People looking for content outside of news, tech, memes and politics, do you know where to find communities?

Asking this to the general audience because that’s a comment I’ve seen quite a lot recently.

So, let’s start with a list of communities that could be interesting to a wide audience, sorted by monthly active users (MAU), the most active being on top.

Those numbers may seem low, but remember that those are active users, who at least commented or posted in the last month. So even if you are afraid to be shouting to the abyss, there will be other people next to you to keep the ball rolling.

Also, please note that those communities are suffering from the current tedious discoverability of new content on Lemmy. I’m hoping to make them more popular with this post, as I’m sure those are topics that can interest a lot of people.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Lemmy cannot replace 18 years of content creation overnight. It will take time for those communities to grow to the same level of content and activity than there counterpart, but with a bit of time, we’ll get there.

In addition, there are a few places to look out for new communities.

The first place to look for is lemmyverse.net, but Lemmy.world communities are currently excluded for some reason (github.com/tgxn/lemmy-explorer/issues/139).

A second place is this community: !newcommunities. People tend to promote their communities there, you can also ask for a community you are looking for.

Finally, !trendingcommunities provides a daily report of communities becoming popular.

Nemo, (edited )

If you’re interested in gardening or ecology, the entire Solarpunk instance (slrpnk.net) is full of great munis for you:

!farming

!diy

!zerowaste

!composting

!reclamation

!cdr

!animal_husbandry

!soilscience

!diy

!greenspace

!righttorepair

!right2repair

And I think the following is a comprehensive list of cycling munis:

!utilitycycling

!bicycles

!bicycling

!bikecommuting

!bicycle

!chibike

!fuck_cars

!bikewrench

!bicycling

Xariphon,

How do I subscribe to those two DIYs and Cocktails... as a kbin user, from kbin.social, without creating yet another login somewhere else?

Nemo,

So IIRC the bang-at instance neutral link format directs users to yourinstance.tld/c/muni@theirinstance.tld. Kbinsters need to change the /c/ to a /m/ to make it work.

But I might be wrong; better to ask your instancemates.1

Xariphon,

ty!

gelberhut,

do you know what community is a proper place to ask questions about indoor flowers/plants?

Nemo,

I feel like I saw one but I don’t remember where. I didn’t sub because all my plants are outside. Sorry. The community search is pretty good, though!

Or you could create your own muni, post it to ! newcommunities@lemmy.world, and the first comment will be practically guaranteed to be someone telling you the community already exists and where you can find it.

Zathras,

!houseplants

gelberhut,

Thank you!

Zathras,

Similarly, science geeks of all sorts (biology, nature, space, math, physics, etc) should check out the mander.xyz communities.

!health is not terribly active but they have pinned posts of a lot of health based communities and resources in the fediverse.

Waraugh,

I’ve been in tech for thirty years and my answer is, no, I don’t. I saved your message along with some others that I hope to read in depth one day because it seems helpful. I just have less and less of a desire to fuck with shit anymore. I remember how excited I was about tech at various points in my career. I used to be so into tech. Anymore, I get off work supervising over twenty other folks on implementing, managing, and maintaining disparate technical solutions and products on and off prem along with a slew of cross functional organizations and my desire to do anything tech dies just after the surface. So I dumped Reddit because I agree with the reasons and jumped on lemmy. I use wefef. That’s as far as I’ve gone. I won’t use reddit anymore out of principle but I miss it.

As another example, I used to pirate the shit out of stuff. Into the scene big time. Became ‘successful’ and subscribed (and invested) in all the services. Just recently canceled all my subscriptions and moved to real debrid with torrentio or w/e. I was able to get it going in an hour and it makes sense. Hell I’d pay $100 a month for what I have now but whatever. It’s not about the money as much as the ease of experience. I keep Netflix because it makes it easier to find stuff I want to watch but that’s all.

I know I could sit down and spend an afternoon getting my shit setup to better deliver content to me across instances and everything if I’d just do it. Instead I just see what’s in the standard feed this evening and start doing some crosswords before bed instead. I think I’m just burnt out on technology. Kudos to what everyone is building and all the investment being put into educating folks though. I don’t think I have any critique other than it’s just too much more difficult for me than Reddit was to find everything and I’m getting old and tech disinterested.

I really appreciate and understand the value of federating services but to claim theirs no value, big picture community wise, in having a central access point to content is willfully ignorant of a broad user base in my opinion. None is this stuff is new, it’s just a new wave of human nature with updated technology.

