Asking this to the general audience because that’s a comment I’ve seen quite a lot recently.
So, let’s start with a list of communities that could be interesting to a wide audience, sorted by monthly active users (MAU), the most active being on top.
- !moviesandtv@lemmy.film (1.6k MAU)
- !casualconversation@lemmy.world (521 MAU)
- !personalfinance@lemmy.ml (453 MAU)
- !fiction@literature.cafe (140 MAU)
- !gardening@thegarden.land (133 MAU)
- !relationship_advice@lemmy.world (130 MAU)
- !recipes@lemmy.world (69 MAU)
- !parenting@lemmy.world (56 MAU)
- !skincareaddiction@sh.itjust.works (31 MAU)
- !longreads@sh.itjust.works (24 MAU)
- !malefashionadvice@lemmy.world (12 MAU)
- !femalefashionadvice@lemmy.world (9 MAU)
Those numbers may seem low, but remember that those are active users, who at least commented or posted in the last month. So even if you are afraid to be shouting to the abyss, there will be other people next to you to keep the ball rolling.
Also, please note that those communities are suffering from the current tedious discoverability of new content on Lemmy. I’m hoping to make them more popular with this post, as I’m sure those are topics that can interest a lot of people.
Another thing to keep in mind is that Lemmy cannot replace 18 years of content creation overnight. It will take time for those communities to grow to the same level of content and activity than there counterpart, but with a bit of time, we’ll get there.
In addition, there are a few places to look out for new communities.
The first place to look for is https://lemmyverse.net, but Lemmy.world communities are currently excluded for some reason (https://github.com/tgxn/lemmy-explorer/issues/139).
A second place is this community: !newcommunities@lemmy.world. People tend to promote their communities there, you can also ask for a community you are looking for.
Finally, !trendingcommunities@feddit.nl provides a daily report of communities becoming popular.
The biggest problem people run into is a lack of thier niche communities here, and that’s mostly due to a lack of overall numbers. Reddit, while a festering hellhole, still has that. I’d be thrilled to see that change one day, but it’s definitely gonna be a while.
another issue is: most of the people want to consume, very few contribute and most “contribution” is a link-posting, even without a personal opinion for it.
Ironically, right now Lemmy is better for contributors than lurkers. The limited amount of content means than any post/comment that I submit is more likely to be seen and get engagement. I already get more comment replies on Lemmy than I usually did on Reddit.
your profile says that you created 1 post. And this is just a link post.
Yep I mostly comment. Back on Reddit I used to almost never post because most posts would get buried in New. I might post more here since there is a need of content.
commenting is a a contribution. but posting is more important, at least so far - no posts -> nothing to comment.
I’m optimistic that more niche stuff will come with time
Lemmy has been growing alot lately, so there’s certainly reason to have optimism. It’s really just a numbers game to get more niche communities here.
Reddit’s jumped the shark and will continue Tod slowly bleed users until everything of value’s over here
Agreed, the top suggestion here is a community I’ve been subscribed to from day 1 and it’s always felt dead. Lemmy is good for specific tech niches but outside of that it feels like the same generic meme stream that /r/all is. Also a red flag that nearly all of the communities listed here are attempts to recreate a reddit niche 1:1 which obviously was never going to work as long as the main reddit version is still around
Unfortunately I don’t think recommending dead communities with 9 MAUs and 1 post/month is the solution to building up Lemmy’s userbase but I respect the attempt