this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
56 points (85.0% liked)

NZ Off topic

367 readers
4 users here now

This community is for NZ discussion about random non-NZ things, or whatever you want! Shitposts, circlejerks, memes, something you found funny, anything goes!*

*except for:

If you want to have a serious political discussion, take it to [email protected].

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

When I joined Lemmy during the Reddit exodus it felt like a new breeze and very positive. It feels like this has changed, posts and comments are more negative. Lots of complaints, even positive news posts receive a lot of negative comments. I am always trying to see the positive in things. Just doesn't feel fun anymore. Perhaps it's just me though.

Also still mainly see technical posts, lots of Windows/MS bashing. I'd like to see more communities about non technical things. Perhaps I haven't discovered them.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I don't know who said it first.

"When I packed up and moved to the frontier to get away from people, I didn't realize that the people I was trying to leave would have the same idea.'

[–] APassenger 4 points 1 year ago

Did spez move to lemmy, too?

[–] carl_dungeon 18 points 1 year ago

Lemmy has been a lot more news heavy than Reddit was, and almost all the news is bad. It’s really been bringing me down- shitty politics, shitty politicians, shitty people doing shitty things, shitty companies, climate falling apart, food scarcity, enshitification of the internet, etc etc etc. it’s made my 10 year outlook very bleak, but I cant tell how much of that is because things are really bad right now and getting worse, and how much of it is just me being more exposed to the bad things than before.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

I think it's like when you date someone while they're with their partner then when you're their partner they cheat on you.

A lot of the people who came here did because they're the sort to focus on problems and complain about them, they were hyper focused on problems with Reddit but now Reddit is leaving our minds we focus on the new thing.

Society needs all sorts and the first step of solving a problem is to spot it, I do think there's a really good quality of debate compared to Reddit so even the doomers are better here.

We could do will more positivity and good news being shared though, and trivial things the are just nice and fun.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Only difference I've really noticed is that the attempts to create non tech communities died off, and the tech oriented ones are the ones that are left and remain active.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well it's lemmy. A majority of us are nerds so of course the tech related ones remain active.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I guess I'm a nerd, but I'm mostly interested in non-nerd subjects. I get enough nerdism at work. I prefer hobbies outside of work. Does that mean I'm not actually a nerd?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nah, it’s kind of been like that. I think at this point, all of the people who got swept up “sticking it” to Reddit have gone back onto Reddit, so all we have left are the tech-savvy people and the doomers/gloomers in the news- and politics-related communities.

If this has taught me anything, I found that the best communities are still small forums - like the old school kind, not like here and Reddit. And sadly, those will probably go away with time, and then we’d have just shitty social media sites or the digital frontiers like the Fediverse.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I'm personally a Reddit deserter and I really don't think others like me have all gone back to Reddit. The primary issue most left over is still very much an issue. I haven't used it once since the day RiF stopped working.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've run through everything on kbin and tried to return to reddit a couple of times, and I can't do it, or just don't have the tolerance anymore. The ads are more obvious, the false product reviews, fake relationship advice posts, reposts for karma, fake "best of" chains written by one person with commenters saying they know its fake, but "hey, I was entertained." It feels like shopping Black Friday with a bunch of strangers, knowing some of them are actors there to convince you the prices are actually great, when you know they were lower last week and Black Friday is bullshit. It feels, in a word, Lame.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

You can get a whole lot more content on kbin if you start interacting with the "microblogs" sections which are full of mastodon etc.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I am one as well. I have zero interest in going back. Yes there are things that I miss about that sight, but I can't patronize a business that has such a vile attitude towards their customers and their product.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Same for me. The day RIF made its first announcement, I shredded my complete post/comment history that overwrote them with random BS. When RIF shut down, I deleted my account. Been here ever since. It's really not too bad, if you just resolutely block the most notorious crossposters, and always block any community/user you don't want to read content from.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Note that the person you're replying to created their account during the Reddit Exodus so they might as well be part of the movement too even if they're speaking like they were here for a long time 😂

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm still around too, though, for me, it was less about "sticking it" to Reddit and more about Reddit not feeling fun anymore. I've noticed the same thing as OP and was hoping to find some insight from longer-term Lemmy users about whether this is a result of the influx of new users being more negative, or just a return to form for Lemmy. From other comments around here it sounds like it may be the latter, alas.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

There's no perfect social media. You either get a bubble room where nothing is interesting or has any weight to it and all people post is Tumblr level material, or you get a Nazi hellscape where half the words on the entire site are just the N word. Lemmy is currently dead center in the middle of all that and that's probably the best you can hope for.

I don't feel like I left to "stick it to Reddit" so much as they made it miserable to use. If RiF worked I'd use it.

[–] SpaceNoodle 2 points 1 year ago

Same, but I simply never went back after the June blackout started.

