I love how these beauties look like some combination of a reverse satellite dish with Scavenger’s Reign / LEO-style flora and fauna.

Awesome; thanks. I don’t post videos very often, but in future I’ll add that step.

Btw, just remembered that Piped and other YT proxy services may work as well.

I don’t understand the age limit at all. #1, nothing is even remotely PG13 here and #2, I personally wasn’t asked to confirm my age. WTH?

Sorry about the USA-only thing. Wish there was a way to spot that ahead of time. FF and Opera browsers both have built-in VPN, if that helps.

The two communities in question are both active, yes. And TBF, one incident of the two is my own darn fault, because I posted what turned out to be an AI-made comic strip. It was actually a really good, topical cartoon, but it simply aped the original one, and I didn’t notice that in my fatigue-state at the time.

Unfortunately, it didn’t help in the slightest when I apologised and explained the above. A bunch of commenters didn’t seem to care in the slightest in their mania to trash anything AI-related, no matter the nuance or context.

Interesting comments.

The second paragraph could be from any game dev POV reading reviews of their game. I think it’s the nature of the beast.

Actually I’d love that. Paying for the product and then reviewing it would be a massive upgrade from what I’m talking about, which is like the opposite-- paying nothing, demonstrating entitlement about the whole thing, and barely commenting. Almost like they believe CC’s are robo-humans posting content because of some internal programming, and don’t need any feedback or appreciation. Hell, a critical or bitchy review would mean someone was paying attention!

I’m also a tourist, as you said, not having a particular community I routinely visit or maintain.

The fact that you took the trouble to thoughtfully write all that suggests to me that you’re not a tourist in this case. And really, tourism itself isn’t bad. Readers and upvoters are always needed, and commenters outside of various obvious situations (like an “AskLemmy” post) are something of a luxury. My complaint(s) is moreso about more toxic situations. I’ll give you an example:

Maybe 6mos ago I created some kind of scratch post that included backstory on the content, some extra research, and included a couple links where people could find more. One of those happened to be a focused, cleaned-up google link that would specifically fetch image content. Some commenter then weighed in with ‘hur, hur, so now we’re including google searches? (as if we didn’t know how to do those already?)’

I replied that the link was handier that it might first appear (for example, some searches can take several tries to perfect), and that I wrote the whole post by hand and didn’t really need that kind of comment. They seemed shocked and offended by my reply, as if it was their gosh-given right to dump on whatever they felt like on, and the convo turned negative. Which I think touches on what you said above.

Politeness for me is part of good netiquette, and I (used to) expect a certain positivity when it comes to the general FV, but I do think there’s a major swath of users here who’ve normalised being obnoxious content-gobblers, essentially. That it just doesn’t occur to them to be any other way, even when an author / maintainer / etc is directly involved in wherever they might be being toxic users.

That said, I think a big part of the whole equation stems from the internet being like a giant, diverse box of free content everywhere, which arguably encourages a spoiled, entitled mindset for some. Now I don’t want to overstate all that, and I agree that the state of the world isn’t helping, but I can’t just ignore this stuff, either. So I kvetch…

One thing that may apply is that a certain % of people who have problems behaving on other sites wind up landing here. In a sense, the exact opposites of what this place is built and run for, at least in my hippie-infused vision, haha. Not to mention the whole tankie-Lemmy angle, which of course bleeds in to other areas.

But again, especially as a long-time webforums user, I’m not convinced that the nature of info-feeds brings out the best in a userbase.

What help and support would you like?

Personally, the more effort I put in to a post, the more I’d appreciate any kind of constructive comment, even if on the bland side. More engagement than the current level of tourism, essentially.

Overall, I think the content consumers here would do well to err on the side of gratitude. Just in general I believe it’s a healthy kind of mindset to cultivate, and specifically, it would be a more pleasant kind of energy for the FV software writers, instance runners, volunteer staff and content creators to reap. Maybe not full-blown validation but a bit more sense of appreciation.

Another point is that most of us are sort of refugees from Reddit and other toxic social media sources. Why don’t we naturally have more of a sense of community?

I’ve diversified in raw community output across the past ~4-5 months, but also slowed way down on my own community the past month. A recent, very unpleasant posting experience in another community was sort of the catalyst for altering how I feel about the Fediverse, and I’m not sure what the future holds in terms of my outlook.

