A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.
The thing with mostodon and lemmy is that the feed is not algorithmicly tailored to you with the goal to get you to spend as much time as possible. That’s why these experiences are usually more relaxed and fulfilling than what the big players offer.
And that’s why I’m never going back. I absolutely love it here. I scroll my feed for a few minutes here and there, drop a comment or two, and I’m done. No feeling of missing something cool. I’ve probably seen it and I’m good.
OH! That’s fucking interesting and makes so much sense. Lemmy is the only social media thing I have now and that’s 100 percent what the difference is that I couldn’t put my finger on.
Reddit wasn't tailored to the user, the user tailored it to themselves (unless they were fool enough to use the official app).
It really is just that there's less content here, and the content there is isn't sorted particularly well via Hot. It's a WIP
How the Best and Hot algorithms work on Reddit is completely up to Reddit. They 100% tailor it to the user.
Oddly enough, people are pretty adamant about demanding that we add a lot of addictive features into lemmy, just because they exist on reddit and on other big tech platforms. I usually push back, but I'm always downvoted to oblivion. I conciously wanted to avoid putting these addictive, psychologically harmful things into lemmy-ui.
So its great to see posts like this one. Social media doesn't have to be a negative experience, or addictive. The time we spend here should be short, and positive.
Short positive social media is my dream
What would be an example of an addictive feature that could be added to Lemmy?
Infinite scrolling, karma, targeted content.
Karma we can definitely do without. I don't know of anyone who actually took it seriously anyway.
The lack of karma is one of the reasons why I prefer lemmy over kbin.
I'm really thankful for it, so thank you for pushing back. One of the biggest reasons I chose Lemmy over Kbin was the lack of overall user score. I'm fine with posts and comments having a score — it sort of helps one determine what is and isn't good content for a community, or what might not be good advice — but summing those up on your user profile only leads to weird score measuring contests and a sort of "number go up" addictive cycle. Thank you also for giving us the ability to hide scores if we don't want to see them.
Thank you for that
o7
Does Lemmy even need any more features? Can we please avoid feature bloat and don't break what doesn't need fixing?
I think that depends on what you would call a "feature". Most everything I can think of that could be "added" would be front end stuff, and third party devs can do those if they want.
I have seen the same behaviour in myself. Reddit was the only social media I used and when they pulled the plug on third-party apps, I took it as a goodbye.
I see myself sometimes opening my phone to "do something" but I have almost no apps to waste time on. I've reused that time to do better things, which feels nice. I read a little more here and there, I learn stuff of wikipedia when I'm on my phone, or I get up and do something else. It's been great for me, even though I'm kind of sad to see it go. Lemmy is a great community, though I'll try not to start using it so much, just for my own sake and not on the fault of the platform itself.
Same here, but as of now just need to find things to fill that gap. Started reading a little more this morning so hopefully that will help with that
Same. I find myself scrolling through my apps and can’t decide what to do. Got me to open Duolingo which I had forgotten was installed. At least doing something productive now.
It's like being knocked out of a trance.
It has made me more aware how often I rely on my phone for cheap entertainment. I get an impulse to take it out and then remember there's nothing good to watch. Obviously I still make it on here, but the lesser diversity and higher repetiveness is throwing me for a loop. Annoyingly, it means more time scrolling past ads on Facebook, but I feel I'm avoiding my phone more. I have been searching out more long format YouTube videos though which is a tradeoff. I wonder if it's temporary and if I'll stick to doing more beyond these tiny rapid endorphin kicks
Corporate Social Media are constructed to be addictive. Ever since I immigrated on July 1st, I stopped using SM like Reddit, twitter (only FB for old relatives sake). I noticed that I actually decreased the time I spend on Lemmy and Mastodon. I value it as the same kind of decision as the one that I quit smoking
I scroll for about 30 minutes, try to comment or post OC once, set it down and check back later in the day. I never did that on Reddit!
What are you doing with your extra time? I bought a keyboard recently with a digital screen that shows you which key to press, sort of like guitar hero. Also learning spanish and thinking about buying an entry level nice telescope.
