Lemmy's "Mildly Interesting" site is more interesting than "Damn, that's interesting."

Comments

• NateNate60@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Lemmy’s “shower thoughts” community is also just a “share an opinion” community. It’s not really similar to Reddit’s r/showerthoughts. The subreddit contains more of the sort of random mundane revelations while everyone on Lemmy is trying to either make a statement or be overly philosophical with their posts.

  It’s not better or worse, just different.

  source

  • sik0fewl@piefed.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Lemmy doesn’t have the population or the moderators to curate those specific communities.

    It is what it is.

    source
  • HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    yeah. our shower thoughts is not comprehensive enough for me because my thoughts have like 12 tangents. maybe we need an ADHDshowerthoughts where we can put all the
    Image
    without clagging up the normal showerthoughts. or maybe a [dammit it’s that one guy (me!) again] tag

    source
• colourlessidea@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  The irony of posting this in showerthoughts

  source
• mystrawberrymind@piefed.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Also Lemmy’s goodoffmychest is just offmychest? I first subscribed thinking it meant talking about wholesome stuff, but the content there is actually not lol

  source
• Bosht@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  The ‘wtf’ subreddit comes to mind. By the time I left that site there were FB moms posting issues with their casserole purchase from Walmart to r/wtf. Was both disheartening and hilarious.

  source

  • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    There’s a weird phenomenon where subs get homogenized and less accurate as they get popular. It’s because posts and comments are ranked by user votes, not accuracy. So as subs get popular, pandering to the average user works more and more.

    I work in professional audio, and there is a lot of misinformation, disinformation, and snake oil in the audiophile world. And I was fairly active on a few audio related subs back when they were niche. But as they grew, the snake oil inevitably ended up at the top of the comments more frequently.

    It’s because someone peddling snake oil can get upvoted by the masses if they make it sound believable, and stroke the average reader’s ego just a little bit. If a situation requires in-depth technical knowledge about how something works, that post likely won’t appeal to the average user on a popular sub. But someone offering snake oil in an easily digestible format will get upvoted just because the masses believe it.

    Let’s say someone posts a troubleshooting question on a technical topic. The problem isn’t something the average user would encounter, and just using surface-level knowledge will get you nowhere. Now let’s say there are two answers: One is correct, but highly technical. It flies over the average user’s head. The other is incorrect, but is presented in a way that the average user feels like they learned something from it. On a niche sub, the first answer (correct) would be upvoted. On a popular sub, the second (incorrect) would be upvoted.

    People want to feel smart, not be smart. If you’re reading a highly technical post that you don’t understand, you don’t feel smart. Because if it’s too technical, it’s all just going right over your head. And that doesn’t feel good. But if someone posts something that seems technical but is really just surface-level stuff that anyone can understand, it will get upvoted by the average user. On a niche sub, there are enough experts to bury the incorrect/surface-level posts. But on a popular sub, those experts get buried by the masses.

    source