A list of casual communities on Lemmy (that aren't just tech news or politics)

Madbrad200@lemmy.world to New Communities@lemmy.world – 592 points –

Searching Lemmyverse is good for finding communities. !trendingcommunities@feddit.nl is also a nice tool for finding new places.

I posted this on the other site but I thought I'd copy over here too, lots of good communities around to subscribe to if you want a more casual/fun frontpage that isn't just tech news, elon musk, or politics.

note: all of these communities have posts. If they appear empty, it simply means nobody on the instance you use has visited them before (or you might have blocked them and forgot, I've done it before, lol)!

My rough criterion was:

  • Of interest to me or a wide audience
  • Has a decent amount of activity
  • Casual / fun / interesting / cool / funny / chatty communities.
  • 0 negativity/negative vibes, news, politics, overload of tech or niche tech news/info, etc.

Directory

  • Conversation Communities - for chatty places
    • "ask" based
    • Casual chat / Misc
  • Hobbies, Creative, Passions
    • Misc
    • Artwork
    • Cooking, food, drinks
    • Gardening / Plants
    • Keyboard enthusiasts
    • Knitting, stitching, crocheting, etc
    • Reading and writing
  • Nice/Interesting/Funny pictures
    • Animals
    • Comics
    • Flags
    • Maps
    • Memes
    • Misc
    • Photography
    • Wallpapers
  • Games
    • Board games / Table top games
    • Chess
    • Video games
  • Knowledge (e.g history, science, etc)
  • Space
  • TV (television, movies, film)
  • Music

Conversation communities

These are places that are 'chatty', good if you want a lot of comments.

"ask" based
Casual chat / Misc

Hobbies, Creative, Passions

Misc
Artwork

(see also the list under the Wallpapers header)

Cooking, food, drinks

Generally mostly nice pics of food:

Gardening / Plants
Keyboard enthusiasts
Knitting, Stitching, Crocheting, etc
Reading and Writing
Sport

Honestly there are so many sport communities around - if you search Lemmyverse for popular sports, you will almost certainly find more.

Nice/Interesting/Funny pictures

Animals

Literally just pictures of cute animals.

Comics
Flags
Maps
Memes

Meme communities in general can overload your feed, so keep that in mind.

Misc
Photography
Wallpapers

Games

Board Games / Table top games

The ttrpg.network instance has a lot of communities based around table top gaming & RPGs.

note: the battlemaps communities seem to mostly cross-post between eachother at the moment.

Chess
Video Games

Knowledge (e.g history, science)

Space

TV (television), movies, film

Music

Lots of music communities on Lemmy. Search Lemmyverse for genres of interest for more, this definitely isn't exhaustive.

Note that music communities generally have low comment counts, from my experience.

There's also:

102

Bonus: don't have time and want to just auto-subscribe to all* (mostly, I forgot to add some I think) of these communities (please note this isn't reversible without manually unsubbing yourself, there's a lot of niche communities here that may not appeal to you - you can remove them from the JSON file if needed)?

  • On PC, download this JSON file.
  • On PC, download Lemmy Migration Tool
  • Enter instance name and login details, upload JSON.
  • It'll automatically subscribe you to them all. If it looks like it's frozen, it hasn't. Just let it run. If you're on a small instance, you may need to re-run it a couple times (it can error if your instance hasn't discovered the community yet, this is solved on a rerun).
  • Note: this will change your lemmy settings (e.g disable NSFW). No way around this, change back if needed.

Of course, some may not be of interest or may overload your feed (meme communities can do this). Unsubscribe as needed.

I wrote this list for a curious person on the other site. It took me awhile, figured I'd share. Finding these places takes more time than I'd care to admit so... hopefully it saves you some, Lol. It's not an exhaustive list by any means, but is mostly places I find of interest and/or I think has good content. But there's definitely others out there I have missed (either intentionally or not). Lemmyverse is a great resource for finding new places.

My rough criterion was:

  • Of interest to me or a wide audience
  • Has a decent amount of activity, at least a single page worth of posts.
  • Casual / fun / interesting / cool / funny / chatty communities.
  • 0 negativity/negative vibes, news, politics, overload of tech or niche tech news/info, etc.

I'm surprised this doesn't clobber your existing subscriptions - I assume LASIM is smart enough to add the 'followed' list to what is already 'followed' rather than replace it?

LASIM author here - you are correct. I explicitly made it "additive" to avoid accidents where you could end up erasing a bunch of subscriptions. Right now LASIM only calls the subscribe API interface so it's actually impossible for it to unsubscribe you from anything.

I am considering adding a "destructive" sync in the future which, if toggled on, would unsubscribe you from anything not in the JSON file. But it's not implemented yet!

Correct, though I'd be careful about adding such a list unless you're certain you won't mind all of these communities being added to your subscription list.

The meme communities can overload your feed for example. Just a thought. Figured I'd add it anyway, they can easily be removed from the json before using it though so there is that.

I hadn't even considered this use case for LASIM, but that's really neat.

I've been thinking about a settings page where you can toggle what to sync, among a few other future features. I'll definitely add an option in the future to NOT sync the profile settings.

For anyone finding this in the future:

The latest version of LASIM (0.2.1) has a Settings tab that allows you to choose what you want to upload.

If you are using the JSON file posted above, you'd want to choose just "Upload Community Subscriptions" on this tab so that your profile settings, etc. are not changed.

This is the exact reason I follow this community. You are so awesome for putting in the work!

There's a bunch more on Feddit.uk:

edit: trimmed down a bit

CAN WE JUST AGREE ON ONE CFB SUB BEFORE THE SEASONS STARTS?!?!

Seriously, I need my toxic gameday threads.

Thank you! I automatically block political communities and also news (because it's mostly American shitfuckery) and I don't like seeing it, it makes me feel like shit. Thanks for posting up some great suggestions.

Outstanding resource! Thanks for taking the time to assemble this!

This is awesome. I hope you guys don't mind, heres a link to one of the bigger pro-wrestling "subs" on the fediverse. It's on Kbin instead of Lemmy, but there's more than a few Lemmy users among us. Here's the link:

Squaredcircle

I'll add it!

lol Thanks :) Kbin, Lemmy, or Mastodon--it doesn't matter to me, as long as we're all working together to build something better than the last place.

There's also !psychedelic_artwork@psychedelia.ink and !spirituality@psychedelia.ink on an instance I host if anyone is interested in those niches. But all in all this is a super amazing list thanks for taking the time to put it together!

I really really hate the polarised politics, Elon Musk hatred and web integrity thing that gets showered here day in and day out. Honestly I'm tired of blocking the communities and users of that type

That's why I subscribed to a ton of communities! It's nice having a curated homefeed versus shifting through c/all

!Terrariums@kbin.social would fit under hobbies.

I'm hoping in the future it can grow and expand to other communities like bioactive. It's one of the niche communities I miss from reddit.

I loved the reddit version of this! Would love to see it get a bit more activity

May I propose c/cocktails be added under cooking, or food? And those should probably be consolidated. Thanks.

Pretty much all communities on beehaw are active enough

They're still defederated from lemmy.world unfortunately, so 🤷‍♂