I guess the negative experience specifically cemented something that hadn’t bothered me so much before-- that there’s a lot of ‘tourism’ in the FV feeds, and only a certain amount of commenting, especially the more niche a community is. But much more serious (to my mind) is that one can put loads of work in to dozens of posts, and the tourists will evidently barely remember you. A few upvotes as thanks is cool and all, but it’s like you’re not a person to them but a content-creator. Furthermore, if you make an unpopular mistake in terms of content, they’ll turn on you like a pack of merciless wolves. This only happens rarely for me personally, but when it does it really does kill my motivation to contribute. As if most audiences here are a pack of juvenile, vulturous assholes, only wanting to take, rarely being willing to give or remember who fed them.

This would mostly be okay if I was getting paid, in which case generating product for consumption would be a perfectly acceptable concept. But this to me kind of gets to something that has bothered me about the FV for a long time-- that it seems like there’s a shockingly low amount of community spirit and willingness to help and support each other. Unlike Reddit, many of us run in to each other here frequently, and yet that doesn’t seem to be enough. Friendship and true community is pretty common IME on the now out-of-style webforums, but then there was a critical difference there-- the content there isn’t feed-oriented, but activity-oriented. People can keep a topic going for months on a webforums, and yet this feed-style format seems to promote a doom-scrolling, dopamine-oriented hunger to keep moving from topic to topic, rarely lingering. I can’t help but think that brings out some of the mindset and behaviors I was kvetching about above.

So yeah, I don’t know where things lead from here. I’m hanging on for my part, still invested, still posting a trickle to half-a-dozen communities, but something kind of broke for me. Some inherent level of trust, innocence and general goodwill about the ActivityPub and FV projects.

That said, I still greatly admire (and am amazed and a bit mystified by) the high-output posters here. Without them… foof. And of course, we recently lost one such legend (PugJesus) over a major quibble upon how PieFed works. It’s fucking sad, man.

Beyond the Edge of Darkness
There is a World of Sword and Sorcery

Hahahaha… and I can’t help but hear Hal Douglas saying that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGjwZ3XMDes

Okay, but know that there are masses of dead communities out there that won’t help you if you’re looking for a healthy, productive feed.

A major amount of patient curation is needed over time to get you a healthy feed, essentially. Just like Reddit in that sense, but a little more care is needed across the FV.

The amount of new material you mentioned that you see every day (earlier) is absolutely abnormal across a normal, healthy feed.

Massively faulty premise. The point isn’t to burn sugars but to heat them slowly so as to bring about (wait for it) caramelization.

Quite aside from producing sweets, this is one of the most critical chemical reactions in cooking(†), used in any number of popular, classic dishes.

EDIT: (†) and arguably even in human evolution, believe it or not.

Upvote that your whole premise sucks. 🙂

How many active communities would you say are combined in those feeds?

Right on your profile. All I’m seeing are two feeds for you:

• SmallWeb
• Fediverse Videos

On my personal wall I probably get 3-4 dozen new posts per day, so I’m struggling to understand what’s up with yours that you barely see any?

Assuming real topic, complex life would be quick-fried, right?

Your subscribed list looks microscopic, which is weird since you’re a PF user. In the usual signup process you’re asked about your likes, and then you’ll be automatically signed up to dozens of communities based on what you chose.

Did you skip that step? If so, it might be worth signing up again.

Your personal stream looks like nothing but two feeds right now, or am I missing something?

I’m liking a stature of David Bowie for that last open spot. Dressed as Aladdin Sane, let’s say.

This whole strip is set inside a giant mental institution, isn’t it?

Naked Gun - Frank Takes a Walk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUSvEjFM2mY

All hail ditching Reddit, but if that sub’s important enough, there are proxy sites for Instagram, Twitter and others. Might be worth a look to see if there’s one for the evil empire.

That’s debatable, as with all comics. I’ve seen older stuff of his and found it fairly creative, intelligent, and yes, funny. I’ve seen later stuff that I thought pretty much sucked.

Same with Jim Jefferies really, and that guy is easily 2-3x the standup comic Rogan ever was.