People have lots of excuses for not using Lemmy. If I had to come up with one, I would say first impressions. The design / UI is not the greatest. It works, but it’s not the greatest.

They keep blocking me on VPN. I do NOT use Reddit. I can browse stuff on VPN but I can’t post. Piefed hasn’t started doing that, least not the instance I use. May change in the future…

I kind of like this level of people as lemmy is less saturated and that’s a good thing. Quite often when I was on reddit you’d look at a thread and everything that can be said has been said, so there’s nothing new you can add.

I find myself commenting on lemmy a lot more because it’s not saturated and that pun hasn’t been done, the perspective hasn’t been provided, the counterpoint to another comment hasn’t been commented etc.

Hi. I’m Nobody.

1. If you are just a basic prole who wants to use a forum and discuss today’s issues, Lemmy seems to be a smaller version Reddit. How does it stand out?

2. The name is awful. Twitter grew regardless of the name, so maybe this point is dumb. Also, avatar looks like a rat.

3. Rainbow. If you want more users, expand your market. Rainbow in USA means Democrat LGB. Would you like more Christians and Muslims to join? Hindu?

4. I’m a moron, not a programmer… but wouldn’t a lot more users destroy Lemmy? From my reading of what other smarter people have said, too much growth would lead to exponential costs and isn’t really feasible. I am not well read on this topic, so apologies.

I would guess that the founders made these design decisions to exclude normies, maybe that’s also why they picked the name and selected the rat icon. In which case, everything is working as designed and all is well.

Nobody used reddit for a long time as well

Until people did

Lemmy feels like reddit around 2009

Because there is no advertisement for it? Thing is, if you don’t go actively looking for a Reddit Alternative, chance is you will never have heard of Lemmy. At least, that was the case for me.

Because there are a bunch of people on here that have a problem when you don’t have the shit of the world on your mind 24/7.

I use Lemmy

Hidden from Google search results

I was on Reddit a long time, it wasn’t always huge. Usenet forums before that. I like following topics, not people, and like hosting communities built around topics but would hate to have “followers” of myself personally, that sounds hellish. So never used Facebook, etc, and don’t even love Mastodon, really.

But apparently this is a minority view?

Lemmy, reddit, and other forum type websites are primarily text based. Microblogging and social media are short form and have plenty of pictures and videos, which catches and retains the attention of users more. Their algorithms are also more intense and curated compared to say reddit’s front page which is more generalized to all its users. Forums mean you have to spend time reading and typing while you can doomscroll and press a reaction button on social media and microblogging.

Reddit seems to be highly algorithmic now, so I think it has more of the “doomscrolling effect” that does accrue a lot of engagement.

Just gonna throw this out there: Lemmy is a bad and dumb name.

1. It’s a joke about users being lemmings
   • this subtly denegrates the user on every usage
   • this implies the app/product itself isn’t that serious and sounds kinda childish
2. It’s not a satisfying word from a pronunciation standpoint. How many other company or product names can you think of that end with that ee sound? Reddit, Twitter, Threads, they all end with these conclusive consonant sounds. Lemmy sounds like it’s trailing off while whining.
3. At best it conjures up images of rat like rodents.