Most folks barely know how to utilize a web browser, that doesn’t mean that they have less value or less interesting or compelling information to provide the world; it just means it won’t be shared on the platform, or even if it is they likely won’t be heard.

For broad user adoption systems need to be designed for our grandparents not our peers because most folks are a lot closer to the former than the latter, even our peers in tech.

Anticorp,

Thankya! I subbed to over half of those just now.

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Great!

_tezz,

This doesn’t address your question directly OP, but something I’ve been doing here (as a sad former redditor of over a decade) is to relentlessly upvote anything I like or that contributes to communities I’m subscribed to. I was more of a lurker on reddit but I think if we can push more niche communities and posts into the “everything” feed this problem will hopefully resolve itself eventually through organic growth.

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Indeed!

urda,
@urda@lebowski.social avatar

Lebowski memes and more at

!achievers

Rolder,

Im waiting for niche instances like those dedicated to specific video games to take off. They exist right now but have approximately zero traffic

MisterHavoc,

Same

Blaze, (edited )
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

lemmy.film is quite active, literature.cafe is getting there.

The one for Star Citizen etc could indeed get more activity.

Hopefully we indeed see more in the future.

Strangle,

I’m getting tired of Musk, left wing news stories and left wing memes myself

I’ll join these communities simply because lemmy seems so one dimensional looking through my feed.

If there is non-political content here, I’d appreciate it being brought more to the front, at least for my own feed.

I’m hoping for more diverse topics than what seems to hit all day after day. To the point where I’m usually not even logging in as often as I could be.

The topics are boring, one sided and just … lame

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

If there is non-political content here, I’d appreciate it being brought more to the front, at least for my own feed.

That’s the main issue Lemmy has right now. I blocked myself all news, politics, memes and almost tech, because it was just… too much.

DudePluto,

Probably due to the relatively small user base, it just isn’t as diverse as some websites. But, even reddit had the issue of the front page being flooded with political posts from one perspective. So as nice as it would be not to, lemmy is probably going to be the same way. It just might highlight a slightly different perspective from reddit

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

It might be for sure due to the small user base, and also the lack of algorithm.

I don’t know how Hot is set up, but it’s quite hard for a post from a random small community to pop up.

I know people dislike content algorithm, but in this of cases we might be needing something to make content more discoverable.

DudePluto,

Yeah tbh I think people totally misunderstand algorithms. I mean, hot is driven by an algorithm, as are the other sort methods, too, albeit simple algorithms. What we really want to avoid are profit-driven and invasive algorithms. But algorithms to boost discoverability for small communities could be really beneficial

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

I agree!

DudePluto, (edited )

If you want neutral memes you can come over to !comedyheaven

We’re for memes with humor that’s so bad it’s ironically funny. A bit niche but at least you get a break from politics

soren446,

Based on your comment and post history you want to talk about politics but with people who agree with right-wing opinions. Maybe go to exploding-heads.

Strangle,

I tend to comment on things I have something to say about, that’s usually a contrary opinion. I’m less likely to comment if I agree.

Rolder,

“I only want to see the politics that I agree with” A tale as old as time. Plenty of knockoff right wing reddits/twitters out there.

Strangle,

I mean, I’d love to talk to people who don’t think like I do.

Unfortunately, that’s not really how it ends up working out.

Anticorp,

He specifically said he wants less politics, not politics he agrees with. He hasn’t given you any reason to attack him, but you did so anyways.

Rolder,

I said that after looking at his comment history and seeing a ton of right wing talking points being tossed out on other instances. Sure didn’t seem like he wanted less politics to me!

Anticorp,

I started using Sync, despite disagreeing with their privacy policy, just so I can block entire instances, and use filter words. I’ve added Musk, Trump, Politics, Twitter, and a bunch of other filter words to my block list, then filtered hexbear completely, and a couple of other problematic, one-dimensional instances, and Lemmy is a lot more enjoyable now. It’s okay reading about those subjects occasionally, but my feed was like 95% filled with those topics. Some of them aren’t even topics that would normally bother me, but it was like every single post.

Infynis,
@Infynis@midwest.social avatar

!cocktails is one I’m hoping will grow with time. As is, we get probably a couple posts a week, and honestly, roughly the same amount of comments as on r/cocktails, despite it’s much higher user and post count, so it seems like people are enjoying the engagement. If you’re into fun drinks, stop by!

Xariphon,

I just subbed. Next time I make one of my favorites -- a White Russian or a Mudslide -- I'll try to remember to take a picture. (And yes I know I have the palate of a six year old girl.)

