this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2026
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I know the word normies may have weird connotations, but I just mean that, regular everyday people.

I've been enjoying Lemmy a lot and even recommended it to a few close friends who are working in tech. But I would like Lemmy to be way bigger, maybe have those makefriends communities like reddit has, be it gaming friends, just for chatting, for voicecalls, etc etc...

But I also wonder, could growing Lemmy indiscriminately be a bad thing? As you relax filters and barriers to entry, yes, more people can come in, but I have a feeling the quality of the people might go down aswell.

Is a clique-like platform what Lemmy is supposed to be like? Or is it supposed to try and absorb as much users as possible and be just a user-managed user-owned reddit alternative with no ads and less censorship?

I believe the answer may lie somewhere in the middle, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on it, as I'm a total newbie on here.

(Also I understand private dms on Lemmy are not secure, but you can keep the idea of the "r4r" community and just drop a matrix or session link in dms, not perfect as the admins can be what username you sent out, but at least it ends there)

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[–] AskewLord@piefed.social 17 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (6 children)

Depends. I wish there were more normal people here myself. Because I'm not an extremist looking to live in a hugbox and I enjoy diversity. I genuinely take joy in learning other people's thoughts and perspectives on topics when they are expressed in a peaceful and thoughtful way. But I'm in a minority.

As for needing to 'grow userbase'. Not really, but if you want more content and more niches you need more users, plain and simple. Most folks here miss there niche communities from reddit.

[–] SlayersFan@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago (5 children)

Agree 100%, but when I mean normies I'm not only referring to people that like football over retro DOS game crt plugins discussion forums.

I mean like people who don't really engage in that much critical thinking in general and just want to hang out without much thought, like yk, reddit people (ofc not all reddit users are like this, but if you ever tried to have any type of argument you know what I'm talking about, if you even need a refresher on your logical falacies for a class, reddit's always got your back)

[–] AskewLord@piefed.social 5 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (4 children)

According to that definition, IMO, lemmy is already overwhelmingly normie.

Whenever I see critical discussion here, it gets harassed, reported, and the thread is locked/removed. Because much of the userbase here is incapable of thinking and reacts with utterly hostility towards anything that isn't part of their far-left dogmatisms about capitalism evil, communism good, etc. Any arguement or evidence that doesn't support that belief is labeled 'fallacy' or 'propaganda'.

[–] SlayersFan@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

That sounds awful, I really hope it's not a "forever thing", Idk where I stand when it comes to politics, but I feel it would be stupid to dismiss an ENTIRE ideology and say "nothing inside of this box labeled capitalism/communism will ever be useful".

I'd like for people to be civil and discuss the virtues of X or Y policies inside an ideology, kinda hate that if you are a leftie you can't be anti abortion.

Like who decided that? I don't like the idea of happy-meal-ideologies where if you subscribe to a particular ideology you are opted in to all that's inside it and its frowned upon for you to deviate from it.

[–] AskewLord@piefed.social 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

people do. human nature is to be tribal and the tribe is formed based on inherited belief structures. it's feelings.

university used to be about learning to think and challenging beliefs, but that's being flushed down the toilet because administrations now want to protect student's feelings above all else. so now a lot of university grads have gone through 4-6 years of academic training without ever thinking critically about themselves or their beliefs, and most of them seem to now come out with much more rigid belief structure than they went in with (radicalized).

[–] SlayersFan@lemmy.world 1 points 40 minutes ago

If I was charging as much as private unis charge per student I'd try my hardest to protect their feelings too lol

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