There is a huge emphasis I see on just growing community size and creating an alternative to reddit.
Back in the day we used to hang out in irc chats with 5-10 active users or forums with few thousand users max. I made friends there I visted across countries. Years after Id log in and people would ask how you’ve been.
I had a reddit account for over 10 years and I dont think a single person would recognize my username. Its always felt like people aren’t talking to you but trying to appeal to the whole audience for points. Reddit exploits our psychology for attention but nothing humane is gained there. The super massive “community” ends up as a void where 99% of posts go completely unseen and any discussions suffer heavily from mod mentalities.
If this a place where even just ten people call home but feel good doing so, that is more good than a million being miserable. Maybe the best alternative is not to be reddit altogether.
Besides, good things have a natural tendency to spread, we don’t need to focus on it.
I can see what you’re saying and I do agree on some level. However one of the things I liked most about Reddit was how pseudo-anonymous it was.
There was too many people to know who everyone was, so I feel like it mitigated that unwelcoming cliquey-ness that you tend to get in the kind of smaller communities you tend to see on discord. It felt as if everyone equal, whether they had just joined a community or been furniture for a decade.
Entirely willing to suggest this might just be my own perspective and not a very common one
I believe it just felt more pseudo anonymous because of how lively discussions can get, but nothing stops you from going back through peoples accounts and getting a feel for them. If you’d like to post something completely anonymously here you arguably have even more choice since you could set up accounts on entirely different instances with an entirely new name and nobody would know who you are. So I think it’s a mentality problem and not exactly a technical thing. You can be anonymous here too. :)