who is on Lemmy (the sociology of Lemmy)
I dont know if this has been asked before or if this may be a little goofy of a question but I didn't see anything relating to it and I'm kinda curious what the culture of Lemmy is like and what sort of common things people see. ive been paying attention to interactions but nothing is as good as just asking everyone.
I am probably blowing the statistics way out, but I'm 71, a podcaster on three shows, no degree, no computer experience except personal, poor, living in a trailer, in Eastern Tennessee.
Podcast links? Please and thank you. Sounds interesting.
https://mintCast.org https://distrohoppersdigest.com https://fullcirclemagazine.org
And you might catch me on https://hackerpublicradio.org
Thanks so much for the update!
That's the perspective I need. Clicked follow.
i think ive seen a few in your age bracket. there seems to be a good amount that must be around the 50+ mark
You still didn't answer the most important question of Lemmy, though. ^(joke)^
Do you use GNU+Linux?
sometimes it is a good reference point though
Bruh
Love it! Glad to have you here!
sounds like many would love to see your podcast! myself included
Well it's kind of hard to see an audio podcast. Although mintcast does broadcast its uncut show on YouTube, my others are audio only.
You sound kind of amazing.
The median age seems to be much higher than other platforms if i had to guess its around 30-35. There are a good deal of tech people, Foss people and activists. There seems to be a balance of gender( based on nothing but vibes). Lots of lgbt people and communities.
There is a culture of creating art, technology and building spaces. There is a culture of inclusiveness and working together. Calling out bad behaviors in people, companies and governments.
Also cats and coffee.
I am only including the lemmy that is within my own federation. I am aware there is fringe communities of extremists and vile people but I've had very little interaction with them so I can't say how much of an impact they have on lemmy as a whole.
What's a foss?
Free Open Source Software
Free open source software
For example: you want more choice than store named brand Downloader you get the F-DROID app which allows you to look at free and open software apps developed independently
Another example is instead of Spotify you download Spotube to listen to music.
Ahem.
Also cats, coffee, and trek.
There is definitely a federation.
As a late gen x/"xennial" myself I've noticed there's proportionally more of us here than on other social media.
Tends to be left of centre even without factoring in the communistanarchistsocialist nexus, but also wider political range.
Tends to skew STEM.
Loves cats as much as the rest of the internet but proportionally loves FOSS more.
Strong rainbow presence.
Accurate
I fit many of those bills :)
hi. are you me? lol
People that miss forums
That's me.
Yo!
Still mainly use them!
Here representing the suburban moms.
Fellow mom, working class.
I am new, and I am sure that the culture has changed a lot like with Mastodon in the last few years, but what I perceive is lots of FOSS and Linux people, which is unsurprising. There's tech/infosec people like on Mastodon, and people that have what I consider a very healthy skepticism about big data, corporations, and corporate surveillance. I also notice that political attitudes have a much healthier range than any other social media I've been on in the last decade - and I don't just mean that there are more people like me. There is a good number of people I disagree with, too.
There are definitely people interested in games and niche interests/hobbies, but it feels to me like the community is still very FOSS-centric. Which is nice. :)
e: obviously influenced by my instance of choice
The instance of choice has a surprisingly large impact on experience here. I've tried several.
huh thats interesting I guess that makes enough sense since you have your subscribed section, your home server section, and then the everything section. so you are seeing more of what you choose to see unless you explore things that aren't your interests so much or check out the everything section a lot.
Think of it as the cool/bad kids’ table in the special-needs school cafeteria
lmao
More language diverse than Reddit, especially on language based instances. Shout out to the Germans who seem much more active than other languages (such as French or Spanish)
I'm here for shitposting, anime titties, and saying disproportionately cruel things about rich people.
Ah, a world politics enjoyer.
No. The I dissociated with reality kind.
I'm here to have a experience similar to reddit, without the negative load on my mental health.
Do you feel like that's been accomplished here?
Less content than I used to follow on reddit, but much less toxic. So, partially.
I havent used Lemmy much and only made a reddit account like a year ago after reading reddit posts for many years on and off but I alresy feel like this is the case on Lemmy.
That’s a good question. From what I gather, Lemmy (and most of the Fediverse) is an alternative to something, with less focus on the money/advertising. So I would guess most people are looking for an alternative way to connect about common interests. And because it’s not the easiest path for social media, I would guess most people have a desire for agency/self-reliance.
