Their sidebar appears to be intentionally vague. It is overwhelmingly low quality memes.
History wise
195 was a college dorm of a few friends who made a reddit sub to share memes with each other
Over time the sub grew really fast and became a major shitposting sub. I dont remember if it was while 196 was still around or after it shut down, but r/196 was made and became pro lgbt while 195 was kinda a cesspool. The guy running 195 shut it down because they were no longer dorming together or talking, and it was becoming hard to manage a huge sub alone with so many people posting hateful crap
196 became the weird trans femboy lgbt shitpost sub
197 popped up because people didnt like the lgbt stuff and it kinda became more like 195
196 moved here but a lot of people jumping to lemmy havent actually interacted with 196 before do theyre just posting whatever whenever
That’s a great explanation. I love the idea of having an “internet historian” (other than the actual internet historian, who really doesn’t talk the origins of the internet). I guess there’s the meme databases but still, this is a great read.
Yeah, what’s up with Internet Historian’s more recent videos? When I first found the dude, he literally did just do history about internet stuff. Now it all just seems like half hour long shit posts with no real info about anything in particular. Just strings of “lol so random” type humor.
You should watch only “Internet Historian” channel, he has alternate channels and those are of mixed quality (all far weaker). I avoid Incognito Mode like the plague, yet he links that channel off his main channel constantly
Oh thanks. I used to see them pop up on Reddit and never really got what it was about.
Cut that shit out. Just thank them and move on, awards were useless trinkets that fed the spezmachine
It’s a meme community where the only rule is you have to post something before you leave, that’s why a lot of posts say “rule”. The reason it’s so popular is because it used to be a super popular subreddit called /r/196.
As for why it kinda turned into an LGBT-specific community, beats me.
Every meme community becomes a trans shitposting paradise or an alt-right nazi gamer hellhole after it reaches critical mass. There’s no alternative.
r/196 became all lgbt stuff, so it followed over. IIRC the mods were really trigger happy with removing stuff that didn’t align super close with them politically.
r/197 formed as a direct response to this, and while at first they had issues with too much bounce back to the right with some gross anti-trans memes, once the dust settled and new mods were added, it became the best sub for just mindless shitposting without worrying about fitting a political theme.
Don’t know but I blocked it.
Blocking is ok, but subscribing to communities you care about and viewing by subscribed solves a lot of irritation.
Of course! I am mostly browsing All to discover other communities that I haven’t found yet.
The second part of your question is the easiest. It shows up all the time because you haven’t blocked it yet!
To add to this, to block communities, you need to go to your “home” server (ie where you have a lemmy account), navigate to Settings > Blocks and then search for them under “Block community”. This cleaned up my “all” feed.
