Hadn’t realized how reliant upon Reddit I’d become for news and interesting things until after it turned to shit and I quit it. I’ve rediscovered RSS for ex., using reader apps to scan sources directly and read without all the noise—that actually came from someone’s recommendation here in the comments. I’ve found several new sites with deep, knowledgeable articles and discussions, like https://theconversation.com/us (free! No ads! Also discovered through the comments here), and my engagement with articles and their sources has gone WAY up. I’ve stopped reading garbage comment sections, too, and I’m just feeling better mentally as a result, disengaging from the endless, low effort memes/jokes and the mean, toxic comments*. Anyone else?

(Thanks again, admins—really enjoying and appreciating how Beehaw is run!)

  • MrKarato@beehaw.orgEnglish
    33·
    2 years ago

    Honestly? No. I like Beehaw. But it’s less convenient, with less content. I would rather stop using Reddit, but ultimately I’m just doing the same stuff here that I was there. Then again, I saw little toxicity in the subreddits I was in. Also, adult content is far less accesible.

    Again though, I’m pretty happy with Beehaw/Lemmy. I’m sure they will only improve with time.

  • Evkob@lemmy.caEnglish
    24·
    2 years ago

    I’ve noticed I’m spending more time looking at content that I actually want to engage with.

    I’ve also been on a huge FOSS hyper-fixation for the past week after replacing reddit with Lemmy. I’ve stopped using Youtube in favour of an open-source front end (Piped), I finally ditched Windows as my main OS and set up EndeavourOS, found an open-source Spotify front-end for desktop (psst) as well as an alternative for mobile (ViMusic).

    If anyone has any other open-source software to recommend, hit me up!

  • cabbagee@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    17·
    2 years ago

    What I liked about Reddit was the balance of content and community. There’s nothing on the Internet that hits the same balance for me. Lemmy feels like the early days of Reddit, in that way it’s refreshing. But I miss being able to read through dozens of comments.

    • sentientLasagna@kbin.social
      8·
      2 years ago

      Not sure if 2011 counts as early days or Reddit, but yeah this feels like that. I’m glad that I’m spending less time scrolling, and more time reading books, articles, and comics. But I do miss the endless stream of content, and putting ‘site:reddit.com’ in my Google searches.

  • Jarmer@kbin.social
    15·
    2 years ago

    I am absolutely loving it. Truly does feel like the old days in a good way. Where communities were made of good people and chatted about whatever random stuff they were interested in.

    • pilot@kbin.social
      9·
      2 years ago

      I agree. At first, I felt bereft that I couldn’t discuss xyz niche topic. Now, I’d rather find friendly people in whatever topic area.

  • SharkEatingBreakfast@beehaw.orgEnglish
    14·
    2 years ago

    This might sound weird, but bare with me!

    I save funny stuff, goofy things, and positive content in a folder for my son to browse through, which keeps him from looking for content himself in parts of the internet unknown. He loves it, and I had been able to keep the folder updated with a good amount of new images daily, thanks to R×ddit.

    However, lately that has changed. Posts deemed as “wholesome” and “made me smile” now increasingly have the edge of a dystopian nightmare (“look at this father reuniting with his son who he thought was dead amidst this war-torn country! Awwww! Wholesome!” and “this teacher was surprised when his students gave him something that his paycheck should have been able to adequately provide but he is not actually paid enough to afford it! Awww! Made me smile!”). I’ll find animals doing something “cute”, only to realize that behavior is caused by bad or abusive care.

    Now I struggle to find things that are actually funny or nice without having a sexist edge, a horrifying implication, sexual undertones, or some kind of underlying dark tone.

    I am finding less content here, but the content I am coming across seems to be much more genuine! I’ve actually saved quite a bit more things than I’ve seen on R×ddit within the past year.

  • lixus98@kbin.social
    14·
    2 years ago

    I’ve been doing so many things for kbin, it has literally reignited my passion to code. I’m having a blast

  • beepnoise@beehaw.orgEnglish
    13·
    2 years ago

    Man, I’m enjoying life since I got off Reddit, which was when they first announced the API changes. Deleted my account there and then. Same goes with Twitter.

