this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2025
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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?

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Gonna be honest, pop culture is the thing about Reddit I miss the least. I couldn't care less what drama some rich people are getting into, unless that drama is their yachts being sunk by killer whales.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Nah I'm with you on this. I have this weird set of interests that align me well with Lemmy, but also as a dirtbag couch goblin who binges reality TV like my life depends on it. I feel like Lemmy can get a little uh... holier than thou about it and I don't feel like I have any trashy echo chambers anymore. I miss Instagram reality and all the snark subs tbh.

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[–] [email protected] 82 points 3 days ago (11 children)

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]

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Thank you so much for running the Taylor Swift & popheads community here!! It was one of your other comments somewhere that really inspired me start posting and commenting around the fediverse. It does take work to cultivate a community, which I have taken for granted being just a lurker in reddit/in general.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Thanks! Yeah it does take quite a bit, patience is the key. Originally I was excited that 200 people followed, but then learning that it means only a handful of comments will pop each time. It goes constantly though, and that always feels great!

[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 days ago (6 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

'there is no posts related to my interests' 'go to domains specific to your interests!' domain specific to your interests: last post is a reddit screenshot from 3 months ago, 0 comments

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago

That's one of the reasons I use Lemmy. I see links to major news stories, those I'm likely to care about and nothing else news related. I think there are celebrity news and sports communities. I'd also be surprised if there isn't a Eurovision community out there. But if the things you've described are "pop culture" then seemingly I have no interest in it.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 days ago (2 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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).

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Even when I was still on Reddit, I needed a friend to explain to me that Funko Pops don't do anything - you just have them.

So really I think it's just me.

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 days ago (3 children)

OP, this is a pop culture reference. Your lemmy account will now be revoked. 🔫 Hand it over

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago

Yes and I love it.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago
[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago

No. I make my own pop culture.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 3 days ago

I’ve been way out of pop culture loop even before I started using Lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 days ago (4 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago

Got to be the change brother. Start posting stuff. I'll read it.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago

Go on asklemmy and ask what people think of the situation. Go on casualconversation and talk about your opinions.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 days ago

Yes and I love it

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago

You can always create posts in appropriate communities to start conversations on topics you're interested in. Be the change you wish to see in the world.

I don't care much for most pop culture stuff and get enough by happenstance from other sources/people.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago

DAE died a violent death on reddit years ago. I was there. I remember the backlash.

Let's not revive it here. This place is special.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Ooooh, we do need a Eurovision community if we don't have one already.

Edit: there's one at [email protected]. I'll see you there!

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

I'm going to say it: lemmy is too white

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Only when it comes to hearing about new games. For all the people I see in random non-game threads that mention games or get game references, there's next to no activity in the game-related communities.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago (4 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 days ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Not really. I find that most "pop culture" still gets talked about, it just doesn't get pushed into everyone's face by an algorithm.

If I drift away from my subscribed feed and look at the all feed, it doesn't take long for something or another about pop culture to pop up. And then if I'm interested, I go to the particular community that's talking about it and subscribe. The more I do that, the more interests start to show up in my subscribed feed.

For the most part, these communities all exist, there's just no algorithm saying "hey...you'll probably like this". And so you have to find them yourself.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 days ago (7 children)

DAE is what? I know, but i need reminding.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 days ago (3 children)

"Does anyone else" sorry, I was trying to keep the title snappy

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