And because the whole Fediverse seems to be a different way of approaching social connecting, it takes a little more understanding of computer technology, so I would also guess most people have a least a higher than average affinity for computer technology. Linux and Programming Humor are larger communities.
That said, I have enjoyed a somewhat active participation about woodworking, gardening, jokes, news, medical updates, etc. Like mentioned in another comment, the different instances will have somewhat different norms and practices.
There'd better not be any ads.
Lemmy is free and open source (AGPL), the ad money would only go to the person offering your client not the people hosting your instance. If your client has any ads I'd recommend switching. I use Jerboa (Android, play store) and the official web app hosted by my instance.
I'm pretty new to fediverse stuff and hadn't use many clients but I heard about boost for reddit as I was trying out Lemmy the first time and found out there is boost for Lemmy too, it has ads but I think there is also a pay version? I may be wrong about that though. so far boost has been nice
voyager is the way
thanks for the recommendation, gonna give it a spin
Female, old, non-techie but in the one fourth of people in my office who can set up a printer.
One of us! One of us! One of us!
Nice try Mr. FBI
(It's a Terry Davis quote. For those that don't know who he is -- you should check him out, it's a pretty wild rabbit hole.)
I accidentally read an extremely dry Wikipedia page about a British politician until I realized that you meant the TempleOS guy. I agree, very interesting guy. Too many Terry Davises!
Terry A. Davis, my bad to everyone reading about a boring Terry because of me.
Done
I was hoping to one day see someone make a comment like this lmao
We are Reddit before it became... Reddit.
Lemmy has an abnormally tech literate and FOSS "aware" (there's got to be a better term but I'm blanking) user base. The community is small enough that recognizing people isn't unheard of so we tend to be more polite overall - with a smaller community there's less of a sense of anonymity and more social accountability. Oh, we tend to be rather left leaning but, to be honest, "The universe has a well known liberal bias".
Other than those factors we're a mix of folks.
Lawl. Speak for yourself: I'm a luddite - I just asked someone 'what is a foss'
Is this is what happened to my parents when the internet came along and computers started being a thing? I swore to God that would never happen to me
Abnormally tech literate and FOSS aware - we've got lots of people who aren't and I didn't mean to imply we're all in that camp.
This isn't a tech forum so self-identified luddites are welcome!
You figured out the Fediverse, you're not that much of a luddite.
You shouldn't feel to bad gen x and millennials created the web and how most tech is today. The generation after these are damn near tech illiterate. If it's not an app or buttons to click they're lost.
This warms my geriatric millennial heart
Technically, every generation up until now contributed to modern tech.
But anyway, even if we consider just those who did directly, I am pretty sure you should still also include boomers and even the silent generation.
Check out the computer chronicles: https://archive.org/details/computerchronicles?sort=date
Seems modern enough already.
Some boomers definitely helped in it, but do remember even the youngest boomers are 60+ now. While they did help, it wasn't anywhere near what gen x and then millennials did. Not discounting them at all. Also while yes the younger era of the net with darpa is from boomers and the silent gen, I'm more talking about what the web and tech is today. They %100 laid the foundation, we just built the rest.
wowee is it really that bad for them? I wouldve thought since they grew up with tech that it would just be intuitive to them.
It's on par or worse than boomers. Do remember these kids grew up with mainly cell phones, very few had to actually learn how to type and use a computer. Go to r/teachers and you will see countless stores of how far behind they are compared to each previous year. I feel like millennials and Gen X strived for the easiest and best user experience, which means less having to figure things out like we did.
I'm curious, how did you find out about and start using Lemmy? Most folks on Reddit when the API fiasco was happening acted like you needed to be a tech god to even sign up, so I'm curious if you felt intimidated at all?
I was following what was happening on Reddit and someone mentioned it. It was a little tricky to sign up and understand how it all worked once I did, but I got there, obviously (to the chagrin of the shitpost communities)
Different per instance, but generally, it feels to me like the conscience and reason from Reddit left the body on that day and moved in here at Lemmy. It hasn't gone back since.
in my experience, Lemmy is 33.33% owls
what's this mean?
