Lemmy suffers from the “alt-tech curse” in that since there is perfectly serviceable, normie friendly tech, for someone to come to the alternative you have to be not so normie.

Gab, Parler, Voat back in the day, Mastodon and Lemmy, bluesky, etc are all part of the same phenomenon of micro-exodi from established sites due to fitting poorly with existing moderation which, given the fact normies still use the sites, means we’re always looking at extremists of some kind.

Whether it’s the tankies on lemmy.ml, or the progs on bluesky, or the tradcons on parler and gab, it’s always some group being told “if you don’t like it here go make your own” and them doing it.

The problem is this makes these environments extremely off-putting to normies as every single motherfucker on each of these platforms has at least a Bachelor’s degree in scaring the hoes.

The reality is, if you want normie content, you’re gonna find it on platforms used by normies.

Lemmy is too niche to have karma farming bots reposting the same shit every hour, so cat videos etc are in short supply, and most of the people who do participate here have scary levels of politics brainrot.