I love interacting with you all very much, and I know there’s a lot of important political issues in the world going on right now. I love my Linux Mint setup, I support Palestine and trans people, and I’ve blazed through all of OG Star Trek, TNG, Voyager, and am now on DS9.

But I also want to discuss Luka to the Lakers and Kendrick calling Drake a pedophile and getting 5 Grammy’s, a tour, and a Superbowl halftime show out of it, you know? I wanna talk about your country’s Eurovision entries. Am I just not in the right communities?

  • Zero22xx@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    23·
    2 days ago

    I hear you. I could go on about how pop culture is lame etc and not really answer your question but I think, the more the merrier. If I’m not interested in the Lakers, I can ignore it and scroll past it. Easy. It would be nice for people who want to discuss the Lakers to have a place to discuss the Lakers, though.

    Honestly this place is starting to piss me off a little bit sometimes. Because it’s like the users here actually want ‘All’ to just be politics all the time and for there to be no variety to anything. You can talk about missing features from Reddit and think of ideas to make this place a little better and you’ll get responses like “No. Why would anyone want more features? I know that I don’t have to personally use them if I don’t like them but I prefer pretending it’s 1998, so no one can have them. And why would we want more users? I like empty communities with no activity. And then complaining about empty communities with no activity.”

    So I dunno. It’s gonna be interesting to see if this place actually grows or if it just stagnates. I’m right there with you though. I’d be more than happy to see pop and sports and things I’m not really interested in because then there’s a bigger chance of things that I am actually interested in taking off here.

    • Blaze (he/him)@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      12·
      2 days ago

      Honestly this place is starting to piss me off a little bit sometimes.

      What you describe is a vocal minority. It’s pretty obvious that most of the users wouldn’t wind getting the place getting at least twice as active.

      Not sure if I mentioned it to you, but you are aware of [email protected] ? I’m going to start daily threads there to promote non-political communities

      • Zero22xx@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        6·
        2 days ago

        You are a shining light in this place when it comes to promoting growth. So just so we’re clear, because I’ve discussed features and stuff with you a couple of times now, I was not picturing you when I made my comment here. You’re more or less carrying this place on your back as far as guiding and encouraging new users goes. So also thank you, you rock.

        And yup. I’ve seen you promoting this community lol and I’m already subscribed!

    • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.clubEnglish
      8·
      2 days ago

      Politics flood All because that is what most people post and upvote here.

      Building a new community requires yelling into the void for a few months and heavy cross promoting to get any traction.

    • sigmaklimgrindset@sopuli.xyzOP
      1·
      1 day ago

      I hear you. I could go on about how pop culture is lame etc and not really answer your question but I think, the more the merrier. If I’m not interested in the Lakers, I can ignore it and scroll past it. Easy. It would be nice for people who want to discuss the Lakers to have a place to discuss the Lakers, though.

      Thank you for this! I got a few comments being like “Why would you want to, pop culture is vapid” and like…I know T_T, but that doesn’t make ME vapid. Some people go on COD or whatever to blow off steam after work, I just want to go on my non-corporate social media to discuss how the Lakers traded away their future for AD and somehow STILL CAME OUT ON TOP (I have been praying for their downfall my entire life and it continues to not work).

  • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.techEnglish
    713·
    2 days ago

    It’s a bit of a mixed bag, and the real thing is that there are other people who want to talk about it here. Trust me, I run a Taylor Swift community here, and it is an uphill battle - but it’s worth it because there are people who care and enjoy the community.

    If you’re up for it, choose one or two communities and then nurture them. When reddit imploded 2 years ago we came over and we had a ton of people open hundreds of communities and then abandon them, people just opened them left and right and then expected a large audience the next day. Instead expect it to follow the 90-9-1 rule. Out of a hundred people, 90 of them will lurk and never participate. 9 will comment, and one will post. You will need to be the one to post for a while - but it will grow over time.

    Take care of the communities, let them know you’re here to stay, and that it’s a place where you can chat about it. We’re a lot of nerds here, but nerds can also like football, there’s [email protected] that is usually pretty quiet but obviously people subscribed to it.

    And if you’re a swiftie make sure to stop by [email protected]

    • sigmaklimgrindset@sopuli.xyzOP
      21·
      2 days ago

      Hiphopheads community hosted on my home instance, and I had no idea it even existed. . Lemmy is never living down the poor community discoverability allegations.

