My experience with the Fediverse has only been through Mastodon, through which I struggled to find a community I really gelled with. Either it was supper overwhelming with meme posts or NSFW, or it was too chill to the point of nothing. Or, it was hyperfocused like FOSS/Linux and became uninteresting after awhile. May try again, but I think I will explore the other fedisites like Plemora or Calckey to see if I like it better.
I love the pace of a forum. I grew up primarily with GameFAQS and some lucid dreaming forum, and honestly it was very formative in teaching me how to write and use critical thinking skills, as well as how to respond to a variety of temperaments. I stopped participating in online forums awhile ago, and while I loved Reddit as a resource, I never felt inspired to participate. In the same way, there are an incredible number of forums dedicated to a certain topic, and are extremely valuable, it would be annoying to make an account for all the things I am interested in.
I like what lemmy is becoming. Glad to find system that makes interacting with people enjoyable.
They’re different kinds of experiences.
Forum-type things like Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker news, Reddit, etc. put the focus on the topic or community.
Micro-blog type things like Twitter, Mastodon put the focus on individuals.
If you want to see what your favourite author is posting about, or what your favourite musician is working on, or maybe behind the scenes pictures from a sporting event, microblogging platforms are great for that. Journalists also loved them because they could follow specific other journalists or other key people in the area they cared about, and get direct info from that source.
OTOH, if what you care about is a certain topic (F1 racing, beebop jazz, etc.) then forum-style platforms are better because the focus is the topic rather than the individuals.
This is an important distinction. I follow people on Twitter, while I follow topics on Reddit. It’s also the main reason why Mastodon will never succeed until it reaches the people I want to follow.
I didn’t like Twitter for that reason. Often I’d follow someone because I saw some posts they made about something I’m interested in. Then suddenly they’re flooding my feed with stuff I don’t care about and often being really annoying while they do it.
I rarely find someone who I like all their posts. So it’s like do I just put up with the furry porn retweets because this person is a genius who occasionally posts about really interesting hacks?
That’s why I rarely ever followed random people on the microblogging platforms. IMO what it’s good for is following journalists, who treat the platform professionally and mostly only talk about things related to their work, or say famous authors who do some self-promotion, but also sometimes talk about their creative process.