I felt the same way about my activity on Reddit! I originally joined years ago to get homework help. I had little experience with forums but thought Reddit would be a place to gain a better understanding of niche communities and higher-quality content. I was never into typical social media sites/microblogging because it felt like a chore trying constantly to update your feed; short-form content outside YouTube didn’t really hook me. Foolishly, I thought joining Reddit would equate to “superior” content or that investing time there was more valuable than on other sites.

In the end, we can all see that the site has and was very toxic and addicting, arguably not that much different from Twitter (the difference between a sentence and an essay). People constantly seek to argue with others without netiquette; without coming with an open mind and reading through articles. It took me a long time to self-discipline myself to steer away from drama and find niche communities that didn’t trigger those kinds of activities, such as r/CasualConversation. But even those communities weren’t bulletproof (tbf nothing on the internet is).

Being on Lemmy has encouraged me to have a healthier relationship with the internet/social media (even though I became a mod 🤪). Hosting a small community has reminded me of the importance of valuable conversations; that a post’s value isn’t necessarily determined by its upvotes and comment counts. Sincerity and effort surmount all those things.

With Redditors moving to Lemmy, I hope that they come with a different mindset. We shouldn’t be trying to make this site a Reddit clone. This shouldn’t be a site where you have to be on daily, be updated constantly with new content, or fester arguments.

I’ll miss the old.reddit UI, with all its faults I loved how each subreddit had its own customized html theme! I’ll kinda miss some of the instant content, news, and videos.

Though the Fediverse can’t solve all the internet’s problems, we should set an example for other communities by fostering a place where true conversations/discussions can be made and be alternatives for people who don’t want to have to go through ads and algorithmic content made to trigger toxic arguments for revenue. I hope you’ll have a better experience in our community and find your niche 😊