    Turns out all these places just churn dumb online drama that is so inaccessible to the general public, that I ended up being a bit withdrawn because I had all this online drama in my head and I couldn’t really talk to folks about it.

    Now I’m ironically much more sociable that I’ve moved over to the fediverse. Outside of the reddit drama, conversations have been much more human. And even with the drama, I’ve learned to stop caring about such things - everything is in change, it will be okay. Companies don’t matter - people do.

  • Irv@midwest.socialEnglish
    13·
    2 years ago

    I could always add ‘Reddit’ to a Google search and get information from real people. With the rise of bot sites/articles, this was my way of getting answers online.

    Lemmy is great for learning new or interesting things, and I’m glad it’s here. I just am not sure how to get answers from real people anymore

    • pineapplelover@infosec.pubEnglish
      5·
      2 years ago

      I really hope Lemmy becomes searchable. That’s an amazing draw from Reddit. Other than Quora, I haven’t seen it yet.

  • Leer10@beehaw.orgEnglish
    12·
    2 years ago

    Honestly? It feels a bit mid for me. I keep reflexively opening the app, and there’s still a lot of smaller communities I peek at. I try to keep time-burning scrolling here, but it doesn’t feel the same.

    • kehtea@kbin.social
      8·
      2 years ago

      I feel like if your someone who enjoys smaller corners of reddit, it might feel odd until you find a place on here. Because there is a higher chance what you enjoy isn’t on here yet, or it might not have enough traffic yet.

    • elrac@kbin.social
      4·
      2 years ago

      I was reflexively opening Reddit too. I combated that by putting a link to kbin.social where I had my RIF app on my phone. So the reflex lands me here now.

  • YourHeroes4Ghosts@beehaw.orgEnglish
    11·
    2 years ago

    Oh yes, absolutely. I spend a lot more time watching tutorials on YouTube, because I’m not having pointless discussions with people who automatically hate me and dismiss me as soon as they learn my age (I’m ten years too young to be a “Boomer”, but to the kids on Reddit a “Boomer” is apparently anyone over 40). Also, of course, I’ve discovered Beehaw, which is awesome and far more chill. I’m not sure if I got away from ageism, but hopefully?

    I’ve also done a lot more reading. I’ve finished two books in the last three days, which would have been the norm for me pre-Reddit. Recreational reading had fallen by the wayside for far too long.

    • wet_lettuce@beehaw.orgEnglish
      5·
      2 years ago

      got away from ageism

      No way, old man winter!

      Just kidding! I remember being on a gaming forum back in the early 00s and having a couple of “old” guys on (in their 30s-40s). We’d always give them shit, but at the same time looked up to them and thought it was cool they were still gaming.

      They also had great perspective and wisdom to share with us teenage idiots.

      Now I get to be the ‘old’ guy in my 30s. It’s fun to engage with the younger crowd, and not dismiss them because of their age, because the younger generations have interesting perspectives too. I’m like paying it forward.

      • YourHeroes4Ghosts@beehaw.orgEnglish
        3·
        2 years ago

        undefined> No way, old man winter!

        I see the assumption “everyone is male on the internet, especially the ones with feminine avatars” hasn’t gone anywhere. :-P

        • wet_lettuce@beehaw.orgEnglish
          4·
          2 years ago

          Haha! I didn’t even notice the avatar. So I guess maybe ageism and accidental sexism are still a thing here?

          My bad :)

    • kool_newt@beehaw.orgEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      I joked to my friend that worldwide productivity would spike once the blackout started. I notice myself, I love Lemmy but feel less “addicted” to it than I did to Reddit if that makes sense and I’ve found myself doing more IRL as well.

      Also, I hear you on the age thing.

  • Majin Boowomp@techhub.social
    10·
    2 years ago

    @SemioticStandard I’ve felt a similar way since I’ve stopped using Reddit, Instagram, and Twitter over the last few years. I feel like those websites have so much petty drama that feels like it’s desperately trying to persuade you to be on the website all day for the next brief burst of satisfaction, and it unfortunately works on a lot of people. I’ve seen people run back to Twitter because people aren’t constantly arguing with each other on the Fediverse alternatives.

