I’m here, not planning on leaving any time soon. But I’m also acknowledging that Lemmy can’t fully be everything Reddit was, not without a Reddit-size userbase.

I’m saying that when the problem is a low userbase, responding with “you’re spoiled for even wanting niche hobby spaces, and it’s your fault for not putting in an excessive amount of energy that isn’t even likely to pay off (because the userbase isn’t there)” isn’t productive.

I never said I don’t want to be on Lemmy. But when people talk about the downsides of this platform’s still niche userbase, it isn’t productive to jump in and admonish them for just not trying hard enough to manifest a critical mass of users through sheer willpower.

Okay, now you literally are saying I didn’t try hard enough.

This is not my first account (it’s also not anywhere close to a year old, not sure where you got that idea). I’d tried to start a few communities over on kbin.social, but that’s gone now.

I don’t have the energy to spend several hours a day flooding threads nobody will engage with, just in the hopes that if I keep it up forever eventually one of them might get a reply or two. It’s not that easy, and it’s patronizing to act like that’s such a simple solution I should’ve thought of.

Fighting games and Riichi Mahjong. !fgc@lemmy.world and !mahjong@lemmy.nerdcore.social exist, but are pretty barren. I’d also previously tried to start communities for them on kbin.social, but that’s gone now.

Also arcade-style versus puzzle games, but those are so dead these days that even on Reddit they didn’t have an active sub.

Not overnight, that’s for sure. It’s going to take a long time to ever get that kind of critical mass.

I’ve tried, believe me I’ve tried. Posting a bunch of threads out into the void doesn’t suddenly manifest a like-minded community to reply to and engage with those threads. It won’t truly be viable until there’s a much larger userbase to begin with.

And honestly, it just comes across as patronizing to say the only reason my hobbies don’t have traction here must be because I didn’t try hard enough.

Pardon me for wanting to have a place where I can discuss my hobbies, I guess.

Stessie - Home

BlueSky has money. We don’t.

People are going from one corporate-controlled social media platform to another corporate-controlled social media platform. You and I both know that’s the problem, but to the average user, they’re going to go to whatever has a large corporation spending a lot of money to tell them that their platform is the next big thing.

BlueSky has the one thing Fedi doesn’t: a large advertising budget. Hate to say it, but we have lost.