When I joined, just a few days ago, the number of users at lemmy.ca had just climbed above a thousand. I see that now it’s well over two thousand.
That’s quite the growth!
Guilty as charged. I’m one of the refugees. :)
I’m also a Reddit transplant, still learning the ropes but lemmy seems like a breath of fresh air.
Refugees are people whose lives are in mortal danger, and who have lost everything they own for a chance of safety. I wonder if a more tasteful analogy could be drawn.
Yes, it could be. But words can also be used metaphorically.
Sure. I actually called it an analogy, which a shcolar like yourself will no doubt recognize as a form of metaphor.
Lots of words can be used as metaphors. Words like “removed” for example. But sometimes we choose to do better than that.
Wildfire evacuees … our house burned down from the uncontrollable wild fires of capitalism and now we have to start a new life somewhere else :(
The dictionary defines refugee as : “a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster.” While those could lead to mortal danger, they may only lead to undue suffering. Fleeing one’s home to avoid said undue suffering still qualifies as refugeeism, as refugee is defined by the dictionary.
Of course, the dictionary is only a record of observation around how people have commonly use words in the past, not some kind of rule of law. Language is merely a tool, and one that is available to be used by the user as they see fit. Refugee is whatever we want it to be, and from context we understand that refugee here means someone who left Reddit to use Lemmy. How refugee is used in other contexts is irrelevant.
It’s irrelevant to you. It is not irrelevant to actual refugees, who are present in this forum. It trivializes their experience. The same way you would not use rape victims as a careless metaphor for whatever your current First World Problem is, you should not abuse refugees in a similar way.
This verbal rape is poorly considered. There is no reason not to use rape as a metaphor when it works. This is like saying I wouldn’t butter my toast with a knife because some people have been unwelcomely stabbed. Except I would, because there is no connection between someone being stabbed and me buttering my toast. Words are just a tool. Ascribing emotions to a tool may be something people do, but it does not make sense to.
No doubt there are stabbing victims who are affected by someone buttering toast with a knife, but at some point it has to be their problem to sort out. Society would stop functioning if we had to consider everyone’s irrational idiosyncrasies. But we have chosen to live in a functioning society, so that means only problems shared by the collective as a whole are to be considered by the whole. Individual concerns are on the individual to figure out. Like it or not, that is what living in a society entails.
There is no reason not to use rape as a metaphor when it works.
Stopped reading. Thanks for letting me know I’m wasting my time with you.
You come to write comments on an Internet forum when you could be doing literally anything else with your life and you only just now realized you were wasting your time?
Its great to see, but its going to have to grow for a lot longer to be more than the smallest splinter in Reddits toe!
Yup, but that’s okay. I’m hoping the number of users on all of the federated Lemmy servers will be small enough to keep the community feel and the content relevant, but large enough to ensure there’s decent content and engagement.
Exactly, there’s a critical mass and ideal number. No idea what it is, but we’ll know it when we go over it :)
I like that there’s more than enough content at the moment to keep me preoccupied when I’m feeding my digital addiction through the day. I already see the fediverse as a success in that way.
To me what is more exciting is building an alternative. So often there has been something unpopular at Reddit but the issue is there has been no safe land to head to.
If we keep this community alive (I’m all in) then we can hopefully position ourselves if not this time then next time. People just want a community to interact with and the network effect is real.
Uh oh. @smorks@lemmy.ca gonna have to go to the $30/month plan!
I’ve been paying for reddit premium for … well, since it was created. If we can get enough of a snowball here, I won’t renew at reddit and will redirect for server costs here. I’m also trying to set up some communities here that can welcome my favourite reddit users. For example:
I’ve been paying for reddit premium for … well, since it was created. If we can get enough of a snowball here, I won’t renew at reddit and will redirect for server costs here.
That is an excellent idea. I think I may do the same.
I don’t mind the small community … it usually generates some actual useful content
Social media sites tend to grow that way from what I’ve seen over the past 20 years
They start up with very small groups of people … a core group of enthusiasts build the community and little by little others join in and contribute and it grows and grows steadily … eventually it hits a critical mass of users where about 70% are lurking and just reading and watching and 30% are actively contributing and creating actual content … then it goes into a heavy growth period … the site gets more popular as more and more lurkers join in wanting to see what all the excitement is about … now the site turns into 80% lurkers and 20% contributors … it continues to grow with its own success and eventually its like watching a star reaching its end stages and now the site is 90% lurkers and 10% contributors … the site now relies heavily on its huge library of content during its growth era and little new content is created … things are heavily repeated and reposted over and over again … critical mass now grows higher and now it is fast becoming 1% contributors 80% actual human lurkers and now 19% automated bots rehashing old content … the star is now contracting ready for its final stage … 1% contributors, 70% human users and 29% bots and the site is now actively being monetized and flooded with advertising that is quickly obscuring content and driving away users
the site reaches critical mass, collapses in on itself and goes supernova … exploding in a digital storm and the content is blow away into the empty vacuum of disconnected data storage arrays.
Interesting synopsis 👍🏽
I think for more niche communities we need more people. My interest in a Reddit like community is not technology, memes and world news. It is all my very niche hobbies.
and if you noticed how those niche communities formed … they started out with two or three people that just liked to talk about stuff they liked, then it took months and years to gather and create a whole community of dedicated followers and contributors.
give it time, everyone here has just arrived, we’ve dusted off the shelves, swept the floors and we’re still prettying up the place
you love to see it!
And now, five days later, over three thousand.
