I discovered Lemmy as a reddit alternative once they introduced the api changes, and from what I understand, so did most of the current users. So I was wondering what was Lemmy like before that? Did any notable things or inside jokes happened? If you are one of the old users are you happy with this growth? Is there anything you’ll miss?
I’m very happy with this growth! Lemmy before the refugee influx was nice enough, but the conversation topics were more or less based on politics and open source software. With new users coming here posts have become much more varied.
As far as notable things are concerned, there is one incident that I thought was funny. About two years ago, the content on Lemmy was sparse. So sparse that even if a post only got a few upvotes, it would get on the front page. And so it came to pass that one user’s posts were regularly featured on the front page. The user will stay unnamed, but the posts were about flat earth.
The posts were downvoted, many into negative numbers no less, and ignored at first, but they just kept coming. And the user was so adamant that the earth was flat, he would go off in the comments calling people “simpletons” for believing the “lies” we were fed. So then a few users, myself included, went to the user’s community and just started shitposting flat earth memes. The user tried arguing at first, but then went quiet. And after that, no more flat earth posts.
As a refugee myself, I’m glad to hear the old ones seem to perceive the influx as mostly exciting and positive. I had some worries some people might not like how the new ones change and overwhelm what’s old and dear.
Ah well, maybe it’s too early to judge. Maybe you hate us next week? :)
You could come to lemmy once a month, and see just about nothing change.
It was not nearly as fun as it is now
https://lemmy.ml/u/Communist from a 4 year old account.
It was very small and slow, every post had max 50 upvotes and like 10 comments (maybe more on the more political ones, where trolls reigned) There was a new post once in a blue moon, you could scroll at 10,and find the same content that you would find at 22.
I joined a year ago btw, it was like this until the mass migration 1 week ago or so
Slow, mostly tech- and politics- focused (for me, as I follow plenty lemmygrad communities), and to be honest kind of boring. I’d open it up once in a blue moon, check if there was some content, “nope”, and then move on.
Now though? I’m probably a few hours straight here, drinking my yerba and using it.
peaceful
It still seams a lot more peaceful than Reddit was. It feels like the early 2000s all over again!
There are certain factions constantly agitating for defederation, which is a nuisance for several reasons – not the least of which being it sort of defeats the point of the format!
It was… sleepy. One guy provided half the content. Particular topics had like max 30 people interested enough to click the arrows, usually way less. Hell, even the few trolls we had were usually recycled.