[–] SpaceNoodle 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You might be happier over in Beehaw; they've walled themselves off in a little saccharine hive.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

They walled you off. Here on lemmy.nz we are free to participate in Beehaw 🙂

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I don't disagree. There are definitely a lot of negative posts and attitudes, though in the early days there was lots of negativity towards reddit. But perhaps more optimism about Lemmy. Recent ... events ... may have hurt that optimism.

I do still come across nice spots pretty regularly, though. Perhaps look at some Beehaw communities, which is an instance focused on people being friendly to each other. It's actually how I got started on Lemmy. (Not quite true, I started on lemmy.ml a couple of years ago, but it wasn't for me. Then earlier this year joined beehaw and it inspired me to start my own instance).

Also still mainly see technical posts, lots of Windows/MS bashing. I’d like to see more communities about non technical things. Perhaps I haven’t discovered them.

What kinds of things are you interested in? I'm keen for some good non-technical/non-news communities too but I don't know where to start 😆. Maybe we can pick something and make an effort to make the community more active?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks! Will have a look around Beehaw.

Some non technical topics I'm interested in are ice cream making and fitness. Also I like to read uplifting news, there is a community, but the comments are predominantly negative so I've unsubscribed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I'm not much of a fitness person, but in the past have done ice cream making. Is there a community for that somewhere? Though, it doesn't seem like something that two people could contribute a lot to. I'm not sure how much there is to say about ice cream making, if you don't have people coming looking for help. In fact, the [email protected] might be a suitable place to start discussions about ice cream making?

For the Beehaw communities, you can see their community list here. If you have the Instance Assistant browser addon, it makes it easy to open the community on lemmy.nz for subscribing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Oh I mainly browse on mobile, on the liftoff app.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks for considering starting a community. Yes, think it's better to start discussion in existing communities.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I haven’t noticed too much negativity, but I don’t visit too many communities. I have to say smaller hobby communities seem to be struggling with engagement. There’s either very few active posters or posts get moderately upvoted but there are little to no comments.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah I'm running a Japanese Metal community on my other account, and out of all the posts, less than a handful are not by me. I already gave up on creating content, only posting there when I discover a cool new band or song, or when my favorites bring out new songs. Small hobby communities are having a rough time on Lemmy/Kbin.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I'm certainly missing the more niche subreddits I was subscribed to (a couple of really active permaculture ones, favourite bands, hobbies etc) but for the most part I find the general NZ news useful and relevant, and some good conversation around it. Other communities are definitely tech-focused but that may change with time. But as with any group of people, you always get the negative ones - and Baader-Meinhof had a thing or two to say about noticing things!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

It's not just you. It seems like there's a lot of young, antisocial people on this platform who think it's the coolest thing in the world to dislike things. Any given subject has a thousand comments talking about how it's actually the worst thing in the world. That combined with an overall disdain for actually working to better your life makes a lot of the users insufferable.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, exactly what I feel. Even at the uplifting community every positive news item received a lot of negative comments how it's not going to help, how bad things are, etc etc.

Guess I'll just have to block / unsubscribe communities. Also will post more on Beehaw. Posted about ice cream there and already some cool replies.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I started using Sync for Lemmy, even though I don't like their privacy policy, just so I can block entire instances. I'm also really liberal with the block community options. I've got most of the political communities blocked, but it's surprising how many there are, so I still come across them. I literally just blocked a leopards ate my face community right before reading your response, since the entire premise of the community is political schadenfreude. I've also blocked a bunch of communities that are overall negative. I'm a hair away from blocking the technology community since it's almost all privacy invasion reports, which really gets my blood boiling. I'm not even sure if all that blocking has helped to be honest with you. I subscribed to like 60 different communities for subjects that interest me and the only one that is active is a Star Trek Memes one, so I spend a lot of time in the Everything community and it's still pretty negative despite my efforts. I'm at a crossroads right now where I'm thinking about just leaving, or changing the way I interact with the site, because I think it is making me overall less happy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A lot of the for lemmy apps allow instance blocking, like summit for lemmy. No ads either and a lot of them are open sourced.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks for sharing!

I’m at a crossroads right now where I’m thinking about just leaving, or changing the way I interact with the site, because I think it is making me overall less happy.

That was my feeling yesterday as well. But, today, I posted on food@beehaw and had some nice discussions. Think you just have to be mindful of which posts you are participating in. I'm avoiding going to /all, and if I find a community I'm subscribed to too negative, I just unsubscribe.

But it's annoying if that means, like for you, that your subscribed feed is not active. Well, gives you time for other things :) Personally, I wouldn't leave Lemmy yet. I've learned some very cool things here, and had some very good discussions.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

The general sentiment I get when discussing work and work related issues/politics is not about not wanting to work but wanting to work for fair wages with fair conditions.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah I noticed that. People getting arsey with each other for no reason.