      Kudos on trying to keep the TS community alive here. I don’t really follow her outside of whatever hits the radio/wider pop culture news, but I remember when I moved to Lemmy your community would hit my front page and I was insanely jealous of everyone kee-keeing together in the comments. Maybe you’re right and I should start shitposting about my hobbies on Lemmy, but dang it’s hard going from a consumer to an active poster in any social media lol.

      • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.techEnglish
        7·
        2 days ago

        It really is, but I’ve found that a surprisingly large amount of people like what I like. I also mod [email protected] and honestly when I post there it’s mostly just screenshots. People then ask questions and it’s a good time, if news drops or a video drops I’ll just paste a link in there, something to get the discussion going. There’s also some other great members who do similar. That’s really all it takes to get a small community off the ground

        • Dil@is.hardlywork.ingEnglish
          1·
          2 days ago

          I need to redload reddit or some frontend so I can steal interesting links from there to post, one day ill be bored and feel like growing some communities

    • wjrii@lemmy.world
      8·
      2 days ago

      I maintain that we need to be funneling engagement into fewer communities. I mod [email protected] but I probably shouldn’t. It should probably be co-located with a 3D printing community, but the name makes anybody doing subtractive or 2D feel excluded.

      In a perfect world, maybe there’d be a “Makers” community that was, sure, 70% 3D printing, but the other 30% wouldn’t feel like they needed to leave and shout into a void, and people into 3D printing would get to see cool shit done with other tools.

      The APIpocalypse resulted in a land grab followed immediately by “Wagons East!” back to Reddit by many of the new mods, leaving us with every named neighborhood we might want, yet feeling Balkanized because you feel like you should respect the communities’ boundaries, but there isn’t anyone there in the “perfect” one and likely won’t be for some time.

      • Blaze (he/him)@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        3·
        2 days ago

        In a perfect world, maybe there’d be a “Makers” community that was, sure, 70% 3D printing, but the other 30% wouldn’t feel like they needed to leave and shout into a void, and people into 3D printing would get to see cool shit done with other tools.

        Have you tried reaching out to the mods of [email protected] ?

        Also, I just created a thread to promote manual hobbies communities on [email protected] , feel free to add yours!

        • wjrii@lemmy.world
          2·
          2 days ago

          Yeah, and it’s certainly not anything wrong that the users and mods did in creating the communities that did gain traction. Just one of the unique challenges of setting up shop here.

          Dedicated comms should be popping off of more general ones like so many Mogwai spores, but things happened differently and it is what it is.

      • wise_pancake@lemmy.ca
        4·
        2 days ago

        I’ve seen a lot of communities shift instances and change names. At least that seems to work here, so I wouldn’t feel too bad about disrespecting the unmoderated ones.

        Obviously the active ones I would stick with

        • wjrii@lemmy.world
          3·
          2 days ago

          Yeah, it’s just an administrative and “marketing” question. You would never want to harm a community that’s doing well. One just sort of wishes that the reddit refugees (myself included) had been a bit more thoughtful in how the Fediverse world work most efficiently at the size it is.

          I like the analogy that it’s a small and slightly isolated town, but one where people are pretty friendly. There’s plenty of people to talk to, but the only issue is, say, if you wanna talk sports you may need to find the couple of folks at the coffee shop who actually like sports and hang out with them whether they’re talking about your favorite team or not. There’s the Linux factory in town, though, and most of us have at least a passing interest in the goings-on there. 🤣

    • felixwhynot@lemmy.world
      4·
      2 days ago

      Is there a “pop culture” comm somewhere? Something more specific than like, “usa” and more general than e.g. hiphopheads?

  • Elle@lemmy.world
    36·
    2 days ago

    I’m of multiple minds on it, but the short of it is, I don’t feel out of the pop culture loop, I know I’m out of it being around here.

    On one hand I don’t mind that, as I’m frustrated by pop culture essentially being mass market culture. It’s not typically something that arises from people interacting and creating together from shared passions, it’s produced and pushed by big businesses. Nothing novel about this observation or frustration, but it’s a vibe I resonate with.

    On the other I know if ever you want people to shift into a popular culture produced in the alternative manner mentioned, you gotta accept the transitional situation of entertaining the mass market culture alongside what you’re trying to cultivate. It’s too jarring for many to switch over entirely, and frankly there’s not enough contemporary non-commercial culture to keep people’s interest to justify any attempts at a complete switch.

