The only time I use reddit instead of Lemmy now is when I want to read discussion of TV shows I just watched.
The water coolers never came here organically. The communities exist here, but the bots are forwarding the articles from Reddit, the moderators are meta moderators of 50 different communities that sprung up on the first migration happened. Trying to actually hold conversations in most of the communities you’re just screaming into the void.
Then there’s the problem of the community existing in six different nodes each with four life humans in them.
A lot of the niche communities haven’t hit the user density required for self-sustaining discourse.
Then of course when you do start to get a community with a couple dozen active people moderation starts demanding tags and strict rules. I mean it’s good to get out ahead of things if you can, but if you only have a couple dozen active users don’t run them off.
Even the big communities feel small compared to reddit. You post something on a news comment section and you might get one to two polite replies fact checking you or giving their opinions. On reddit you would get dozens of people telling you how your post is wrong, and even if it’s an opinion your opinion is worthless and you have no value in life.
Much more engagement on reddit.
For me it’s the fact that I am one of approximately two people on Lemmy that has ever seen stuff like Haibane Renmei or Shin Sekai Yori, and there isn’t almost a decade worth of discussions about them to read on this platform. I could start communities for them, but I’m not cut out to moderate, and I’m not quite a big enough fan of either to justify taking on the role of a community leader
Effort!
I don’t usually want to contribute my own opinion. I just want to read other people’s and silently judge them if they disagree with me.
