Fediverse

Me, me and me. Maybe I've finally found my people?

I'm literally less than a decade old and only own a phone and a shitty HP laptop

Not EXCLUSIVELY... but kinda, but even though I'm only 1 (or maybe 2) out of the 3, and a bunch of programming jokes and jargon go over my head, I really don't mind. And... if you're going to start with a particular demographic as a core userbase, man oh man could you do worse these days.

hey! i'll have you know i'm only 26. calling me out...

i also haven't used linux for a while but i'm currently procrastinating on setting it up on my laptop because windows modern standby hella sucks

I'm neither cis male nor that old but I fit the other two demographics lmao

Might be that tech inrerested ppl are more inclined to switch to less used alternatives when they allow for a more free and open platform. Also the barrier of entry for those might be quite a bit lower than the average Redditor

you ever feel like tech people embrace new technology first?

you're not wrong, and it's something that needs to be acknowledged, but I can't think of a single innovation on the internet that wasn't dominated by older (when you demarcate 30 as "older") tech people before coming to popularity among the general public

Yes - guilty! We understand what it is, and we have used the centralized systems long enough to remember how they started. It's so romantic to be at the beginning once more - until the next eternal September :)

All true for me... except I haven't booted into my Linux install in literal months.

Every new technology is first used by this kind of people (not sure about the age), it is for now just to us to extend the area covered by various communities to non-techie areas. I hope to start with participating in [email protected] and [email protected] which are hopefully far enough from the usual techie crowd.

I guess I'm all 3. I'm 39, tech enthusiast (tho I've long since given up on working in the industry), and have been using and occasionally contributing to the Linux community since the mid-90s.

My husband is afaik, still just on reddit. idk if he's moved to the official app on his phone (he was a rif guy for years) or what he's doing tbh. But, he's not really a geek 😁

You caught me. I'm old, write software and regularly use Linux.

Let's be honest here - Lemmy today is a very broken experience. I can't recommend it to my partner because she will complain non stop that this not working, that is laggy, etc. It's all fun for enthusiasts, but it's nothing more than a very broken alpha preview of what could be made in few years.

There's also a lack of content. Can you get a professional skincare advice on Lemmy? No. Can you talk to Bill Gates on Lemmy? No. Is there a Chinese Cooking Demistified community on Lemmy? No. It's just Linux, Fediverse, cats and porn.

And then there's a question of money. For Lemmy to go mainstream it needs to spend millions on promotion, ads, development, customer support, lawyers, etc. You can build great thing on enthusiasm, but they will remain a niche. If you want to reach the masses, you need a lot of capital. You can see that clearly with Facebook's Twitter clone - tens of millions sign ups in 24 days. Can't do that without spending tens of millions.

Yes, I'm one too. That's why I am here. The channels are generally relevant to me, and I can communicate with people, and not disappear in the mob, or deal constantly with low effort smart ass comments, trolls and bots.

What is it that you want to win? http://web.archive.org/web/20230707004346/https://ploum.net/2023-07-06-stop-trying-to-make-social-networks-succeed.html

The average person is about as technologically literate as a rock and curious about learning new things as a weed. Only a small subset of intelligent, curious, principled people dare to think of using alternatives that require users to have more than two brain cells or an attention span of more than 30 seconds.