I showed up last year in the aftermath of reddit's APIgate. I'm a longtime reddit user, for better or worse. Though this isn't my first foray with reddit alternatives. I've tried Imzy, Voat (briefly; very briefly), and Tildes. The last of which is still doing quite well, though it's a bit different from reddit and even Lemmy, in terms of overall culture and activity.

Admittedly, I am still on reddit, though my activity is reduced. I stopped using it almost entirely from like June through October, but then slowly made my way back. But instead of spending all my time on reddit as before, I spend my time between Lemmy, Tildes, Mastodon, and reddit. So I think that's still a win in my book. I don't mind using multiple sites for information and entertainment; it's kinda like what people did in the earlier days of the Internet. Further, I'm not really anti-centralized platforms. I still have a FB account. I scroll Instagram daily. I use Discord. I use YouTube. I use what gives me value.

Anyway, I landed on Beehaw after briefly looking at other instances and looking at Beehaw's "philosophy," which seemed attractive. Overall, Lemmy is not the promised land; There are issues I see with the platform, the userbase, and even with the current state of federation. But no site or platform is perfect. Every platform has upsides and downsides. I get what I want out of it and try to "give back" what I can.