I'm spending way more time!
I didn't really like the community in Reddit that much. I used it more like a news feed. So I never read 'all', I just read my subs for a few minutes here and there, but I didn't post and comment much.
Since coming here I post and comment a lot more. There seems to be more proper discussion here, despite being much smaller and quieter.
Yeah I also post and comment way more. I probably have more comments here during the last month than I had there combined since 2006.
I think overall my social media time has gone down considerably, but my direct interaction (ie posting and commenting) has gone up.
For me it helps to know that somebody is actually going to read this comment and it won’t be buried under 1000 others. You usually had to get to a post pretty early on Reddit to have your comment be seen, and I mostly browsed /all.
I haven't found a way to hide posts I've seen yet. So I find myself opening Lemmy, seeing a little new content and then putting it down. There isn't a constant feed of new content to just consume.
It's been nice not to be inundated with a neverending stream of bullshit.
yes, can you hide posts though? it seems not and I would like to sometimes
I feel like with Lemmy, it's harkening back to a period of the internet where you can approach it and put it down for later. It's not yet constructed in a way like all of the other social media platforms, that want to keep you invested, even if you know what to expect. Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, Twitter .etc all remind me of the days in the old internet, where you had web portals. These web portals were from MSN, Yahoo and AOL primarily.
They all had things there, to keep you attracted to them. They had their search engines, they had games, they had news, they had weather and many more things. All to keep you in one place and to keep you from venturing out to other places unless you used their search engines before Google became the juggernaut of that.
Social Media today, is designed now, to be like them. Except it's worse because they've got algorithms in place that they extract the data from, i.e you, to pitch to you things that you may be particularly interested in just to keep you invested.
For all of the numbers those social media platforms have, they sure do say a lot of nothing.
I feel like most of the critical news and politics makes it to the top political communities here, but without the 5000 articles of people rehashing the same stupid story over and over. If I read Lemmy world or beehaw news and politics, I have the gist of what’s going on.
Everything else is the meme trend of the week here. Not pooping, beans, vintage memes, Ohio, etc.
I feel like I am spending less time on Lemmy but am more satisfied with my time here.
On Reddit I would scroll endlessly. I'd find a comment or sentiment that was wrong and start typing out a reply, or once in a while a topic I knew about or had a story for. Then delete it because I don't want to argue with an idiot and no one will ever see the comment because of the flood of "jokes".
I feel like I can actually interact with the content here.
I feel that, my friends asked me how Lemmy is and I told them it's great, but I find that I spend a lot less time because it's harder to find new content.
I have the same effects. But this is probably the best thing to ever happen to me.
I do, too. Prefer the Fediverse to anything else.
Same, I used to scroll reddit a lot, but since I switched to lemmy my lemmy usage is nowhere close to reddit.
It doesn't matter what domain you're on, break the habit of being stuck on these sites. The internet is regurgitation of content, and echo chambers that have extreme point of views that shouldn't be celebrated
The splintering, the difficulty of the federation relative to the easy UX of the silos, the normal pickup time of any new thing on the internet, but most of all, [unlike Reddit and every other platform], there is nothing in the server code which is designed to keep you here. Go play with your cat, and post a video of it.
Lemme isn't using some algorithm designed by an entire phycological department to be as addictive as possible for engagement numbers.
I'm the opposite. I find myself on Lemmy off and on all day. I use it way more than I have been using Reddit in the past few years
To me there’s less engagement right now in Lemmy than there it was in Reddit, partially because there is less content, but hopefully this will change in the near future
Ive experienced the same. The communities I enjoy are still too small on Lemmy (like 14 users/month) and the quality of content on local and all is pretty hit or miss - so I just spend less time looking at it
I am finding more time IRL now that I've converted to Lemmy. I'm learning a new language as well as learning chess. I think it's because much of the new posts aren't showing up in ALL/Subscribed so I end up consuming much of it faster than Reddit.
Same.
Although I have less knowledge now.
Also, the UX experience is much better. I always felt Reddit was super slow to load.