Griseowulfin
I think a lot of it is depression and loss of hope and think “why would you bring a kid into this mess?”. I feel there’s a lot of personal aversion to children that might feed into this too where someone generalizes their dislike of children into the idea that having babies is bad.
I’ve heard the idea that one of the biggest issues of the web is the homogenization of user spaces. When I was a kid, I could get on Club Penguin, Webkinz, Disney and Nick’s websites for games. I think AOL even had a kid’s oriented network I might’ve used once or twice when dial was still around. When I got into my teen years, I started joining user forums and message boards where I knew that it was mainly adults, so I did my best to act mature (and failed, lol), and if I got called out for being too young and not fitting in, I either got ran off or banned. Now that I’m an adult, even in non-NSFW internet spaces, I don’t really want to interact with kids, but rules and culture are dictated by the need not to expose children to unsavory content because we just let them run around.
I’m sure it’s the responsible thing to do, because I saw stuff I never should have, browsing 4chan, adult content, and other really nasty stuff as a kid. I definitely don’t want kids to be subject to that, but damn I hate that the presumption that kids might see something be a strike against users when adults want to discuss mature topics.
I’m dangerously furry, though I keep on the down-low.
Videos/mealtimevideos was a big thing for me. They kept me entertained while I ate lunch, lol.
I hope so. I miss the old days of forums and stuff. the Pre/peri web 2.0 era was when I first started exploring the web and while i probably have rose-tinted glasses, I feel there was far more community in those days, when you knew who was in the audience when you posted something.
Yeah, I got a bad taste of crazy tankie stuff on my first venture into Lemmy when I decided to check it out. Luckily I’ve not seen much extremist rhetoric once I joined. I do see where it’s scaring off a lot of people from reddit, that said, I’ve seen lots of people promoting non-communist instances specifically, as well as the idea of federating/defederating as an antidote.
I’m trying to grow mine out, which is hard because it looks a bit messy. I have trouble finding a barber who can help shape it (it’s curly, so you really gotta find a good one for a good result) without cutting it really short. Now the hard part is finding products and techniques to style it. I’m so used to typical men’s hair routine of like 3 in 1 shampoo, so I’ve had to do a lot of research because I actually need to put effort into how I wash, dry, and style it.
"At that point Digg had a serious power user and astroturfing problem, "
lmao. Sounds familiar. I think you’re right that Reddit is going to survive, but I think this is a hard enough blow that it’s going to change the personality of the site. For one, the IPO dreams seem DOA currently, with the handling of this, the fairly toxic nature of some areas on the site, and drying up of VC in tech all seem to be bad news for any optimism for Reddit as a company. I imagine that this treatment is going to lead to migration of some communities, maybe smaller ones, leaving only the karma-farming, bot-ridden, main subs to be “the front page of the internet” anymore.
I hope that Lemmy serves as an acceptable shelter if not home for users looking for the next good web aggregator/messageboard, despite its shortcomings and the growing pains.
