It’s unfortunate, but there’s a real chicken-and-egg problem here. Those of us who are on here are here because of how strongly we believe in the ideal of it, but for the average person who just cares about talking about their favourite interests, there’s a serious lack.

I’ll use two examples, one that you clearly care about, and one that I do. /r/stopkillinggames is hardly super active, but in the last 3 weeks it’s had 11 posts with a cumulative 68 comments. !stopkillinggames@lemm.ee, by contrast, has had just 8 posts, all by a mod, with just 6 total comments. /r/AgeofMythology is very active with artistic appreciation posts, balance discussion, and advice just within the last 24 hours. !aom@lemm.ee has failed to attract a single post from anyone other than myself, and it’s been over 3 months since anyone other than myself has left a comment. It’s disheartening, not being able to have conversations about the stuff you love, when you know that just over there it would be so easy.

Lemmy’s excellent if you want to talk about politics, or open source, but there’s not a huge amount outside of that. The Star Trek communities are pretty good, but they pale in comparison to a great sub like /r/daystrominstitute, and the amount and depth of discussion on ttrpg.network is slim compared to /r/pathfinder2e, /r/dndgreentext, /r/dndnext, etc. And these are some of the best-supported hobbies on Lemmy.

So as much as I’m staying here and trying to do my part to make it better, and frequently encourage others to join…I also can’t really blame people who don’t.

(I feel less charitably towards people on Twitter. Because that place is a total shithole, and Mastodon is surprisingly good, if you like microblogging platforms. Plus even Bluesky is better than staying on Twitter, and it has most of the celebrities and micro-celebrities some people might want to follow.)