Hello! I’m in Minnesota. I’m a social worker, former therapist, and work for local government. I’m trying to exit as many other social media platforms as I can and get back to slower, more local, person- and purpose-centered internet.

I understand and like the basic idea of federated platforms, but find them a confusing learning curve after decades of being hand-fed and dark-patterned around, so am still getting my feet under me. I feel about as old as I possibly could in the process. But I’m glad to be here learning!

I’m mostly a quiet and introverted lurker, but will probably pop up with a long rant the first time something about the state of the therapy industry comes up, lol.

Hi! I’m Nolan from Minneapolis! Trying out this board as part of a broader effort to un-big-tech my life. Didn’t see one, so I just created a community for posting about bicycles/cycling! I also love music, the outdoors, and dumb movies. Nice to meet you all!

From Chicago. I made the plunge to Mastodon (and here) after the Reddit shenanigans and just seeing the repeated bad-faith policies by Twitter. I have been using redirector and libredirect for the last month or two to actively decide who I give my data to just as a fun experiment into best practices.

I think it’s slowly starting to be clear that this type of setup will be the way forward for the more tech-savvy, privacy-focused users, and hopefully/eventually it hits the mainstream as well, but otherwise, it’s just self-selecting into the type of people I want to be around, which will probably be better for my mental health anyways.

I’m into cycling, trading, sci-fi and FOSS. Currently reading The Expanse and taking a sabbatical year from work

Edit: Just want to encourage people to engage w/ and create content over the next few weeks. Activity and friendly faces are probably the most determining factor in whether someone becomes an active user or just browses for a few minutes

Sup nerds. I’m Miah, I’m from Western Michigan. I’m a UNIX/Linux nerd, Right to Repair advocate, and transgender woman. I’ve been working on our cars by myself and would love to make some car nerd friends. My wife and I have 24 chickens, and a budding garden.

Hello! Quad Citizen reporting in, pretty active in the /r/Iowa and /r/QuadCities subreddits and poking around to see who’s popped up in Lemmy.

MOST of our buildings are solid.

Another former reddit user from the Twin Cities here. Enjoying learning about lemmy so far, still trying to figure out how it works! Big fan of disc golf, board games, books, and video games.

Howdy! I’m Evan, I’m from STL, and recently graduated from S&T with a BS in CS, going back for an MS. I’m a linguist, software engineer, musician, FOSS contributor, and Fediverse enthusiast. I build computers, run servers, write music, and get angry at the US/MO on the daily.

P.S.: call me scum, because I’ve only ever used Reddit via their official app, but at least I jumped ship!

Hey all, I live in Wisconsin and am exploring moving over from Mastodon because I like the Reddit-style interface better than Twitter-style. Like probably most here, I’m a tech nerd who is forever trying to get people away from the centralized internet.

Chicago leftist here! I like to play games, do Mutual Aid when I can, and read a lot of theory. Came over here to find a new community and more opportunities to network with other lefties.

Minnesotan and architectural designer here. I’m giving lemmy a try after deciding to leave that other site, and I feel like this midwest instance has the right vibe for me. Looking forward to spending all my time here instead of helping a faceless company make more money on their IPO!

Ohioan and electrical engineer here. Not exactly a refugee from reddit, since mostly all I did there was lurk, but excited to be here and distributed anything makes an engineer happy. At least this engineer.

Hi, Chicago resident primarily occupied with left-wing politics, board games, biking/public transit, and functional programming :)

Love the regional community server

Hi there. Iowan leftist fleeing the mainstream platforms to help my mental health. Feeling disillusioned with national political action and wanting to focus my attention locally. I’m and avid gardener, war-gamer/mini painter, and forever D&D GM.

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Yet another reddit refugee, but the only thing I will miss is the niche animal husbandry subreddits.

My main interests are critter genetics & habitat management, and a lot of husbandry n enrichment on the side. Always been a bit of a pain to be lefty & interested in livestock, most of the old forums such as they still exist are full of people that are pretty aggressive in their disapproval of my sort. But maybe I’ll find a niche eventually!

I do other science n tech reading and cruise some of the hobby stuff (carpentry, mini terrain, jewelry making… I like a little bit of a lot of things) but don’t usually post as much as lurk those areas.