I highly valued the discovery of niche communities. Like solo ttrpgs as my current hyper fixation. I always lurked on reddit so I hope to be more involved here. And of course memes.

I'm old enough to remember the earlier parts of the internet. I'm talking Prodigy and AOL keywords–the era of "You've Got Mail!" and 14.4k modem speeds. The era of if someone picked up the phone inside the house (the one that was tethered to the wall with a wire) you'd get disconnected and have to go through the logon process again.

At the time, just being able to access anything was a marvel. Then the internet exploded, and in just a couple of years modem speeds were 56k and it was wholly impossible to see it all. Then we saw the rise of one of the first iterations of a link aggregator in a browser tool called StumbleUpon.

I absolutely time-traveled with SU. One click and I was brought to the next quasi-random site that was generally within my predefined interests. This was about 2004-2009.

Then SU stumbled (I can't remember why) and I made my way to reddit. It had done a lot of what SU did, but condensed onto effectively one single page, and the community could vote on whether or not it was "good" and discuss nearly any aspect of the content.

It was that juncture I liked. It was part BBS, part StumbleUpon, and the entirety of the internet conveniently laid out. It didn't try to do too much. At the time, it didn't try to link us together, harvest our data, generate avatars or any of that other goofy shit. It just served all of the internet quickly, and simply.

My oldest reddit account is 11 years old and as reddit grew, I grew with it. I was there for the Chuck Testa memes. I was there for poop knife. I was there for the Coconut. I was there for /u/Hornswaggle rise to fame with 1985 Sweet 1985. That was big deal reddit news at the time.

And I was there for the rise and fall of Alien Blue, from whose ashes rose Apollo. I grew into a heavy mobile user that only third-party apps could keep up with.

I found reddit through the the fall of Digg because I was wandering from the demise of SU. Now it seems I'm cast into the Fediverse.

Solutions to weird and oddly specific problems. If you go looking for a solution to a really weird, seemingly one-off issue with Windows, good luck finding an answer in any Microsoft forum. Put "Reddit" at the end of your search, and you'll find something helpful more often than not.

Also, shitposting. 4Chan and Weekendgunnit levels of shitposting.

I literally just want to shitpost without a phd in Web 3.0, maybe it'll get easier in time though.

Cats and news

Community/togetherness -- Since leaving Reddit, I feel more 'lonely'? Being here definitely scratches the social-itch.
Positivity -- Wholesome people and productive conversations.
Humour -- Some of the comments/posts on Reddit were wonderfully dry and/or edgy. One that made me giggle recently: "Avoid being misgendered at checkout by not paying :)"
News -- Following centrist/neutral subreddits, and r/outoftheloop was great too.
Niche interests -- As said in OP!

I think the only issue we may have is niche interests -- the other points are not contingent on 'size'. Loving what's here so far <3

Definitely want to continue the game threads for NBA/NFL games. It's really fun to have a small community of people you can shit talk with especially when they aren't around in person

Access to some really great knowledge combined with a friendly community .. I think of subreddits like Picopresso and Selfhosting among many others

I'm looking forward to Lemmy becoming a useful DIY or reference tool. I always used to finish Google searches with 'reddit' because someone somewhere will have asked that specific question already.

On top of that I'm going to miss those really supportive subreddits like r/dadforaminute and r/momforaminute. Though, it does seem like a lot of the people who made up subs like that have migrated here, so I'm hopeful!

I'm not sure how all this federated stuff works. I just want to browse absolute rubbish and hope I learn something in the meantime.

News links with mods keeping links relevant and trustworthy sources. Bots summarizing paywalls, discussions, that sort of stuff. /r/animetities basically

Also memes. me_irl

People to talk to about things that annoy my wife lol. Mainly linux stuff.

I learned how to fix so much stuff around the house and picked up ideas for my home automation hobby. And the photos of swimming pools were nice :)

I used reddit for news, socializing, and discussion/debate. along with niche hobbies/interests. I'm not sure how much the fediverse stuff can replace that lol. we'll see.

Definitely number 3. I completely agree that Reddit was great for the niche stuff.

I mean, if not for Reddit, I wouldn't have organised multiple hiking and backpacking trips, sticking up propaganda posters about kayaking.

"A way to burn time that doesn't feel like a digital sugar rush" - well said, that was definitely one of the main reasons I used it habitually. In my experience, reddit had a fairly unique balance of being able to facilitate both serious and silly content.

Plenty of camaraderie, suggestions and wild discussions on /r/HPFanfiction

I was mostly a lurker on reddit for a long time but got into some of the hobby subreddits and support groups over covid and started talking more. I stopped doomscrooling so much and focused more on the communities in the individual subs. So now I am here and looking to do the same. Support and community are what I am looking for I guess. And to share my interests with others.

To find people with shared interest, to find niches.

And the community of the random thread r/chile

And the autism subs tbh.

The various subs that can help you get your life in order, in the way you chose. personalfinance and/or financialindependence, whatever diet sub to help you learn how to eat better and get recipes that fit the diet, exercise subs like weightlifting or some others. Things like that can have a huge impact not just from the community encouragement, but the knowledge that they include in the sidebar, etc.

1. Get a view of world news that does not fit into traditional spheres and biases from unanticipated (by me) categories of importance.
2. Keep track of hobby-like subs (Magazines here?)
3. Community, which drives the above two.

When I first migrated from Digg I was astounded by how in a thread on some obscure topic you would find super informed nerds and enthusiasts who could wax poetic on the topic at hand. I learned so much! As the internet matured, and Reddit as well, those interactions seemed to become more rare and argument began to drive the conversation. Statements would be made and a slew of randos would plunge the depths of the interwebz to contradict, one up, or expand on that statement. I have to admit I learned a lot from this as well and did my fair share of educating myself and others. I was hoping to find that impassioned community of yesteryear where the topics were the inspiration, not the karma farming and argument. My experience to this point is that that is happening here because many of us have migrated and need/want to build these communities to the ideals asked about in this post! I am excited about the federated platform and the FOSS mentality and think it will draw those people I mentioned formerly.

Well, the first thing I'd wanna replicate is just the sort of "town square" area. More or less free form discussion places, something like AskReddit or IAMA or just something that encourages people to ask questions and talk together. Everything else tends to fall out from there, in my experience.

Getting new ideas for some hobby's, like 3d printing, photography etc. Also helping people that are new to those when they have issues. Also memes and funny catvideos.

Discussions on varied topics and community insights on things are what I really love(d) about Reddit.

#3

The random really cool people that show up in the comments

Most Google search involves the "Reddit" keyword, it's really getting in my way now that most subs are private! One of the reasons why I don't like the "delete all your own comments" thing people seem to be doing