I’ve been off and on with the Fediverse for sometime now. It’s a relatively friendly place full of fellow nerds, but with a few caveats…
My feeds seem very focused on hard information be it Gaza, tech companies doing bad things, or people pitchforking about the lastest big bad in digital privacy. This is all well and good, but it does get a bit tired after a while. Seeing the samey stuff post after post by academic types makes me more informed but also mentally draining.
Where’s the fun? On Facebook and Instagram I see light fluffy popcorn type posts of people reminiscing over Nintendo games or reels of cockatiels being cockatiels. It’s fun to scroll and interact. Here it feels like I’m in a classroom, and people, while friendly, do get quite hostile if you don’t like Linux or Star Trek.
As a leftist I like it here because it’s my bubble of people, but I’d like to see the fedi let its hair down a bit. It’s okay to talk about stuff other than infosec, privacy guides, distros, and Gaza.
I see this as a positive. Instead of being fed content to keep me engaged by an algorithm until I suddenly realize the day is almost over and I didn’t really enjoy myself, I reach a point where I feel like I’m done for the day then I make plans, play a game, read, etc.
Now I read the news, fuck around on lemmy a bit, then actually get on with a “real” day.
Yeah I don’t really relate to the complaint because why does all your fun have to come from a single website? Does your online content have to be a one-stop shop? I just hop around Lemmy, Tildes, read sports news, maybe watch some cool videos on Youtube, etc etc. And when I’m bored with internet, I have other stuff IRL to do. Yeah I’m just not treating Lemmy like an endless scroll feed like Reddit or Instagram. I just check out what’s new (I might pop in a few times a day), participate if I want, and move on.