats.
That last thing you said.
Many such cases of those who do not take advantage!
Lemmy has a community identity problem. People copied all the subreddit names over but basically none of the posting rules that makes them unique.
How is nostupidquestions different than asklemmy?
Why is nottheonion full of headlines not in the style of The Onion?
Why is there a whitepeopletwitter at all when microblogmemes exists?
I think the lack of guidelines leads people to post whatever wherever. I see why you feel like you can’t escape politics in every community
throw away your router and go outside
the only communities without ragebait are also without content in general
This is bizarre and hasn’t been my experience at all. I block “meme subs” and find the rest of lemmy quite normal.
Looking at your previous rant, I see that you describe “rage bait” as:
Every. Single. Thread. has the word “capitalism” or “Trump” in it somewhere.
I don’t see that much. Block political subs if you don’t want to see Trump.
methinks op leans a certain way politically, that is not being appreciated 'round here
Nah, even as a liberal, I do hate that all the top stuff on Lemmy seems to be political. It’s not surprising, it’s just much harder to make your entire feed just super niche interests. Like I’m able to make my Reddit fun by just following animal, Lego, plant, history, science subreddits and having zero news stuff pop up. If you do that here, you will be bored fast.
I’m just returning to try again after the latest generation of destroying Reddit, hopefully it is better than before and I am surprised.
Believe me, I’m praying for lemmy to catch up and be able to self sustain content. I’m fully on anything’s team that brings back what Reddit was 15 years ago.
Yeah…
Alternatively, people seem to think that politics are some nebulous separate thing to their life, sort of like a hobby, when the reality is everything is political. Like, you cannot escape politics as a general rule (and arguably, nor should you try to), because it infects every aspect of a person’s life.
I’m educated enough on politics though. I want my free time to be spent learning about random animals, Legos, rocks, Ancient Rome, not the latest dumb shit trump did. That’s wild take to think you can’t play video games, read a book, run with your dog without having to think about politics 24/7. If you truly believe that, see a therapist, that’s seriously not healthy.
Having hobbies is all well and good, I have them as well, but to not think politics has an impact on quite literally everything in your life requiring therapy is…a take.
Stating that politics have an impact on everything is just a statement of fact.
In just the examples you gave, some sort of political situation has impacted them - the price of Legos, modern interpretations of ancient history (through the lens of modern political discourse and what lead to the fall of Rome as an easy example), media regulation/censorship, the list goes on. It is possible to recognize that these things are impacted and not “think about them all the time.”
Ultimately, places like Lemmy are largely news aggregators, so you are going to get a lot of stuff related to the news (i.e. politics). It’s a bit tough to discuss the “latest in dog walking” for any period if time to largely anonymous people online when compared to “US geopolitics” or “global conflicts,” because those things are ever evolving.
Nobody said politics doesn’t have an impact on everything. But it’s possible to have a community dedicated to Legos or dog walking that doesn’t constantly talk about how the Trump administration or the economy effects it
“Be the change you want to see in the world” is the only real solution to that problem. News aggregation is an easy thong because its relatively universal - niche hobbies are not by definition, so its kind of up to people to make them happen.
Block political subs and filter out trump and murica related keywords and your feed is a ghost town. or porn.
My feed is nowhere near a ghost town. I have porn disabled as well.
I just hope niche communities comes here
I don’t think things are bad enough for niche communities to make the switch. For instance, I check out the Critical Role Reddit subreddit semi-frequently, and it seems quite healthy, rather like how Reddit used to feel. By comparison, Lemmy does have a CR community and it gets posts from some dedicated users, but the comment section is always quiet (which is unfortunate, because interacting with other fans in the comments is kinda the whole point).
It really takes an organized move, where the subreddit community as a whole decides to switch over. The numbers just aren’t here for most niche interests to survive organically.
Every once in a while I see some, so I get a feeling there’s a nice amount already. =)
But takes more effort to keep them healthy, as the network is young and relays to help with discoverability aren’t common or widespread yet.
I’m hoping for more niche instances with their own distinct identities and quirks. The threadiverse could really be the best of the old PhPBB universe and reddit.
Go outside
I browse feeds for about an hour a day, to get a feel for the information and mark anything I want to deep dive at my leisure. Outside is great. Creating things is great. I would highly recommend it. Even if you don’t ever make anything “worthwhile”, doing is worthwhile.
Is rather die with a pile of poor paper-mache ant heads wilting in the humidity, than 1000 karma or 1,000 people who know me as “wireheadcrawfishscissors” on socials. I’d rather waste an hour under a tree, listening to the wind, than an hour listening to others rage and whine into the void.
The world outside is beautiful. The one capitalism has created is a Frankenstenian horror of rotting thoughts posing as alive through the power of electricity. It wants to eat you. That’s its only goal. Don’t put your head in its mouth.
My brother I live deep inside a city and the heat is unbearable. The wet bulb temprature here is higher than 30c. Being outside isn’t much of an option for me
As someone from the swamps of Louisiana, who has spent considerable time in South and Central Texas, I can say that I was speaking with full understanding of what hot really means. I’ll be outside in the middle of July, in the shade for noon to 3.
Concrete and asphalt offers no joy and life with which I might forgive the sun though. I would suggest the morning or late night hours for the crushing city. Regardless, as the other poster said, inside offers a plethora of activities and space for creation. Learn, sculpt, knit, whatever.