    So in a way, yeah, but also I’m more bummed that it’s so difficult to create an alternative non-commercial pop culture.

    obligatory

    'cause capitalism trying to monopolize everybody’s time and make everyone feel they gotta make everything make money

    • sigmaklimgrindset@sopuli.xyzOP
      2·
      1 day ago

      This comment resonated with me a lot. I think I am in the same boat as you, and one of the reasons I am happy to use Lemmy as my primary method of social media/online engagement/whatever is that I am SO SICK of having algorithms pushing what I should like or be discussing. But also, people who are engaged enough to think like this are sometimes a bit too serious and (sorry to use a potentially dated term) I miss the normies a little bit, lol.

      So in a way, yeah, but also I’m more bummed that it’s so difficult to create an alternative non-commercial pop culture.

      This is so real. Unironically, I miss BBS communities where you had threads/subcategories for whatever niches you had, and then when something big happened it would get pinned to the top and EVERYONE would swarm to it. Discord tries to do that, but it’s remotely not the same.

      …should we go back to BBS?

  • Opinionhaver@feddit.ukEnglish
    9·
    2 days ago

    Personally I’m longing for more discussion about ideas and less about events and definitely less about people.

    • sigmaklimgrindset@sopuli.xyzOP
      2·
      1 day ago

      Would you be interested in my 4 000 word thinkpiece on how Kamala Harris’ campaign co-opting Charli XCX’s Brat Summer is a perfect encapsulation of the how the neoliberal mechanisms in the United States try to use cultural capital to mask their regressive politics? Trump appearing on Joe Rogan, and George Bush’s “drinking a beer with the little guy” will also make appearances.

  • pigeonholedpoetry@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    112·
    2 days ago

    Anything black/“urban” generally gets heavily downvoted on Lemmy. Haven’t figured out why. With all the other heavy virtue signaling you’d think it would also be pushed.

    It’s one of the many things that aggravates me about my experience here. I went back to Reddit after over a year of only spending it here.

    It has gotten better though.

    • explodicle@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      If you block a person or instance, does it also remove their votes from the totals you see? If not, is there any way to do that?

    • sigmaklimgrindset@sopuli.xyzOP
      1·
      1 day ago

      I’ve noticed this too, but I didn’t really want to say anything because I don’t want to get into internet drama. I’m overwhelmed from this post as is lol.

  • dance_ninja@lemmy.world
    5·
    1 day ago

    I think this is a problem with the Fediverse in general.

    Search Kendrick Lamar on BlueSky and it’s filled with people celebrating it, breaking down different aspects of the show, and making memes. Search the same on Mastodon and you get news articles about the show and the occasional personal post. A majority of the posts have 0 engagement on most of the posts.

  • Allero@lemmy.today
    111·
    2 days ago

    I feel it, but to me it’s kind of positive.

    Like, I can belong to a social group without being bombarded with nonsense that is just noise meant to distract.

    It’s the same kind of liberation and control I felt when switching to Linux (since you mentioned it) - one decision, and the entirety of Windows drama is no longer relevant to me. I’m part of a much smaller, much more concentrated group of real people, in a sort of blissful silence to which I only admit the information and people I find worth my attention.

  • daggermoon@lemmy.world
    11·
    2 days ago

    I made a community for survival horror games because I like them and like talking about it. Build it and they will come. Make a community to talk about things you like and those with similar interests will join.

  • dumples@midwest.socialEnglish
    4·
    1 day ago

    I wonder if there should be a more generic pop-culture discussion thread to get it started. I know I enjoy a few aspects of pop-culture and would like to discuss. If you start it people will join

    • sigmaklimgrindset@sopuli.xyzOP
      3·
      1 day ago

      This is what I’m kind of thinking too, like a r/popculture chat, but less related to celebrities and more about general non-political happenings. Maybe I’ll message my instance admin and see what hosting something like that entails.

  • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
    16·
    2 days ago

    I mean, post the content and people will come? I think a lot of people would have commented on these things if they saw the thread

    • sigmaklimgrindset@sopuli.xyzOP
      15·
      2 days ago

      This is true, but 1) It’s hard going from a passive consumer of a community to a facilitator of discussions (I have anxiety issues lol) but also 2) It’s hard to even know/find if there’s a community TO post in, you know?

      Maybe I’m just a Lemmy noob after almost two years here, but I do find community discoverability harder here, and there’s always discussions of fractionating communities even further. I don’t want to risk creating a new community, take up server space that my instance host generously provides, and then find out it was redundant.