Hope a two part question is allowed but after mostly lurking a lot, I’m noticing that there do seem to be quite a lot of Xennials. But on the other hand, also plenty of rebellious youth.
In my mind I’m thinking that Lemmy userbase is (very broadly generalizing) dividing into people who saw internet’s early days and as such, aren’t scared of the slight technical hurdles to enter. They tend to be a bit worldweary but Lemmy does feel a bit more like OG internet, which they like (this is me). But also, there’s younger people who are techy enough to deal with the hurdles too but see using Lemmy as a sort of an act of rebellion against the mainstream internet (which I appreciate).
That said I feel like the two clash a lot since the former tends to have fewer shits to give than the latter. As often is the case in the whole history of humanity.
Obviously there’s plenty of people who don’t fall into either camps, which is why I’m curious. Lemmy is small enough to have a sense that there are actual, real, individual people here, as opposed to Reddit’s amorphous blob of a massive userbase most of whom seem like bots.
- Old
- LONG time redditor that got fed up during the original API bullshit. Ive been here for a bit. Feels like home. 2.a. I feel like I am in both camps. I don’t mind the technical hurdles (it really wasn’t THAT bad, folks). I also do it for rebellious purposes.
24 (approximately)
Doesn’t take much knowledge to find Lemmy, I like a topic-based forum, not some influencer-follower twitter like shit… I don’t like “following” “people”… I want to talk about stuff not people… was on Reddit… and just have a burning hatered for authoritiarians and bullshit like: “AUTOMODERATOR: OPPSIES YOUR KARMA ISN’T ENOUGH…” or “YOUR POST HAVE BEEN AUTOMATICALLY REMOVED”… and a desire for freedom.
Techical Knowledge? Idek how to do coding lmao…
Never knew what internet was like in the “Good Ol’ Days” or whatever y’all are talking about, my first glance at the internet was in 2010
Internet in the “good OK days” was very (^1000000) slow.
But, on the bright side, sales funnels didn’t exist
I think you could summarize by saying: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
I’m 65 and I hate the generation labels. I genuinely think they were originally pushed as another propaganda mechanism to create further artificial divisions between people. There is no doubt that people of significantly different ages are often different in various ways, but the over simplicity of the named generations just provides another convenient way to stereotype people instead of understanding them as individuals.
I think I joined reddit in 2008. I’ve been involved in social media since the days of dial-up bulletin board systems in the late 70’s. (And I ran one of my own in the mid-80’s.) I had an email address on Bitnet in 1983 and was on Usenet in its early days. reddit was an interesting and open place for a while there and I enjoyed the variety, but most of it was becoming too cynical and tribal for me by the early 20’s. I discovered Lemmy a couple years before reddit’s API debacle, but that is what convinced me to drop reddit and focus on the Fediverse.
I like the decentralized model of the Fediverse. I think the idea that different servers can have different rules is healthy. I stay away from parts of it, but I have found plenty of communities that are friendly and interesting to me. After hanging out on several different servers, I joined Fedican and have been happy here. It’s a nice place to call my home online.
less than 20, reddit pissed me off by killing the API so i could no longer use Infinity for Reddit.
Not yet 30, and I got banned from reddit after 13 years for saying nazis deserve to be dead. Hit too close to home for the admins with that one, evidently. I have alts that they can’t find, but I mainly hang here now.
Ayo fuck nazis
Fuck pedos
Fuck fanatics of any kind
Fuck the zios
Fuck the billionares
And fuck my girlfriend, lovingly (if I had one)
FREEDOM, BITCHES 🦅🦅🦅🦅
Lolllllll.
40s. Saw Lemmy mentioned on Reddit around the time of the API debacle. It became clear to me that reddit would not be usable in the long run, as it is unusable without 3rd party clients.
Upon checking Lemmy out, it reminded me of the kind of internet I hadn’t seen in ages, so I stayed.
Late 20’s
I used reddit app so the api fiasco, while it bothered me on a fundamental level, did not directly affect me.
Then I read some article about the potential for reddit to create paid subreddits or something?
I don’t remember exactly why paywalled subreddits bothered me so much, but it was enough for me to decide to leave.
59, been on Mastodon for years, saw the occasional mention of Lemmy and came over for a look some time ago to lemmy.world, then to the instance I’m on now. Also have a piefed alter and the original .world alter.
Spend more time here than on Mastodon these days, I find the shitposting here is if a higher equality.
Had used reddit in the way distant past but it annoyed me the usenet structure was being centralised and replicated for $ off the back of “slaves” and left way back.
Early 30s. API debacle.
Interesting that it seems like most people here are around 30 or are 50+.
I’m in my 40’s. Reddit being an increasingly bigger piece of shit led me here. Mostly the api changes but also they literally banned me for something that isn’t even against rules, I think a bot banned me actually. I appealed it and they unbanned me but I was already pissed, as they were forcing everyone into a worse experience and also idly watching Nazis slither around, increasing in number every day. But if you said mean words as a leftist you would get banned-- I also got temp bans for things like that.
I think I saw reddit posts about Lemmy, I forget, but I was actively thinking of leaving already, however I found it.
Mid 30s, 3rd party Reddit app migration ~3y ago
Stuck around because it reminded me of a lot of the good parts of Reddit that increasingly seem to be gone from the actual site. Though not that I’d really know because I probably only go to Reddit once every few months now via a search for something, and every time I do, it seems even worse than the last time.
I’m just hoping the growth continues such that the less busy communities start to pick up a bit, we’re getting close to the point where there’s a community to cover most interests I’ve thought looked for, but many of them are ghost towns. But we’re making progress, month on month it does feel like there are more people knocking around
Late 20s, moved to lemmy during the Reddit API scandal like a lot of others, so it’s a deliberate anti-corporate choice. I’ve always been techy (I worked as a software developer at the time I made the switch) and I’ve always hated the corporate social media platforms. Reddit was the only social media that I ever used extensively and the API fiasco was the straw that broke the camel’s back. This may or may not be true for others who switched around the same time but it coincided with my political views becoming more radical; I used to consider myself a social democrat but by the time I fled Reddit I fully considered myself socialist and was on my way to becoming an anarchist.
Like 2-3 years old (as of 2026)
I was unhappy with Reddit’s userbase(before i cared about company track records), and i randomly stumbled across lemmy.(ion remember how)
The small size makes finding communities hard but its workable.Turned 20 last week. I found lemmy through reddit about 2 years ago.
Backstory :
My parents had flat refused home internet until 2020 when online classes made it a requirement.
Since I am 14, at home, and just got introduced to the wide world of web, I looked up tutorials on becoming a hacker like in the movies and got into linux.
General social media was still too overwhelming for me but I did like reddit for the linux content. I later saw the “about” page of r/unixsocks explaining they are on c/unixsocks now.
I checked lemmy and community was better here, also reddit had and alt-right problem so I decided to migrate.
Which instance and time of day you ask this is going to give different results I suspect. I’m a 500 year old antarctican. I came here after stopping on mastodon for a bit after leaving reddit.
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