Roundcat, 9 months ago

Btw, this is me testing the limits of kbin's microblog feature, so the following post will be long. I will post a TLDR at the end.

It has been nearly a month since I've first joined #fediverse. Even before the #reddit exodus, I was already growing tired of the site for the fact that despite how large the communities were, they were very cold and impersonal. There was also the fact that for the #queer community at least, we had been siloed off from the rest of reddit, because nearly every topic involving #LGBTQ issues were very often met with hostility by a good amount of users, often followed by a locked topic. It was even getting to the point where I didn't even feel safe in the some of the more socially liberal spaces.

The fact that mods were being stripped of some of the few tools they had to keep their communities hospitable, I knew the writing was on the wall. I tried many reddit alternatives during the blackout, including #raddle and #tildes. But once I figured out how #kbin, #mastodon, and #lemmy worked, I found myself feeling right at home on the fediverse.

I think the main reason why is because many of the people here are misfits from other platforms. Many of the users on mastodon are former twitter users who were driven off by the corporate culture of twitter, and later by Elon Musk and the poisoning of the platform. Others are former redditors like me who found platforms like lemmy, and are in the midst of trying to rebuild the community they once had on thier former platform.

Fediverse definitely doesn't feel "mainstream" like the sites that many of us come from , but perhaps that is part of the appeal, and why I have taken to it far quicker than any other social platform I have tried in the past. I'm just hoping as the fediverse continues to grow and attract new users, that it doesn't lose it's quirky and experimental spirit.

TLDR: I like fediverse. It's weird, quirky, and I feel more open here than I was ever able to be on reddit. Don't ever change.