What are your thoughts on being called Lemmings if this platform becomes a staple?

Curious to know, I'd heard "lemming" used in a semi derogatory way, since "a person who unthinkingly joins a mass movement, especially a headlong rush to destruction" is the dictionary definition. It seems to be the first thing to come to mind as to what you'd call a Lemmy user.

This platform certainly is embodying a mass movement to get off of reddit, and I'm definitely all for it! But I can't help but feel this could be one of those baby names that sounded cute and catchy but could be bullied later into life. What are your thoughts?

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@Redecco
I've been thinking about this for a little while now and I think Fedditor is the best choice.
Between Lemmy and Kbin, there's already two choices of software platforms for Reddit-esque link aggregators that work together. In the future there may be more. I think the term should be inclusive.
Fedditor is play on redditor, a widely used term for users of the privately owned Reddit. A fedditor is a user of a Fediverse alternative.
Since ActivityPub is an underlying protocol that interfaces with the rest of the Fediverse, I think emphasizing the Fediverse aspect and the "reddit-esque" aspect is more important than the specific software platform.
People may use different terms for Lemmy vs Kbin vs future alternatives (or ones I just don't know about), but they may also use different terms for the instance they use or for the magazine/group that they are a part of. I think if any term becomes widespread, it should be an inclusive term that fall underneath a more general term such as Fedditor.
- Good points. I like Fedditor. It includes Kbin users too.
- I think my initial instincts were Lemmings for Lemmy, Kbinners for Kbin, and yeah when it comes to the Fediverse as a whole there's a lot of room to play with the Fed in it. I'm having a hard time adopting Fedditor since it makes me think of Feta cheese + redditor, or like a f-ed up redditor haha. But I totally get your logic, universal sort of nicknames make sense across the different apps.
  Speaking of which I have no idea what a Mastodon user would be called, I guess Twitter you'd just say a "Twitter user" so the same would go for it.
- they may also use different terms for the instance they use or for the magazine/group that they are a part of.
  I feel like the community at sh.itjust.works really knocked it out of the park here. Feel like we may not even bother, everyone else is just going to be fighting for second place now.
  
  I feel like the community at sh.itjust.works really knocked it out of the park here.
  What are you referring to here? /outoftheloop
  
  We're sh.itheads? :)
  
  Love this!

116 comments