Those hoo- sorry... who don't know already will never understand
That's the influence of @anon6789 and the owl lobby!
well for me:
I guess that puts me in the the tech group that seems very common here
other groups that seem well represented are the 'left' and lgbqt+
I'm 51 and have been neck deep in tech since I can remember. On Linux since RedHat Halloween. The fediverse reminds me of the early days of the internet when it was all Usenet, IRC, GeoCities, etc.
I'm sometimes a little jelly about those that got to experience that era of the internet. I was born right on 2k and I still grew up feeling a little bit of that very briefly as a kid but not to any major degree.
I miss the days of AIM, ICQ, mIRC, Napster, kazoo, burning CDs at 2x, mp3 cd players
now it seems like everything is an app
Since lemmy is decentralized, the demographics are going to vary greatly depending on the instance. You’d have to create a pretty generalized poll and then post to most of the major instances to get anything close to even a general read.
On Hexbear, for example, everyone shares their Russian heritage and, presumably, the same employer
What's wrong with hexbear? I must've missed something
@JetpackJackson this community had a thread on them last week, scroll a bit and you'll soon see it.
Alright, thank you.
What’s wrong with any tankie shill?
Oh. Yikes
Hexbear seems a little passive, they could be a little more aggressive in their interactions. Also they don't include enough random spam and shit posting when they find a thread they want to interact with. What's really sad though is that they only tend to engage with one or two representatives instead of sending every user on their server into the thread.
I know well enough to have that instance blocked
This is true.
at first I wasnt picturing how that would work exactly but then I realized you are a bit locked down into your own communities a bit unless you intentionally explore other areas or mainly look at the everything section
Not so much. One has the freedom to explore and subscribe and participate in communities across the lemmyverse (mostly) regardless of what one’s home instance is.
However, one’s home instance often has quite the influence on one’s… perspective and one’s exposure— even one’s intended exposure.
For example, one will probably have a notably different experience if one starts from Lemmy.world vs lemmy.ml (or even lemmygrad.ml) vs lemm.ee. Or, especially Beehaw.org. And that experience may color how one views how one experiences external communities.
My point is that it’s mor complex and nuanced than you’re giving it credit for.
interesting
About a month or so ago I was at a gay bar and saw a guy wearing a Debian tshirt. Him. Lemmy is people like that
Would be cool to do a census.
that it would be haha maybe this will spark someone to actually do that 0.0
I am early 40s in the accounting industry. Married, no kids, don’t want em. Have cats. Live in the Midwest, a lefty, woman, vegetarian that hates labels (heh heh).
Came to lemmy shortly before the Reddit API fuckaroo after seeing all the posts about the fediverse. Given that I had dropped all social media except Reddit in the prior 2 years due to a combo of crazy people, algorithms and targeted advertising, I was primed for fleeing. I’m tech savvy but not a tech nerd. Open source, Linux, self-hosting, etc all interest me but without having a direct background in tech, I find it difficult to prioritize learning more about it all.
If I wasn’t so entranced by other people’s thoughts and opinions in text form (never generally been a fan of videos/photos as an information medium), I would have cut all ties. This space can honestly be a little too “damn the man” for me, as I like rules and order, but I also feel the frustration of the public and tend to feel somewhat impotent about it. Hence, I think this is about the best fit I’ll find to still be able to connect with the thoughts of people I don’t know and experiences I don’t have.
I’m a guy whose high school credits weren’t going to transfer so I got my GED (no diploma) and took university classes for a couple years. I got a job in tech based entirely on being self taught. I’m a cis white male, so I’ve had a lot of structural advantages.
Here’s the really fucked up part: I now moved over to a gubment job because I was uniquely qualified. None of my peers could believe it cause I’m a socialist who loathes the USA political system. But a job’s a job and this one is cushy af.
2 cats and live with my partner. Musician (as a hobby). All that stuff.
Isn't it good that a socialist is in those jobs? Better chance that they'd try to help people.
There's lots of LGBTQ+ and FOSS (I wonder why lol). Star Trek and science are also becoming rather common (or it just took me a while to find the right communities). I also get the feeling that the age bracket is larger than on other platforms and people seem to be nicer too (at least compared to the month or so I spent looking through Reddit before finding Lemmy).
