Why does Lemmy feel so fresh compared to Reddit?

As a long time Reddit user, there's something about Lemmy and the fediverse that feels really refreshing and new. I think it has to do with a few things...

  1. People are more respectful of each other and interested in discussion and being social.
  2. Less trolls (users are probably older?)
  3. Due to it not being absolutely huge, I feel like people will actually see my posts and comments instead of being lost in a sea of content. I suppose once Lemmy grows this will change, however the cool thing about the fediverse are the new servers. So you can stick to the server when you want smaller community discussion and go to "all" when you want more populated threads.
  4. The clean UI feels refreshing and clean, almost like the early internet.

What have you noticed? Do you find it refreshing too?

pickle_party247,

In addition to what everyone has said, Lemmy doesn't have an established culture compared to Reddit. No in-jokes like the poop knife for example

Kurumatron,
@Kurumatron@lemmy.world avatar

How long until the "broke two arms" story comes here?

goat,

huuuuuuuuuurr, we should make a really clever and quirky comment to identify ourselves. something something narwhal bacon sings.

XD XD ;p

adj16,

But we do have the no poop guy.

Refuses to shit. Refuses to elaborate. Leaves.

Rob,

I also choose this guys poop knife

mim,

It's inevitable with time though.

Maybe to a lesser extent, since not every instance federates everything. If clusters start to form, you'd expect some in-jokes to be limited to certain communities / instances.

Ciari,

The poop knife has already made its way here 💀

Jumuta,

wtf did i just read

datavoid,

Quick someone link the swamps of dagobah, Jolly rancher, coconut, or broken arms

esty,
@esty@lemmy.ca avatar

I haven't read any of these words in years and I'm kind of upset you made me remember their existence

abcd,

TIL about the poop knife!

bigkahuna1986,

You’re one of today’s lucky 10000! Sort of…

danielton,
@danielton@lemmy.world avatar

It seems like the people who actually cared about Reddit and the community left for Lemmy (and others). It definitely shows.

Reddit will learn very quickly that there is nothing particularly special about it. It's a forum. With the people who posted and moderated on there being chased away or even banned, there isn't going to be much of value left on Reddit going forward.

samus12345,
@samus12345@lemmy.world avatar

The only thing special about Reddit now it that it became insanely popular and got its hooks into millions of people. Those who are interested in actual discussion will go elsewhere, and those who want to mindlessly doomscroll reposted memes and have ads shoved in their face will stay. That's where they belong.

Haan,

I agree. I think Reddit is delusional if they think they will be able to successfully monetize what are essentially just forums. Reddit users themselves don't give a hoot about Reddit as a brand, company, or product. They care about communities and being able to have discussions on their favorite subjects. There's no secret sauce proprietary to Reddit at all and people will go where ever everyone else is

Noedel,

It will probably continue as a shell... Like Digg, Facebook and other failed social medias that once were golden.

danielton,
@danielton@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah, I don't think Reddit is going anywhere, but it won't be as good as it used to be.

5redie8,

Yeah, couldn't have put it much better myself. I'm fine with it, let them stay.

git,

I think it has people with above average reading comprehension because amount of people I saw that said opening a Lemmy account is too hard and they couldn't manage to do it is way too high

Grosshirn,

Yeah that's true! If an article is posted, the discussion shows that people really did read the article!

Very_Bad_Janet, (edited )

Early adopters of any innovation likely have certain personality traits that make them able and willing to assess a new technology and learn/overcome some obstacles to use it. Maybe those traits translate into pleasant, respectful online communication?

ETA: I need to see if I still have my old grad school copy of Diffusion of Innovation. It might have some answer in there.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations

ETA1: Most everyone seems thoughtful and patient. So maybe those are early adopter traits?

dodgypast,

That's my thinking. As an example the people who usually end up answering people's tech queries are the most likely to end up here.

gylotip,

What does ETA mean?

Very_Bad_Janet,

Edited To Add. :)

MyMulligan,
@MyMulligan@lemmy.one avatar

My wife is a teacher at a small district. She's watched student's abilities drop over the past twenty years and the time of covid left them severely lacking. Yes. Their writing skills are practically not there. It's truly sad.

MyMulligan,
@MyMulligan@lemmy.one avatar

The negativity is definitely less. Sure, out of say fifty comments to a post there's maybe two disgruntled souls. Overall it's conducive to discussion.

Over on reddit I kept to just hobby subreddits for the most part to make comments. Only way to not come across the trolls.

Yes, the clean UI is wonderful. It's good to have something simple. It's also fun to watch something grow.

StarLuigi,
@StarLuigi@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

The hobby subreddits and the smaller subs were the only ones I was sad to see go when moving to Lemmy, I was surprised by how much I didn't miss anything else at all .

orcrist,

Of course it feels new, because it is new to many people. :-)

I felt like people were seeing my Reddit posts and comments, and I feel like people are here, as well. As with any commenting website or service, as the numbers of commenters grow large you need to be relatively quick to reply if you want many people to see what you write. On Reddit, obviously that means it depended what subreddit you were commenting on. And surely it will be the same or already is the same here.

The UI all depends on what client you're using. In my mind it doesn't feel like the early Internet, but that probably depends on our relative ages.

Wander,
@Wander@yiffit.net avatar

You don't have your post deleted for forgetting a minor rule and there's a chance that your post will be seen instead of hidden under countless new posts.

Vlyn,
@Vlyn@lemmy.ml avatar

Even worse when you browse /r/all, find an interesting post about some topic, join the discussion, type out a long reply, hit send…

And 3 seconds later you get an automod message that your comment was removed. Because you aren’t a subscriber to that (default!!!) sub, or you aren’t verified, or you used a word they don’t like.

And even worse: You join a discussion, got some good points back and forth, everything is great. You try to reply to the latest comment in that chain to keep the conversation up and suddenly your comments get blocked. Because it was a /r/blackpeopletwitter post (you didn’t even notice as you found it on /r/all) and at some point they only locked it down for verified black users, kicking you out of the discussion.

I mean sure, have your own space on Reddit (even if it’s basically racism), that’s fine. But then subs like these shouldn’t be default subs on /r/all when they constantly lock down threads.

Grosshirn,

I have been a user on Mastodon for quite some time but wasn't that active and felt it lacked some content for me. Now that I joined lemmy I learned that mastodon is federated and I learned about kbin! That's what makes it refreshing for me. A lot of new stuff and small communities emerging :)

kiddblur,

The thing that I think makes lemmy more valuable than mastodon is the focus on content versus personality. With Twitter, you followed people because you were interested in what they had to say and share. With Reddit, you followed communities. So even if a lot of the people don’t move over, once enough of the community does, it’ll feel the same (or better). I was never super active in my various subreddits (although I did comment, I just never posted), but I’m making an effort to comment and vote a lot on here just to help build that sense of community

Grosshirn,

Yeah that perfectly summarizes my feelings aswell. The topic oriented communities are what I preferr!

yads,

Really good summary. I think this is exactly why I never really took to Twitter and I never really realized why, but it's exactly that. I'm more interested in topics than specific people.

danielton,
@danielton@lemmy.world avatar

Not disputing what you're saying, but one feature that was a game changer for me on Mastodon was figuring out that I can follow hashtags in addition to people.

But I do agree with everything you said!

kiddblur,

Oh yeah, that is nice, but I guess at the end of the day it's still just that idea of "I'm a person saying a thing" (and using a hashtag) versus "here's this article I found"

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