I was just reading this post https://old.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1gmv76n/is_reddit_going_to_remain_the_primary_space_for/ and many barely see the fediverse as an alternative and they seem to have a negative bias towards it. Super ironic when it comes to the self-hosting community. Yes, some instances are problematic, yes, some devs might have had problematic views. But it doesn’t really matter when it’s federated and FOSS. I think it’s clear-cut that the selfhosting community on Lemmy is a perfect alternative to reddit. Why is there such a negative bias?
Older userbase makes this place a lot more useful, outside of politcs and news subs you are dealing with who can provide good information, ie how reddit used to work.
Drama has its place… it is provocative and it gets people going… we need more engagement! We are deff getting there too, meme subs were spamming all 1 year ago, now there is enough threads to keep a reader busy without fluff memes.
I agree with you that both things have their upsides; and frankly, I don’t even think that we should be pandering to the immigration leftover wallowing in Reddit. Growth is good, but growth should never come at the expense of the community that you’re trying to grow.
However I feel like those points help to explain why the “lol lmao” crowds hate this place.