It’s like a better version of Reddit in 2025, but what I really want is Ye Olde Reddit of 2010. I keep seeing comments about how Reddit turned to shit with the API changes, but IMO it’s been garbage for more than a decade. I haven’t been on Lemmy for long but so far I’ve mostly seen the same posts as on Reddit with mostly the same types of comment, just at smaller scale.
this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2025
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
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When I joined Reddit around the same time, people who had been on Reddit since it actually started were also complaining it was shit. 🤣
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You don't have enough subs. Slacker.
/s
Yup, and then if you do endlessly scroll all you get to see either very wild takes, porn, and/or extremely niche start up communities, depending on your level of federation.
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Exactly how I feel!
I realize it won’t be like this forever
You can always keep moving to smaller instances.
This is a great point. I have another account on a smaller instance, and there I frequently just read everything in the local feed.
You can also really feel that the algorithm doesn't just blindly promote click/rage bait the way that reddit's does.
It still gets promoted some times, but the front page isn't constantly filled with it like Reddit's is,.
Enjoy it while you can
The beauty of it is that we can enjoy it forever. If one instance gets too noisy, we can block it.
I agree. Very much like Reddit in the early days.
Also, the level of civility and intellect in the comments is relatively high.
I hope the openness of the platform will continue to allow us to keep it that way as things grow.
Eat shit and die, cunt
Way more arguments on Lemmy seem to end with the two users stop down voting each other, and then basically concluding 'that I see your point but still think you're wrong because youre over emphasizing x or y'.
Way more arguments on Reddit just end with an endless loop of insulting and talking past each other.
I think the effect is probably like 30% selection bias of people coming to Lemmy more intentionally, and 70% lack of bots. Between paid influence campaigns, and Reddit's own use of bots to juice engagement, my gut feel is that most of those endless arguments are either directly arguments with bots, or indirectly people who have grown so frustrated arguing with bots in other threads that they're no longer capable of rational discussion.
Also, Reddit comment quality has nosedived in the past year or so. Like, wildly nosedived. It used to be that there would be at least one comment in the top comments that adds some more interesting context to the story, these days, I almost t never see that on Reddit, but frequently do on Lemmy.
The average age of a Redditor started to go down even several years ago, long before Rexodus, in large part as the platform changed things to encourage speaking even without bothering to read anything at all.
Thus I decided to leave Reddit regardless, and only fortuitously decided to come here. Some things simply are not worth the trouble.
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Intellectual? Perhaps. Civil? Not always…
I've found more belligerent comments have started to crop up, and sure enough, most of the time the account is about 2 weeks old. I really hope lemmy doesn't change with this latest influx from reddit.
Fwy, some apps allow for automatically applied icons to indicate such. I forget exactly which ones, but I know PieFed's web UI does it. It's very helpful imho.
PieFed also marks people who receive like 10x more downvotes than upvotes. That way you can still choose to read their content, but seeing that, decide how best to respond.
I've just started using Summit and they show accounts less than 30 days old. Really slick ui too.
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I got sent gore by a two year old account yesterday
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Also, the level of civility and intellect in the comments is relatively high.
Fuck you! No it isn't you moron.
Wow! I want to upvote, downvote and report you at the same time. Kudos!
In the end all i did was leave this lousy comment
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Yeah, I just sort by new. I see everything posted in my subscriptions, and can just be done for a while. It's great. And early comments get more upvotes, heh.
I mute a ton of communities, and I really like quickly getting to the "end" of All. Then I've blocked some other dopamine sites, so I get bored and go play outside 🤣
Wait, the "All" feed has an end? I need to step up my game
Yeah, All Top [time duration] just pulls the most highly voted of the selected time length. The shorter the time period the easier it is to run out.