Jesus christ, dude. I'm here scrolling through posts at 2 AM in a dark room because I'm having trouble sleeping, and this picture scared the shit out of me. RIP my chances of going to sleep any time soon.

Yep. Certified non-tech nerd here. And not quite 30, either.

I was awfully close to not figuring out Lemmy enough to make an account and participate.

I still don't understand exactly what's going on, but I can confirm that my first time visiting was extremely confusing. So many terms I was completely unfamiliar with, and no clear way for me to jump in easily (like you were describing with having to make important decisions before signing up/understanding). Truly the only reason I ended up successfully making it here was that I saw a post on the instance I ended up joining, welcoming reddit refugees so I figured - well, I guess I could try this one. And that was after I had searched around online to figure out what the heck the fediverse, instances, etc, were.

The barrier to entry is really high for those of us with little to no tech knowledge. And I was really motivated, I reeeeally wanted to commit to leaving reddit. I imagine those who are considering joining but aren't quite as motivated just won't make it. :(

Oh shit no way, I didn't know that? Is that the case for most of the random reddit bots? For some reason hearing that the RemindMe bot is dead as well makes me extra sad 😥

To add to this, I think people often underestimate how "easy" it can be to function in society without being able to read well. I know that some folks who either don't read at all or read at a very low level have just gotten used to interpreting the world around them without the language part. For example, visually recognizing a username and password field on a website and knowing what they're for, or recognizing the symbols and colors used for certain objects or meanings, all without the actual words needing to mean anything to them for them to understand what it is and what to do with it. And for those who can read at a 5th or 4th grade level (and would thus be included in the stat mentioned in this post), they're likely then very capable of reading and understanding the majority of text they're going to come across in their day-to-day lives.

Of course, I don't want this to sound like I'm saying being illiterate is easy, I'm sure it creates MANY barriers and difficulties for the person, but I do think humans are also flexible and resilient, and are able to survive using other cues.

I'm a little curious how many folks working at reddit have secretly moved over to Lemmy (or other similar site) during all of this

Thank you!!!! That makes sense - so just checking, Top X is like "Hot", but over a certain time period instead of "recent"? (In that it cares about rating instead of how many comments are being posted?)

Seems like bouncing between Active and Hot is still a good thing to do then maybe. To see whatever people are discussing as well as whatever the most upvoted stuff is.

Well huh. I did not in fact know this, and was wondering why there were so few subscribers to most communities or even zero sometimes. Feels like changing this to include all subscribers would be really helpful?

I was scrolling through "all" and thought this was a legit ad at first 😅

I love it! Looks great. I'm jealous, I've had to severely limit my houseplant numbers and locations because my cats will try to eat anything and everything, even the plants that supposedly sting or taste awful to them. I'm hoping they grow out of it one day so I can have something set up like this!

Forreal, what's going on? Why does it seem like so many separate sites are suddenly so much worse/going downhill quickly?

That's one of the things I've been most excited about so far - it sorta feels like I'm back on an old ~2005 forum again, it's weirdly nostalgic and nice!

Hah, me right now when I should've been asleep long ago. I tried to open RIF as usual, realized it really happened, and then spent the last hour or two trying to understand this site and make an account and whatnot. I was only partially successful on the former, but at least I made it here!