Does it have something to do with the rise of smartphones and no one typing on real keyboards? (Maybe why blogs died.)
Is it a consequence of voting, which blogs didn’t have?
What happens to your thoughts? Do you turn them all in the form of a question? Do you tear them down into a Mastodon one-liner and hope a popular person notices it?
If Lemmy had more of ourselves in this way, maybe it would be a healthier place.
Being idle until the media put out an article on something for us to talk about gives them too much power over us.
There’s an actual_discussion community, which isn’t exactly lively. There’s a casualconversation community, and even that’s all in the form of a question.
Be the change you want to see.
I expect it would be too much for me alone. And do I put them all in one poorly-named general community that I make that ends up a grab-bag, or do I make lots of communities that I only touch once in six months when I happen to have a thought or experience in some topic and I also happen to remember that I even have that community to write in?
Best to give up then
That’s the spirit!
Hello’s right.
Mastodon, Lemmy, and the Fediverse in general are what you make of it. I want there to be more content, so most days I post an article or two.
If you want more discussion, do the same, engage with people.
One large reason I haven’t rushed to start communities is that there are some personality types that live to be a moderator, and some that totally don’t. But I guess you do it and if it reaches the point where you have to moderate and you hate it, someone else must be around who can take it on.
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Typing long form stuff on a smartphone sucks
Why is Lemmy not a place for thoughts and observations, rather than just links, questions, and memes?
First off, Lemmy isn’t “a place”, each instance is unique in their own way. You are quite welcome to set up an instance around this concept, it’s not hard.
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And to think in the 90s, there was the belief that the internet was going to free us from corporations (because the corporations were going to be too stupid for cyberspace or the information superhighway, etc.). I’m not sure whether that was young-person naivete or whether it ultimately came from dot-com marketers, but it was around.
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Isn’t that what Mastodon is for?
My understanding is that on Mastodon, you keep it pretty short, and that you have to be followed by people by having gotten reposted by the right popular people or no one will ever know you exist. I’m not very comfortable with chasing popularity. And when I looked at Mastodon, it didn’t look very light.
Good point. I have an account there, but I don’t really like or use it, I think for exactly the reasons you mentioned.
As to your title, who says it isn’t? Just because it isn’t as commonly used that way doesn’t mean it isn’t for that. Also, my understanding is that Lemmy was created as a federated alternative to Reddit, and while I would say that Reddit did have more engagement for general discussion, it was/is probably better known for questions, links, and memes just as you’re seeing on Lemmy.
What happens to your thoughts? Do you turn them all in the form of a question?
This next part is just my opinion, but regarding this quote and your title contrasting commentary to questions, in my opinion posts with questions are likely to be more engaging as they give a direct point for responses. If you’re just posting your thoughts and ideas into the void, people are less likely to engage with them unless you are saying something particularly compelling or controversial.
If Lemmy had more of ourselves in this way, maybe it would be a healthier place.
Healthier in what way? Size of userbase? Number of posts/comments? Or are you referring to the quality of discourse and level of courtesy or toxicity between users?
I get that a question brings more engagement, but if I don’t have a question, I don’t have a question. And I might have a thought I want to put down in writing, and maybe someone will read it. Even if no one happens to read it, putting it where someone could read it and not just on paper or a nowhere unknown blog can feel better.
Healthier, maybe less combative from getting a better understanding of who someone is.
I don’t know if you’ve seen them, but since no one else has mentioned them, there’s a few other communities that might work for posting your thoughts besides casualconversation:
- !showerthoughts@lemmy.world (tends to be shorter form, perhaps more absurd or sillier in tone than you want. Alternate option at !ShowerThoughts@sh.itjust.works)
- !justpost@lemmy.world (mostly memes/links but occasionally someone does a text post)
- !goodoffmychest@lemmy.world (other posts might be less neutral than you’re looking for but your post doesn’t have to be a rant or vent or w/e)
- !general@lemmy.world
In one of your other comments on this post you mentioned somewhere to ask fact oriented questions rather than open ended questions as encouraged by asklemmy. For those, you might consider:
- !nostupidquestions@lemmy.world (some people might suggest just using google/search-engine-of-your-choice, ignore/block them if they’re jerks about it. Alternate option at !nostupidquestions@lemmy.ca)
- !askscience@lemmy.world if it’s science related
Otherwise just post your question in a community appropriate to the topic. Hope you find what you’re looking for from Lemmy.
Thank you, I didn’t know about goodoffmychest or general.
I think its just down to the lack of users, and esspecially lack of creators. There just isn’t many people who care enough about a subject to write multiple paragraphs on it, nonetheless to an audience of half-a-dozen users, who likely also have an extreme aversion to monitization of said content given Lemmy’s culture. For most users, there isn’t even karma to act as an incentive to post.
Our demographics don’t support uncertainty. Most of us are here because we are certain distributed is better than centralized, community run is better than corporate run, FOSS is better than proprietary, etc. The sign-up process discourages casual users, so most users have made up their minds to be here.
For better or worse, we’re highly opinionated, and we’ve decided some things are bad and others are good. Very few topics are open to discussion because we’ve already decided.
And if we haven’t decided on something, it’s usually because we’ve decided it doesn’t matter, so we’ll ignore it.
It isn’t a sustainable community, but I fit in, so I’m still here.
Relatable.
When a headline or thread starts with “Why…” you can often reply to it simply by repeating the question without the first word and emphasising the new first word, eg:
Is Lemmy not a place for thoughts and observations, rather than just links, questions, and memes?
I’m not sure that’s true as a starting point. So not point trying to answer “why” it might be the case.
I looked around for some time at the shape of Lemmy yesterday, and that’s what I found.
not a place for thoughts and observations
Because there are (nearly) normal people on lemmy.
Normal people are lazy, especially when it comes to using the brain for more than 2 seconds in a row.