Edit: One of these days I'll watch enough "How To Drink" videos to make me ambitious about mixology again.

Infynis,
@Infynis@midwest.social avatar

Hey, they’re classics for a reason. Don’t be afraid to experiment though! I love a White Russian with rum subbed for the vodka. And I bet both of those cocktails would be great shaken with an egg, and topped with grated nutmeg

Xariphon,

What's the deal with eggs in cocktails? Raw egg yolk is approximately the grossest thing I have ever experienced, texture wise, so... yeah. ELI5?

Infynis,
@Infynis@midwest.social avatar

In cocktails, eggs mostly just give texture, so putting a whole egg in a drink makes it rich and silky, which is good in a desert drink. Cocktails with whole eggs are called flips, and you can make all kinds. I did one once with bourbon and apple cider to make apple pie

The_Picard_Maneuver,
@The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world avatar

If you’re a fan of XCOM, I made and have been slowly trying to grow a comm for it here:

!xcom

It would be cool to have posts like this regularly so that people can find niche subscriptions, because I think that’s what people are craving.

floppy,

I think there are a few game specific ones. I run !lemmings

gamermanh,
@gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Simple: lurk until I see something I like, then follow that community if I want them in my filtered feeds

Efficient? No. But I also never looked up communities for Reddit so 🤷🏻‍♂️

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Interesting, did you discover a lot of them that way? It’s usually difficult to me, small communities content are buried under the popular ones

gamermanh,
@gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

I’ve found about as many as I personally like to keep track of (about 10ish varied active communities, another 10 to 15 less active ones)

Most of my interests are things it’s quite easy to find from my instance though (growing mushrooms for example) so that probably helps me, as reddit took way longer to build out my sub list

AbsolutelyNotCats,
@AbsolutelyNotCats@lemdro.id avatar

Great list!

elbarto777,

It’s not a great list for me. I’m not interested in 90% of what’s in it. Maybe because their posts in reddit were uninteresting.

But I do appreciate the effort!

shinigamiookamiryuu,

I really wanted to be a part of CasualConversation on here, but my posts and comments aren’t submitting. Not sure if it’s a glitch or if it’s an intended effect of the federation thing.

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Interesting, let me have a look. I think we had commenters from lemm.ee in the last few days.

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Okay, I just noticed we don’t allow English as a language, could you please give it another try?

It should be fine from a federation perspective because this person commented from Lemm.ee: lemm.ee/comment/2814981

shinigamiookamiryuu,

It’s working now. And you’re right, it’s the English thing.

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Great!

Lemjukes,

Nice little PSA, good stuff!

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Thanks!

chronically_crazy,

The biggest problem people run into is a lack of thier niche communities here, and that’s mostly due to a lack of overall numbers. Reddit, while a festering hellhole, still has that. I’d be thrilled to see that change one day, but it’s definitely gonna be a while.

NOT_RICK,
@NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

I’m optimistic that more niche stuff will come with time

chronically_crazy,

Lemmy has been growing alot lately, so there’s certainly reason to have optimism. It’s really just a numbers game to get more niche communities here.

Uranium3006,
Uranium3006 avatar

Reddit's jumped the shark and will continue Tod slowly bleed users until everything of value's over here

gelberhut,

another issue is: most of the people want to consume, very few contribute and most “contribution” is a link-posting, even without a personal opinion for it.

TrustingZebra,

Ironically, right now Lemmy is better for contributors than lurkers. The limited amount of content means than any post/comment that I submit is more likely to be seen and get engagement. I already get more comment replies on Lemmy than I usually did on Reddit.

gelberhut,

your profile says that you created 1 post. And this is just a link post.

TrustingZebra,

Yep I mostly comment. Back on Reddit I used to almost never post because most posts would get buried in New. I might post more here since there is a need of content.

gelberhut,

commenting is a a contribution. but posting is more important, at least so far - no posts -> nothing to comment.

ultimate_question, (edited )

Agreed, the top suggestion here is a community I’ve been subscribed to from day 1 and it’s always felt dead. Lemmy is good for specific tech niches but outside of that it feels like the same generic meme stream that /r/all is. Also a red flag that nearly all of the communities listed here are attempts to recreate a reddit niche 1:1 which obviously was never going to work as long as the main reddit version is still around

Unfortunately I don’t think recommending dead communities with 9 MAUs and 1 post/month is the solution to building up Lemmy’s userbase but I respect the attempt

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