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.
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.
That’s kind of like saying the United States isn’t a place, it’s a collection of States that are each unique in their own way. Yes, that’s true, but combined they make a place called The United States of America.
You want a deep conversations, you never ask on what. Why pontificate on the reason Baja blast gelato is the color it is and not the fact it’s only available through the app and capitalism in general. Where are you subscribed to what are you seeing and what in general are you truly looking for?
I’m not thinking specifically of deep thoughts or shallow thoughts, but when I happen to think of anything, it could be nice to communicate it to other people where it might spur thoughts for them or conversation or even just put it down in writing even if no one cares. If it’s casual enough, there is casualconversation, but if it doesn’t fit in the box well, it doesn’t fit in the box well. Or not even thoughts exactly as I might want to talk about what I did today or saw today.
Perhaps a new community is called for; something which encourages earnest thinking and open discussion but is not hardcore technical philosophy. I think it should be called ‘interestingthoughts’ or ‘thatsinteresting’ or maybe even just ‘thoughtful’. There is already ‘showerthoughts’ but that seems to be a bit more humour-based than what you’re talking about.
I would enjoy reading and replying to posts on it and posting to it myself too. I haven’t started a community on Lemmy before and I’ve got quite a bit on my plate at the moment, so I don’t think I could take it on as a mod alone but if you want we could try doing it together. Let me know what you think :)
It sounds like you are describing a blog. If you want to stay in the fediverse, there is WriteFreely. I have an account on paper.wf, but I haven’t used it yet tbh.
I tried to have blogs back in the day. People were not terribly interested, and the prospect of having to cultivate being-known so that anyone will see the thing I found unpleasant. It’s strange to think how many people are very driven to promote themselves. Self-promotion feels dirty, and writing for no one feels foolish.
Building an audience over time is exactly how blogs, and publishing in general, work unless you start off with a lot of advertising or endorsements. For better or worse, there’s far more content than there is time for a large audience to read it all.
This gives you three choices:
- specialize and post in an existing community that’s aligned with that specialization. People will nearly always engage, especially if the content is good
- specialize and start your own blog. You could even try seeding it by referring people to it from already existing specialized communities. People will know what to expect content wise and keep coming back if the subject you’re talking about is interesting to them and the content is good
- don’t specialize and strike out on your own. If the content is good and you stick with it your audience will eventually grow. This will probably take more time because your audience will initially be looking for content that relates to what they’ve seen in the past, but what you’re really offering is your personality, writing style, world view, etc
Personally, if I’m looking for engagement I choose the first option.
the fediverse is young, and still incorporating itself into something awesome… something more structured. in the meantime, ive found myself falling backwards into some amazing conversations with clearly very intelligent people.
im not sure why your experience is different, but im having a blast
Seconding this. I find that sometimes in the comment sections, there is an actual worthwhile exchange of interesting ideas and information, and when I participate in this I sometimes manage to fool people into thinking I’m intelligent.
I’ll feel like it would be nice to interact with some people, and maybe I want to write some, but I won’t have any questions, and I don’t feel like reacting to what happened in politics today perhaps, and I don’t enjoy memes.
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.
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Typing long form stuff on a smartphone sucks
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.
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?
The former, because nobody will subscribe to the latter, and therein lies the problem.
Best to give up then
Hey things should be better!
Sweet, let’s get started, go make something better
Nah, gonna give up instead.
k
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.
I’m pretty much happy with conversations I see here. Plenty of quality discussion threads in AskLemmy, Gaming and Technology and Anime. Would be nice to see even more ofc, but Lemmy’s not that big yet I guess. Questions is something that often starts interesting discussions.
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.
Have you never been to !casualconversation@lemm.ee?
I have look at it, and if I have something that’s solidly casual, it could fit there, although I’m also thinking that if I have three casual thoughts in a day, now I’m already almost flooding the place. Would have to start slowly in that case.
We wouldn’t mind no matter how many thoughts a day you have that you’d like to share. Share as many as you’d like.
Thank you for being welcoming.
I sometimes post thoughts/questions and usually get some interesting discussion, so it is worth it. I think I also prefer seeing other posts like this. I think that the reason for seeing more posts which are links is because a) it’s easier and b) most online content is somewhere on the clickbait spectrum and the result of that is manifested here on Lemmy much the same as it would be anywhere else.
Edit: Also, I’m upvoting your post because I think you are essentially calling for firsthand thoughtful discussion, which is a good thing for everyone.
