Well they certainly overshadow mine, haha.

As a Canadian I am also obligated to say, oh don’t be sorry, I’m sorry!

I like your way of putting this. I’m a refugee but I’m already liking it so much better over here than over there. I feel like everyone here really wants to be here and participate. We’re all actively trying to grow these communities so let’s do it!

I’m one of the reddit refugees. To be honest I didn’t think the protest would make it very far, although I was hoping it would. It looks like reddit got a black eye out of it but that’s about it… nothing substantial.

That is fine by me. I was considering killing my two 10yr old+ accounts there anyway, and in the process I found this place, which I quite like to be honest. It’s a little janky and rough around the edges to be sure, but any of you that remember how reddit was back in the day know it was the same thing at one point. Lemmy has serious potential to become great, lots of work needs to be done but it looks like a lot of talent is already here to fullfill that potential. Growth is great, but if things grow too fast problems do too.

I look forward to seeing the true potential of what Lemmy can become, and I hope I can be useful in some way to help that happen and be part of it.

I don’t think anything was really missing … I think it will just take time. I never expected a quick switch from one platform to another for anyone … I even had a hard time making the break from reddit to here. I love the mountains of content at reddit but the more I explore this side of the fence, the more I feel like I am starting over and I really don’t mind that. This was the feeling I had when I started reddit ten years ago and I really don’t mind going over it all again.

However, this time, I am a veteran poster and contributor … I know more how to interact with people and be positive, stern, contribute positively and avoid getting entangled with others on messy topics. I didn’t have that experience the first time around.

Lemmy and the fediverse has the benefit of gaining a userbase of veteran posters, lurkers and contributors who will be more capable of generating more useful content this time around. We all just want to talk, debate, discuss and share with one another … we all like our cat videos and memes but I think a good portion of people just want to be able to talk about ideas and perspectives to stay informed with the rest of the world. And I think it will be those kinds of people that will slowly move onto platforms like this and slowly grow a new community of content on the internet.

People and their ideas and thoughts are the like the dandelions of the internet … they’ll grow anywhere they can and once they catch, they’ll blossom into fields of flowers in no time. Corporate controls are like weed killers that try to manicure the landscape into pretty flowers, grasses and crops to be harvested into picture perfect, highly organized and controlled environments that maximize profits but in the end give no useful, healthy product … I don’t mind living on the gravel sideroad of progress with not enough soil, in the hot sun and not enough water … give us time and we’ll grow our roots deep into the soil and cover the land with our bountiful growth!

Preach.

I’m honestly still using Reddit but mostly just lurking now, and really prefer Lemmy / kbin due to how completely awful the official app is (using Apollo now just makes me sad).

So I love participating here and plan to do so more and more! Whereas with Reddit, I can see myself opening that up less and less.

We’ll likely always be smaller, but we can be big enough while being better - and that would be fine by me.

this took me way too long to do, for what it is.