Build more you. On the off-chance that you can take something with you when you die, it’s about the only option.
If you cannot go outside due to heat, get off of Lemmy/social media and engage in a productive hobby. Learn to craft, build, paint, SOMETHING else than sitting in a rage enducing bubble. Even Lemmy has its problems and you shouldn’t be on here all day. I have friends to hang out with, play games, miniatures assemble, exercise, cooking… Do something else.
Most of this can be easily solved with one simple move.
Profile Icon -> Settings -> Preferences -> Experience -> Default to old Reddit -> turn on
- No ads in comments
- No upvote notifications
- No metrics
- I thought they removed awards entirely
Only thing it doesn’t help with is the bot problem. I’m just assuming that everyone with a default username who hides their history is a bot, and anyone who hides their history in general isn’t worth my time. I still run into bots over there way too often though.
Edit: main disadvantage of doing this is that they removed private messages from Old Reddit.
I did this this morning and it does help a fair bit.
This is a very lemmy.world take.
Lol my first thought too. You chose the no rules instance and you’re upset you’re seeing trash?
Sounds like you’re using default or ‘new’ Reddit. Switch to ‘old’ Reddit mode and I think ~85% of that stuff should drop off. Also, in terms of the FV, sounds like you’re cruising “All.” Instead, I’d recommend subscribing to the kinds of interests (via communities) that you want to see. It can take some time to build up that kind of list, but the results are pretty glorious, at least for me.
Alternatively, maybe just throw your computer or phone out the window. That might help.
About the fediverse, most generalist communities have rampant political agendas crossdressing as posts of whatever topic the community is about.
I recommend blocking communities that bother you, or individuals if it’s specific ones that keep filling your feed with stuff you don’t want to see.
Been doing it for years and it surely becomes serene without drying up the feed.
Also might I suggest making an account on Mbin instead of Lemmy? It connects to microblogging too so further posts to find, allows blocking posts by linked articles (you’d be surprised how much that cleans the feed), and it’s very responsive to Ublock Origin filters and Violentmonkey scripts.
About the fediverse, most generalist communities have rampant political agendas crossdressing as posts of whatever topic the community is about.
Yeah, /c/mildlyinteresting is probably the worst one I’ve come across so far. Yellow stop signs are mildly interesting, three-chambered peanuts are mildly interesting. News articles about the political consequences of AI are NOT mildly interesting. Important and worth discussing? Sure, but not here.
And then there’s stuff like this. Whenever people complain about the fediverse not growing, this right here is why. Nobody is going to want to be in a knitting or woodworking community that only ever talks about seizing the means of production.
Life is politics. Death is the only escape.
The first image is innocuous, not overtly political if overtly off topic. Off topic discussions happen.
The second, well you’re browsing a community on a “politics” instance. There are communities there and people who aren’t devoted to it. Unfortunately the administration is. And it ultimately seeps into everything. If its an issue for you (it is for many many people. No shame there) BLOCK it.
The only real answer when it comes to niche communities and activity. Is to be the change that you want to see. Take an interest or two of yours that you feel is unrepresented and start a community. Try to post content there as regularly as you can. And then as you go along. Browsing new posts. When you see other posts in communities you might be interested in. Simply take the time to stop in and leave a post of general encouragement. It can mean a lot to those who post and moderate. And encourages others to do the same. Realistically the fediverse isn’t all that different in many ways than early Reddit. And that is how it grew.
I’ve complained about this in “mildly infuriating” before, numerous times, and based on response it seems that a critical mass of folks agree with me. However as long as the mods are inactive and don’t remove irrelevant posts, the problem isn’t going to get resolved. (I try to downvote the really bad offenders, but since most people browse all or subscriptions rather than in the community itself, they’re probably not comparing the content against the community all that closely, so the upvotes for content always outweigh the downvotes for context).
I hadn’t thought of browsing habits as a contributor. Both here and on Reddit I always bounced around specific subs/communities rather than scrolling All or Subscribed.
I think the inactive mods are due to a lot of Lemmings coming from Reddit having a perception that mods were power tripping, so Lemmy mods are reluctant to act.
The mod issue is a combination of things. There definitely are power mods and power-tripping mods here (see: yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com), although I’d believe the theory that many mods here intentionally try to have a light touch. I think the bigger issue is inactive/awol mods, and insufficient mods (many? most? smaller communities only have one mod: the person who created the community, who may/may not still be around). Also there are mods who welcome most any activity in their community, because otherwise they’d be dead.
About Lemmy.ml specifically, iirc it is communist so posts and users will generally go that way.
But this brings a point, each instance has a culture or scope, and so some frustations may come from specific instances, requiring you to keep an eye for that too.
deleted by creator
the tankie instances are pretty much 1-sided political asf, i blocked all of them.
Hey I had never heard of mbin, that looks good.
Lemmy has bots too. Mostly those ones used to repost image macros and screenshots from other social media sites.
There’s a stark difference before and after the existence of those types of accounts.
in r/all you can filter out all the subs that are problematic, i did, when those subs were getting annoying. reddit dint get any better after you went back, it got worst after the great purges last year. as a note i only come on lemmy 1-3 hrs at night, so i dont spend all day, im often afk doing something else on lemmy anyways.
