Curious to know, I'd heard "lemming" used in a semi derogatory way, since "a person who unthinkingly joins a mass movement, especially a headlong rush to destruction" is the dictionary definition. It seems to be the first thing to come to mind as to what you'd call a Lemmy user.

This platform certainly is embodying a mass movement to get off of reddit, and I'm definitely all for it! But I can't help but feel this could be one of those baby names that sounded cute and catchy but could be bullied later into life. What are your thoughts?

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[–] achimoze@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I prefer this too. Lemming means a small rodent. It's one thing to be apart of a site with a rodent mascot but another thing to refer to myself as a rodent, lol. No thanks. Not to mention the other derogatory definition of the word. Lemmies is cute and close enough to Lemmy.

Edit: I misread the definition of lemming and thought it was a group of rodents that included rats, but they are different creatures belonging to the same superfamily Muroidea that includes rats, mice, and hamsters. But I still don't know if I want to call myself a Lemming. I've already seen people make fun of those here who call themselves Lemmings when I checked out the instance that was recently defederated from lemmy.world. I think it's a name that could be an easy target for those who want to hate on the Lemmy userbase. Why make it easier for them? It could turn off future users. Although I can feel sorry for the animals that their name has some derogatory definitions like being a synonym for sheeple, if we are to call ourselves Lemmings, we need to come up with our own definition of it that's more positive. Even then I don't know how well that will work.