Hope a two part question is allowed but after mostly lurking a lot, I’m noticing that there do seem to be quite a lot of Xennials. But on the other hand, also plenty of rebellious youth.
In my mind I’m thinking that Lemmy userbase is (very broadly generalizing) dividing into people who saw internet’s early days and as such, aren’t scared of the slight technical hurdles to enter. They tend to be a bit worldweary but Lemmy does feel a bit more like OG internet, which they like (this is me). But also, there’s younger people who are techy enough to deal with the hurdles too but see using Lemmy as a sort of an act of rebellion against the mainstream internet (which I appreciate).
That said I feel like the two clash a lot since the former tends to have fewer shits to give than the latter. As often is the case in the whole history of humanity.
Obviously there’s plenty of people who don’t fall into either camps, which is why I’m curious. Lemmy is small enough to have a sense that there are actual, real, individual people here, as opposed to Reddit’s amorphous blob of a massive userbase most of whom seem like bots.
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I’m older, but I came to use (and host) lemmy as an act of rebellion against corporate controlled internet
40s. Saw Lemmy mentioned on Reddit around the time of the API debacle. It became clear to me that reddit would not be usable in the long run, as it is unusable without 3rd party clients.
Upon checking Lemmy out, it reminded me of the kind of internet I hadn’t seen in ages, so I stayed.
Turned 20 last week. I found lemmy through reddit about 2 years ago.
Backstory :
My parents had flat refused home internet until 2020 when online classes made it a requirement.
Since I am 14, at home, and just got introduced to the wide world of web, I looked up tutorials on becoming a hacker like in the movies and got into linux.
General social media was still too overwhelming for me but I did like reddit for the linux content. I later saw the “about” page of r/unixsocks explaining they are on c/unixsocks now.
I checked lemmy and general community was better here, also reddit had and alt-right problem so I decided to migrate.
Early 40s.
The API thing almost did it for me. The only reason it didn’t is because Reddit kept working through RedReader (still does). It was the bot banning that finally did it for me. Repeated bans and new accounts because some bot autobanned me for things I really don’t think I should have been banned for. Started noticing the bot banning was targeting comments that mentioned the 2nd amendment. That’s when I noped out. I had already been subbed to /r/RedditAlternatives for a while and Lemmy seemed to be what most people were posting about, so that’s what I went with.
Also found out that subs could autoban you for posting in other subs they don’t like. So you’d comment in a sub and immediately get an automated message from another sub saying you’re permanently banned from their sub for posting in that sub.
I don’t need that shit. I don’t need that shit even if I was getting paid for it. And I wasn’t. Bye, Felicia!!!
In my 40’s. Got permabanned for stating pedophiles should be killed.
- Yeah, really.
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I’m 65 and I hate the generation labels. I genuinely think they were originally pushed as another propaganda mechanism to create further artificial divisions between people. There is no doubt that people of significantly different ages are often different in various ways, but the over simplicity of the named generations just provides another convenient way to stereotype people instead of understanding them as individuals.
I think I joined reddit in 2008. I’ve been involved in social media since the days of dial-up bulletin board systems in the late 70’s. (And I ran one of my own in the mid-80’s.) I had an email address on Bitnet in 1983 and was on Usenet in its early days. reddit was an interesting and open place for a while there and I enjoyed the variety, but most of it was becoming too cynical and tribal for me by the early 20’s. I discovered Lemmy a couple years before reddit’s API debacle, but that is what convinced me to drop reddit and focus on the Fediverse.
I like the decentralized model of the Fediverse. I think the idea that different servers can have different rules is healthy. I stay away from parts of it, but I have found plenty of communities that are friendly and interesting to me. After hanging out on several different servers, I joined Fedican and have been happy here. It’s a nice place to call my home online.
Late 20’s
I used reddit app so the api fiasco, while it bothered me on a fundamental level, did not directly affect me.
Then I read some article about the potential for reddit to create paid subreddits or something?
I don’t remember exactly why paywalled subreddits bothered me so much, but it was enough for me to decide to leave.
41, came to Lemmy during the API thing.
I think I’m pretty rare on Lemmy: I use Windows on my PC (although I’ve dabbled in Linux) and I don’t work in a tech field at all.
I’m 22 and I came to Lemmy after my Reddit account got permanently banned/suspended for no reason
Late 20s, moved to lemmy during the Reddit API scandal like a lot of others, so it’s a deliberate anti-corporate choice. I’ve always been techy (I worked as a software developer at the time I made the switch) and I’ve always hated the corporate social media platforms. Reddit was the only social media that I ever used extensively and the API fiasco was the straw that broke the camel’s back. This may or may not be true for others who switched around the same time but it coincided with my political views becoming more radical; I used to consider myself a social democrat but by the time I fled Reddit I fully considered myself socialist and was on my way to becoming an anarchist.
I’m 30. Came here after Reddit perma-banned me and this was recommended as an alternative. Found an app that basically makes it look like Reddit so it was easy to transfer over.
Early 50’s. Came here to step out of the tentacles of billionaire-led corporations and avoid an enshitified online world of bots and data harvesting. Small learning curve to gain access but will worth it.