I've got multiple fediverse accounts so my solution has been to spend more time browsing local in lemmy.nz and beehaw.

Also, I started to block all the big news and politics coms (that's where most of the arguing happens) so that when I browse by new I'm more likely to find cool communities.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Thanks, guess will block more communities.

Discovering new communities is still hard, right? The All feed here on Lemmy.nz only shows communities where at least one person has subscribed?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah, I think so. There are some newcommunities and findacommunity type coms out there, plus I just randomly click on cool people's post histories to see where they are going.

Or visiting at an original instance (instead of through here) you can browse theirs without having to be logged in there

Sometimes you find instances that have a lot of theme stuff, eg mander.xyz has tons of science ones.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Every online community will eventually resemble the society at large. People are people.

[–] ShittyRedditWasBetter 4 points 1 year ago

Lack of content and the user base has always been ticked off reddit power users. If course you're going to get the craziest people here vs casual normal people on Reddit.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm simultaneously not interested in a safe space as much as I'm not interested in Nazis openly discussing being Nazis in broad daylight. Lemmy is a weird mix of both of those things, somehow. It's okay.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The fediverse is mostly a great way to get extra politics in case you're too happy with the state of the world. Blare tons of mostly negative shit at people, even if wrapped in a "super funny" "meme", and the site is going to get negative. Outside of the politics and moronic drama, this place is still more chill - geeky, which colors discourse for better and worse, but at least less rabid than Reddit. When did Reddit have it's biggest increase in toxicity? 2015-2016, coincidentally right when the yanks jumped the shark.

My major issue is there's no escape from politics apart from leaving the platform, which... people then do. And that is really fucking stupid for a place allegedly trying to grow and gain users: people could just keep it in their pants (i.e. post in appropriate communities, same as everyone else), but actively refuse to. Apparently "everything is political" so that makes spam nice and considerate - basically doing us all a favor, really.

Sure, you can spend time pruning the overtly/covertly political communities and likely bad faith or just hilariously singleminded actors. After someone makes four new instances and 12 new political communities - each - on them, to fit all the users we don't have, you get to do it again! I'd love to be able to do the subbed-only thing, but finding communities is somehow even more awkward than blocking it out.

I can't tell if people failed to understand the whole federation thing, if I'm misunderstanding the finer details, or if they're literally trying to sabotage the whole thing (... again), but the trend kind of sucks.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

The world was so much more fun before politics oozed its diseased tendrils into literally everything.

[–] Mojojojo1993 3 points 1 year ago

Have you perchance looked outside? It's pretty bleak. Maybe you need to create a fed that is only positive.

Hiding the injustices doesn't make them go away. Depends on perspective I suppose

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I've found that the quality of your Fediverse experience relies on your participation to a much larger extent than other social media. Lemmy instances tend to be tech focused and I've found it's difficult to discover new content via accounts there - you don't have the capacity to follow new users, only subscribe to communities.

On the other hand, Kbin, because it reads both Lemmy style and Mastodon style instances, has proven to be exceptionally vibrant when it comes to discovering new content, as it allows you to both subscribe to communities and to users. I've found that once I subscribed to about 100 communities and followed a like number of users, my content feed far exceeds what I get on Reddit - because as the users I follow post to new communities, they appear as posts on my feed.

I think when it comes to non-tech communities, a lot of them suffer from the fragmentation effect of having multiple communities of the same type across instances - because most Fediverse participants are in tech, tech is the theme that unifies the audience. To really match the quantity of content on /r/music, for instance, you'll want to be subscribed to at least 10 communities in the Fediverse. It's also harder to run a community in the Fediverse (although vastly more rewarding), and most mods often end up being the primary posters due to a lack of audience participation.

All that being said, shameless plug for @13thFloor if you're looking for a non-tech community. It's a pirate clearing house of sci-fi, music, fantasy, literature, movies, articles, and all other sorts of weird ass shit designed to engage your imagination.

[–] son_named_bort 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I've been getting the same feeling too. Seems like it's become more news heavy since I joined. Bad news tends to get more engagement on social media in general than good news, so any site that discusses news a lot is going to trend negative. I do wish there were more non tech or non news communities on here though. Seems like there were several that started up during the Reddit migration that have since withered.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

It lost the magic but I still enjoy the day to day. I come on read a few things make a few comments and that's it. I try to share things I find cool but ultimately I just don't waste a lot of time scrolling like I did on reddit.

Because there isn't much content on lemmy I find myself always reading the post where as reddit I was guilty of commenting based on headline alone.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I've, anecdotally, noticed more shills or sycophants, more trolls.

Though, employing Hanlon's razor, I'll respond genuinely to find out if they're malicious or just stupid.

Either I've helped someone learn something or I've found an account to block.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago
load more comments
view more: next ›