I'm honestly surprised Lemmy hasn't taken off more than it has. Reddit's actions make it such an unattractive option, but people are still returning there in the hopes of getting an upvote and a crappy useless award.
Anyway, I'll keep posting stuff and participating here.
Just need a few more people to generate the topics and engagement will follow exponentially. I just don't lead an interesting enough life to come up with much.
It's tricky - I want it to grow, but I don't want to lose the culture we have here. Having run forums 20+ years ago, I know that keeping that balance of culture and growth is super difficult.
Every time, you hit a critical point and suddenly it's a site of random strangers with no community feeling. Reddit hit that point over a decade ago. I don't want to repeat that here if we can avoid it.
On the one hand, yes.
On the other hand, you need enough content being created to provoke discussion.
I don't feel we have enough content at the minute. I reckon the active population needs to double. Maybe we need to give away stubbie coolers.
Maybe bumper stickers? What about..
'Lemmy Happens'
"Don't follow me, I'm a Lemming"
"If you can read this, then you're not on Lemmy."
"... unless you're on your phone, which you shouldn't be because you're driving."
Everyone here is a stranger to me, but i never look at the names of people i engage with.
This is where the avatars come in. I don't pay much attention to the usernames, either. But those little avatars stick in your mind and you start to remember people.
Yes, everyone is still a stranger, but that doesn't mean there isn't community.
I forgot about avatars, i use connect and they don't show up unless i go into peoples profiles.
Voyager (and Connect by the sounds) don't display avatars or custom usernames so you lose that bit of customisation in at least some of the apps.
I think I prefer it. Avatars are usually bad anime anyway. I think mines a ghost face lady.
Huh. You and @Aussiemandeus have probably just answered why I keep defaulting back to Jerboa. I have most of the Lemmy clients installed, and cycle through them. I usually use Jerboa for aussie.zone - I thought that was because it was the first one I had. Now I think it's for the avatar support.
Sync also has an option to enable avatars. I can't use any client that doesn't have avatars available. I'm too used to identifying people by their avatars... and now emojis and OP/admin tags.
Aaaaand Sync has become my default app.
I'll probably give that one money, because I trust they'll actually incorporate mod tools at some point.
I cross-post to Discord on occasion, and bring up some of the drama with friends who enjoy a bit of drama.