I miss traditional message boards. No karma, no sorting algorithms, you just get new topics on top and replies are sorted oldest to newest.
You can have forum threads that go on for decades, but Lemmy’s default sorting system quickly sweeps older content away. I’m aware you can mimic the forum format by selecting the “chat” option in a thread and sorting by old, and you can sort posts by “latest comment” which replicates the old-school forum experience pretty well, but nobody does it that way, so the community behaves in the manner facilitated by the default sorting algorithm that prioritizes new content over old but still relevant content.
I also notice that I don’t pay attention to usernames on Lemmy (or Reddit back when I was on it). They’re just disembodied thoughts floating through the ether. On message boards, I get to know specific users, their personalities and preferences and ups and downs. I notice when certain users don’t post for a while and miss them if they’re gone for too long.
Lmao way to turn that on me, good one. I’m literally talking about the people who can’t just scroll past or block something without needing to act like it was forced on them. The people who campaign to cancel Netflix over 1 show out of 1000s that they could’ve just scrolled past. The people who live in an era where you can follow exactly what you want online, and watch and listen to exactly what you want on streaming, but still complain about having the wOkE aGeNdA shoved down their throats because they’re incapable of wiping their asses (or they think it’s gay).
Trust me, I’m not the one with the problem of inserting my business everywhere that I don’t belong. I’m not going anywhere near incel forums, or manosphere support groups, or to tell people how fucking stupid their hobbies are. And knowing these people, I’d get banned quickly if I did because they’re the biggest pearl clutchers of all. This problem is entirely one sided and caused by certain types of people who are more emboldened than ever these days.