Does it have something to do with the rise of smartphones and no one typing on real keyboards? (Maybe why blogs died.)
Is it a consequence of voting, which blogs didn’t have?
What happens to your thoughts? Do you turn them all in the form of a question? Do you tear them down into a Mastodon one-liner and hope a popular person notices it?
If Lemmy had more of ourselves in this way, maybe it would be a healthier place.
Being idle until the media put out an article on something for us to talk about gives them too much power over us.
There’s an actual_discussion community, which isn’t exactly lively. There’s a casualconversation community, and even that’s all in the form of a question.
You either want mastodon which has a higher proportion of thoughts and conversations, or a classic forum which is entirely dedicated to long form thoughts and discussions.
I can look at Mastodon more seriously, but I would have to figure out… I mean a regular person wants status, right, set themselves up as an expert at something, enjoy fame, and there’s careerism. So it’s natural to them to look at who’s a big name in their field, who they want to be noticed by, who they want to be associated with, and follow those people, and craft the right kind of comments so those people will respond to them in the right way to advance their goals.
A forum, yes, that could be it. There probably aren’t many that are so alive today.
Although I am skating past the point, aren’t I, that Reddit didn’t seem to be missing this puzzle piece to the extent that Lemmy is.
I agree that it can look like people are self-promoting and seeking prestige on social media. I find that following hashtags on Mastodon is a good habit for sidestepping this. It shifts the focus to topics rather than identities. The same goes for Pixelfed. I’ve got a beautiful feed on Pixelfed made up of different types of art and photography that I like.
With this comment it’s clear that you are lamenting userbase count, and thus “Lemmy” (there is no singular Lemmy) isn’t meeting the content expectations you built with reddit due to this far lower user count.
Be the change you want to see, set up an instance and craft it to this concept you’re after. If not, Mastodon exists as the comment you replied to mentioned.