    • speck@kbin.social
      9·
      2 years ago

      You know, I never quite realized that, in fact, reddit does front-load lots of petty drama to keep me on there. I’ve basically been little better than someone watching the Kardashians or something.

      Crap.

    • Christian A@beehaw.orgEnglish
      4·
      2 years ago

      You’re right - I was one of those people (Not running back though) I sometimes fell into the trap of just going to Reddit /r/popular and scrolling. After many attempts of telling myself “No, I will just have a nice curated feed on home instead, with only hobbies and interests, and I’ll only look at the end of the day”

      Next thing I know I’ve gone and clicked /r/Popular again and I’m scrolling down. And it was bad because while, sure, I sometimes saw some cool or wholesome stuff, I also saw a lot of bad. People being cruel, drama nonsense, even more extreme stuff like death and gore. It all bubbles up there in some way. It was not healthy for me to keep visiting it.

      Once I ditched those platforms - things started looking up, and I’ve even gotten way more productive too.

  • WRASK@beehaw.orgEnglish
    10·
    2 years ago

    Well, I’m enjoying the Internet now that I’m here on Beehaw. I stopped actively browsing Reddit years ago, only ever using it for web searches and the sidebar/wikis for niche topics. The vibes were bad. Normal subs had too many chuds and lefty subs had too many tankies, and comments felt insincere and sarcastic. So my social media usage has increased a little, but I like it here. Good project y’all are running.

    Edit: /u/[email protected] - It keeps hanging up when I try to reply to you. Tankies are people who advocate for authoritarian governments that are “communist” in name only, like Russia and China. In reality they are essentially fascist. Genocide denial is a quick way to spot them.

    • 🦊 OneRedFox 🦊@beehaw.orgEnglish
      7·
      2 years ago

      Normal subs had too many chuds and lefty subs had too many tankies

      Yep. I was initially attracted to the users that were present from 2014-2017. Over the years I noticed that the communities I had frequented, both leftist and tech subs, had hollowed out and become shells of their former selves. I spent a year and a half wondering where the users I liked had migrated to and searching for them. Search engines are increasingly useless these days as everything retreats behind walled gardens and SEO gentrification runs wild. I had been a Mastodon user for years and I recently noticed at the time that they implemented the ability to follow hashtags, so I tried that out and started building a feed. To my surprise, I found them at last. In hindsight, it makes sense. The Fediverse are FOSS platforms that are decentralized. Mastodon in particular also opts you out of search engine indexing by default. But yeah, feels nice to be reconnected with the demographics I liked.

      • apis@beehaw.orgEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Left wing person who defends authoritarian regimes.

        The term comes from when the Soviet Union rolled tanks into Budapest in 1956 to crush the Hungarian revolution, which aimed to end bureaucratic despotism and place power with the workers. Many Western communists were horrified by the slaughter, but some supported what happened & continued to back the USSR.

        Today “tankies” tends to refer to people who support China & Russia, and sometimes even North Korea & Iran, often because they take the view that anti-Western == good, ignoring that these are highly oppressive, exploitative regimes which have nothing in common with typical left wing values.

        Some are just naïve about the reality of these governments, others just think of it as an “enemy of my enemy” utility against neoliberalism & Western imperialism, but some seem attracted by the idea of being authoritarian themselves or believe that a left wing future can only be achieved & maintained through authoritarianism.

        Online, it is probable that some tankies are working for China or Russia and that others are working for Western organisations seeking to disrupt & discredit left wing movements. Others have just been persuaded by tankie arguments.

        As a caveat: sometimes “tankie” is used to describe left wingers who aren’t like those described above, but who prefer the idea of imposing socialist reforms through force with a vanguard party at the helm, over achieving reform through anarchist organising without hierarchical enforcement.

  • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.orgEnglish
    9·
    2 years ago

    Definitely in a better overall mood without the doom scrolling. Also, haven’t had to see a single He Gets Us ad which is very nice.