Following is more about the kinds of post than users. (I don't want to waste your time if that's not what you meant by "common things people see") There's also some videogame and pornography communities (I'm sure there's combinations too) so I do set my client to blur nsfw images and I block video game communities for games I don't play/don't want spoilers from.
Lots of webcomics also seem to be (automatically?) uploaded to their respective communities.
the lemmyverse was created by tankies as a leftists social media platform; it moved to center right and octupled in users when reddit went full corporate.
there's a lot of overlap between lgbtq and left leaning views as well as left leaning views and foss enthusiasts.
Lemmy is foss which is the only reason I'm here. I assume it being one of the only foss social media platforms is what draws a lot of other foss enthusiasts here too.
It's mostly nerds who had the spine to migrate from Reddit rather than continueing to feed this machine that clearly brings no good for anyone.
I am a nonconformist American in my 40s. I'm a Florida native and middle school science teacher. I hate perpetually divisive culture and the corruption that drives it. I read mostly non-fiction, such as history and neuropsychology. I have little to no interest in computer tech, anime or video games. I left Reddit last year like many of you.
Teachers are some of the best people. I have a lot of respect for you for doing something so worthwhile. I long for the day when we pay you a lot of money.
That getting harder ? The while anti climate science thing creeping in ? Creationism?
That aside, thank you...for being a teacher I mean.
41, software dev, kids, marriage, punk/metal/hiphop, center to left politically, video games, Halloween enthusiast, scale RC trucks, Rams fan, love nerdy things, comics, ninja turtles, X-Men, Legos, theme parks, a good poop.
I'm here because I got permabanned on Reddit haha. Chuds mass reported me multiple times and Reddit got sick of it, I guess. Probably for the best, the website is a true shithole nowadays and absolutely overrun with literal children.
I was planning to leave with the mass-migration a year ago anyway, but Reddit conveniently suspended my account for "mod abuse" because the snowflake r/conservative mods were butthurt that I was reporting the misinformation they were trying to spread.
(In other words, it proved to me that Reddit is run by fascists.)
I'm an Aussie in my early-mid 30s. I've been living in the USA for the past 11 years. I've been a software developer, mostly focusing on web development, since the late 90s personally and since the mid 2000s professionally. I was an early Digg user, moved to Reddit during the Digg exodus, then moved to Lemmy during the Reddit exodus.
I believe that people on the internet should own their platform, for example run their own blog or e-commerce site, participate in decentralized services like Lemmy, etc. Opera Unite was something I found very interesting in terms of allowing people to easily run their own decentralized stuff, and I'm kinda sad it never took off. I self-host things like email and DNS.
I'm a big believer in open-source software and released my first piece of OSS in 2005.
I love listening to people that are passionate about something and get excited when talking about it. Doesn't really matter what it is or if it's a topic I'm interested in.
so your birth year would be somewhere between 1987 to 1993; you started professional web development when you were 14 to 20 years old? you moved to the us somewhere between 20 and 26 years old?
i didn't even start dating until i was 27 and my career at 26 while my first website was at 16 years old and i never truly left the country; you're either very impressive or lucky af! i envy you! ;)
Right in the middle of that range (1990). I started learning about computers when I was around 8 years old. My mum bought an old 486 second-hand, and I spent most of my free time using it. We didn't have a lot of money, and the computer was a great way to entertain myself without needing to spend anything. I had a bunch of shareware/freeware games, but something that really interested me was the Visual Basic system built in to Microsoft Office. In Excel, I'd record macros then look at the code to see how they worked.
Eventually, I did some web development work when I was at school. I built quizzes for some teachers - back when Internet Explorer was used by practically every one, and code was often in VBScript rather than JavaScript. I learnt web development by looking at the source code of the sites I used - that's not really possible these days due to how large and minified/obfuscated CSS and JS files are now.
I've got a copy of one of my sites from 2003: http://www.dansoftaustralia.net/oldest/. Unfortunately a lot of the images are broken. I need to find a copy of them... Maybe in the internet archive.
I went to university from 2008-2011, with a one year work placement (like an internship) in the third year. After I graduated, I started working again at the same company. In 2013, a recruiter from a tech company in Silicon Valley reached out to me over LinkedIn and asked if I'd be interested in applying. I didn't think I'd get through the interview process, but I did, and moved to the USA. 11 years later, I'm still working at the same company.