Thank you. Whatever I’ve done online has always been more or less unwelcome. I saw that my post has a 0, which must really be some negative value. I knew at least some people would be defensive, group membership, tribalism, the angry insecure thrill of attacking outsiders, but I wasn’t sure whether it would lean that way overall.
Don’t take it to heart and remember that there are other posts/comments that received way more downvotes, my own included! I’m sorry to hear you’ve had a rough time online. I’ve appreciated this post though and you’ve had some upvotes, so I’m sure others have too.
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Someone else said that and I wrote something about how it’s a big task for one person and a culture may be resistant to it.
Believe me, no one here is going to be upset if you write some interesting content. The real challenge will be whether or not your content find traction with the masses.
Both Lemmy and Reddit also favor new content over existing content, so expect decreasing engagement with a post as time wears on. This is different than a traditional forum, where a new comment will bump the whole thread.
I’ve kicked off a few good conversations here with OC, granted my posts tend to be more project/image based than what you’re thinking.
I wouldn’t expect to find much traction. And now I’ve spent so much of today writing about this that I’ve mentally lost track of the shape of whatever I felt unable to do yesterday. I’m sure it would have been more about wanting to talk and wanting to express myself than expecting to be interesting or appealing.
You can always talk and express yourself! Absolutely no one will be upset if you do, assuming you don’t have wildly unpopular opinions and/or aren’t interested in rehashing politically fraught issues for the upteenth time. Find a vaguely appropriate community here and go nuts.
Because it’s an echo chamber. Not a forum.
Lemmy’s format just kind of sucks for discussions and visibility. If you comment on a post from a year ago, you can expect that to not been seen by anyone ever.
Lemmy is primarily a link aggregator, just like Reddit. It also happens to somewhat work for Q&A and help forums, but fundamentally Lemmy is more oriented towards new content.
The more classic forum format is better for discussions because replies bump the thread up to bring new attention to it.
Also a lot of people just don’t give a shit about random people’s random thoughts, that’s why I’m not on Mastodon and never really used Twitter either. I don’t know why people feel the need to dump all their thoughts on the Internet, like I care that a celebrity is on a plane or enjoying a nice meal.
Lemmy is about topics, not people, that’s what I like about it. I don’t care about people.
What if we encouraged everyone to sort by “active” now and again?
Doesn’t that sort by whatever people are commenting the most on? To my knowledge it doesn’t put something back at the top if 1 or 2 people comment on it. Unfortunately the threads that most people are commenting on are all rage baited political drama.
Lemmy’s format just kind of sucks for discussions and visibility. If you comment on a post from a year ago, you can expect that to not been seen by anyone ever.
Yes, that is very irritating.
The more classic forum format is better for discussions because replies bump the thread up to bring new attention to it.
Too bad they’re not very active, to the best of my knowledge.
Also a lot of people just don’t give a shit about random people’s random thoughts
Yeah, it’s true. I remember the stereotype of Livejournal, which might be before your time, of being teenage girls telling you what they had for lunch. They could be accused of tending toward narcissism. Me, when I want to communicate, sometimes it’s that I want to point something out, but sometimes it’s driven by a wish to socialize.
There are a few active forums, but they’re very niche. There’s a forum called Thumper Talk for people who ride single cylinder dual sports, and a forum for Doberman Pinschers that are both pretty active. But people are lazy. Most people don’t want to create an account to talk about one subject. They want one account to talk about everything. That’s why Facebook and Google login are popular, despite the fact that you’re sharing waaaaay too much information with some random website and with Facebook or Google by using that option. It’s also unfortunate that a lot of active forums have never taken the time to make their sites mobile responsive, since most people online are on their phones these days.
Also a lot of people just don’t give a shit about random people’s random thoughts, that’s why I’m not on Mastodon and never really used Twitter either.
I never saw the value in that format because you can’t say anything meaningful about anything in 180 characters or less unless you’re Earnest Hemingway. Why do billions of people want to engage with a character limit?
I very much didn’t expect tight character limits to be accepted and take over as opposed to just when you’re on your feature phone but you have something to say.
We didn’t expect the phone to become the default device online either. But the vast majority of people on the internet are on mobile devices now. Even I only ever visit sites in my free time from my phone. I’m on a computer at my desk in my home office for 8-10 hours per day for work. The last thing I want to do after work is to spend more time at that desk.
I hate typing on my phone so much.
It sucks, but I’m not going back to my work environment to browse the internet. I started setting up a dedicated gaming and browsing desk elsewhere in my house, but I never finished, because I didn’t like the way it looks.
It is nice to sort Lemmy’s posts by new comments sometimes. Turns everything into a much more forum-like experience.
