Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

There’s a reason Lemmy/Kbin already feel more like “old” Reddit, and it’s because that was always the “alt” social media users, generally a bit more tech savvy and certainly more open minded to new platforms.

Absolutely this. I was on Reddit prior to the digg migration, and Reddit definitely changed when that happened. Fortunately it wasn’t complete shit, a lot of the folks from digg picked up the reddiquette and assimilated, but there was still a sea-change for sure. And then over the years as it grew and grew it steadily got worse and worse, and I found myself unsubbing from more and more subs, then completely blocking others, then finally dropping /r/all completely - and never did grok /r/popular, man that feed was a corporate shitshow from the day it launched.

but I’m not sure I was even subscribed to a single default sub.

I certainly haven’t been, ever since the brigade to ban /r/nonewnormal - whatever your thoughts on that subs existence, watching the reddit community actively brigade to shut down a sub they didn’t like, man fuck that. I absolutely abhor blatant censorship like that. Every single sub I was subscribed to that participated in that charade I dropped like a hot potato. And then the admins, instead of following their own rules, rewarded the behavior and banned the sub (who had broken no rules, other than to go against the narrative). It was fucking Orwellian.

The dwindling continued - watching supposed time-waster subs become completely political was such a drag. Like man, I just want to see some cats doing cat shit, and now I’m mad. Fuck that, I’m out.

And then the bans… oh, you subscribe to this totally unrelated sub, so you’re banned from these subs too. Lolwut? I started wearing bans like a badge of honor - after over a decade on the site, contributing and sharing knowledge and never even getting any warnings I started racking up bans for complete bullshit - I made a game out of it: what’s the most innocuous comment I can make to earn a ban? Fun times.

Then I got bored of that, so I nuked my entire post history (having a script overwrite my comments with gibberish prior to deletion). Reddit had made it clear that “my kind” was no longer welcomed. Despite contributing to the sites growth, buying Reddit gold and Reddit merch, being exactly the type of user they had been courting, I had become persona non grata. So I lurked.

That was heartbreaking. Reddit had dwindled down to be nothing but hobby subs and porn. The magic was long gone. It was like watching a horrible remake of Weekend at Bernie’s where they kept shuffling around the corpse of a long-since-dead best friend. The worst was when there’d be a question from a user in one of my few subs left that was right up my ally - I would be eminently qualified to help, but held my tongue. Fuck that place, I refused to offer one iota of value to that God-forsaken shithole.

And now they want to take away the last thread that kept me there - my 3rd-party app, Narwhal, because of sheer greed and stupidity. I am so fucking done.

Lemmy, let’s do this shit. You remind me of that long-dead friend I’d thought was lost forever. Let’s kick Reddit right in the balls in the best way possible - by doing well.