I can't decide if it's a good thing or a bad thing, honestly. I joined the initial wave of people leaving Reddit when RiF died. I was excited to see my niche communities like Skyrim Mods and ObsidianMD pop up here, but over time they stagnated as people slipped back to Reddit.

At the same time, I came to realize that I spent a lot of time on stupid subs browsing stupid content that just sucked away my time. And for even my niche subs that I missed, I realized that 75% of that new content is the same reposts, the same arguments, the same debates. I do cheat every once in awhile and go back to Reddit, but now it's to see the top posts of the month to see what I've missed. Turns out, I haven't missed much.

It has taken a while to get Lemmy where I want it. I've filtered a ton of communities and users that do nothing but talk about Russia and socialism and whatever the fuck tankies are, and there sure were a lot of cartoons of animals with enormous NSFW bits I had to filter, but it's starting to come together now for me.

[–] Mostly_Gristle@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

There were/are a lot of dumb subs full of dumb content for sure, but what I miss about Reddit are the subs that have a super deep expert knowledge base. The plumbing sub, the mechanic advice sub, the vacuum sub, the fountain pen sub, etc. I've saved a lot of money and heartache by asking knowledgeable people naive questions in niche subreddits. Lemmy just plain doesn't have the numbers for those kinds of subs to exist here at that level yet. But I hope we get there because for me that was the best thing about Reddit (though I also have a soft spot for the big "what's your true real life paranormal experience" mega-threads that would pop off every few months.)

[–] nodimetotie@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

Your comment resonates with me on more than one level. I joined Lemmy after Apollo went down, and incidentally was also excited to see ObsidianMD (hello, fellow Obsidian user). I was hoping people would migrate over from Reddit but alas, I still have to go where the discussion is. I kind of feel bad about it, but still do it. I also feel like moving away from Reddit saved me from hours of mindless doom scrolling,although I suspect that now I am doing that when reading Lemmy local.