I'm sure there's things you've done that I haven't done. You should focus on things you've accomplished rather than things you envy about other people :)
You'll find a lot of FOSS developers on here. This is a general community and all that, but there is a large Linux and open source software interest here. Some people simply don't understand things like the scope of FOSS software in terms of both users and developers, so that can create some tension at times. There are a lot of experts and radical thinkers in this space. You may or may not find help on super niche questions, but say something wrong or poorly, and you're likely to find the experts soon thereafter. For instance, I am confident enough to ask advanced course computer science questions and get useful answers here. I find this place useful for second sourcing info from AI that I find plausible but sketchy. Like I got into fermentation but have no interest in the whole commercialized nonsense hobby junk. Almost all sources are poisoned by commercial interests and misguided nonsense. Just asking here gets lots of people with practical knowledge on fundamental techniques from long before it was some commercialized hobby.
The group behind the fediverse is very diverse and that diversity is reflected in the user space here in Lemmy.
Reddit without the NPCs
Just chiming in, I'm 28, American, immigrated to Germany. Can't speak for Lemmy but I migrated from reddit when they shut the APIs down. Just want a shelf stable Aggregate site where I can stay up to date on my favorite hobbies and periodically connect with other humans. A healthy political debate is good every now and then but I'm also in the camp that the answers for our current problems are well researched and pretty fuckin obvious so debates have gotten... Idk stale.
Generally Lemmy feels like reddit but smaller, less polluted, but also less connected with every niche major update.
Thank you for summarising how I feel about the debates.
I sometimes go to respond to the more extreme takes and then think, haven't I said this before? And wouldn't they already know this?
The ability to counter misinformation is so diminished now. Everyone can just stand on either side holding up signs that summarise their views and leave it at that.
I'm a southmerican engineering student, 19.
I'm a 30 foot tall lumberjack from Antarctica
Gen Z weeb from FL living in CA for a couple years now, almost went the IT route and finished trade school but ended up just working a part time service job to have more free time at the cost of being poorer lol
relatable haha
56, in Alabama. Pharmacist. Use Pop!_OS on a System76 Darter Pro. I've never used Reddit but I'm a regular on Mastodon and Pixelfed. Also use X. No other social media.
I'm on Lemmy and I'm also hyperopic. Therefore, Lemmy is a community with at least one hyperopic.
I don't want to post a small bio of myself for privacy purposes but you could read through my post history to learn some things about me.
In my 40s, do software development for a living.
Same
I'm imagine people in tech are inherently over-represented on niche social platforms. Although, I do find that lemmy tends to have a political aspect to it as well that makes it attractive to people who might not care about stuff like open source.
Engineering student in Sweden.
I'm here!
now what 0.0
I don't know, memes?
Yeah you are!
Politics in !memes (even over non-political topics). Plenty of engagement in the comments. People want to argue like they're on twitter. Friendly comment sections on non-political posts (if it stays that way). Insert something to do with communism/the west here. Cross-instance posting provides variety. Active mods prevent abuse of the rules. High quality memes. High quality posts. High quality comment sections. The app you use dictates how good your interaction with the website is. (I recommend Voyager, my daily driver.) Lemmy's been better since the reddit exodus a few years ago. You could wait 2-3 days before new content hit your home page back in the day. Sub to communities you're interested in so its easier when you come back.
Late 30s woman in Australia. Work in tech adjacent field. Progressive leftie.
Used Reddit for news, memes and funnies. Here for the same. Sometimes get involved in discussion but more often than not get too angry and have to put the phone down. Feel like you can have better discussions here than the old place, but I've noticed an uptick in right wing nut jobs and incels.
Absence of low effort 'this' and copypastas style responses is great. But I'm seeing a bit of that coming over too.
A piece of tasteless Moroccan filth who despises his country so much and spends time finding as many interesting communities to fit into and discuss about as possible to escape the horrors known as reality.
I'm an early 40s guy who moved north to get away from the city and live a more relaxed life in a small town. I'm liking it so far except the country music that my new job has on the radio but I'm doing more physical work again which is better for my health than sitting on my ass all day as a manager at my last job.
I'm a 22 year old software engineering student from Denmark. I used reddit a little before Lemmy but haven't been there since.
I'm an it student from central europe
Libs
Same as in town.