Slightly off topic, but is there a Fediverse equivalent of Pinterest? I’m feeling the urge to make some boards. I want all the aesthetics please

OK, so Lemmy (or at least this corner of it) skews pretty hard toward atheism. That doesn’t match a typical IRL sample of people. OP, I think you should try to find some online spaces dedicated to different religions and see what people there have to say.

As for me, I was also non-religious at 25. A close friend, on the other hand, decided to join a church singles group, mostly for the community. I think a lot of people get into a religion for the community aspect. Some religious institutions have special groups for new/questioning people or young adults, and virtually all of them have volunteering groups of some sort.

You can also read books about different religions and see if anything resonates with you. I’ve done a little of this. It didn’t really lead my anywhere, but I’ve met people who got started that way.

You could also explore a particular religion for the heritage aspect. If your grandma was Catholic or your family came from a historically Buddhist part of the world, you could explore that. You might not end up believing in any of it, but at least you’ll know a little more about your heritage.

edit: also, make sure you get perspectives from people who are actually part of the religion when you’re exploring. I was raised Catholic, and it was ridiculous how many silly things the Protestants thought about us. A lot of the criticisms were outdated or straight up inaccurate, which was funny because there were plenty of current things to criticize (hello, scandals in the news?) I’m not trying to scare you away from Catholicism, most priests are normal non-abusers and it works for some people.

I’m puzzled that you think this is a uniquely American phenomenon. But to answer the rest of the question:

Most of these people are probably spending time on their causes that they’d otherwise spend working. Their need/desire for money didn’t suddenly go away.

1. Politicians need campaign money

2. Important figures in tech pretty much always want as much money as possible, whatever else they claim; that’s part of why they do what they do

3. A lot of feminists and social advocates probably need the money for their living expenses

Also, this plays into the norms of book publishing. People sometimes value things they pay for more. I tend to assume free books that aren’t classics are worse books, because in my experience, they often are. Traditional publishers usually won’t allow the book to be free (because they’re not charities, even if the book is about a cause), and self-published works have extremely variable quality.

When you want to be friends with new people

Dang, I was fully expecting all the answers to be like “how would anyone know,” but there actually is a way to research this. Thanks for sharing!

External deadlines really help with motivation. See if you can find a hobby group or writing-related Discord or something like that, something where people create goals for everyone to work toward and keep each other accountable. Like, we’re all sharing a short story by August 17th, or we’re all going to bring something new we’ve written to our next meeting.

As for starting, I feel like I had a ton of different starts as a kid. There were school projects, things I tried with friends, and lots of instances of me trying to make my own versions of things I liked, some of which were written artifacts. I guess I always started with whatever I wanted to write, whether that was a small project or a small part of a large one.

I think you shouldn’t worry about whether your writing project is the right thing to start with. Someone might tell you to start with flash fiction instead of a novel, but that’s no good if you don’t enjoy flash fiction, and flash fiction has its own challenges that might pose more difficulty than writing a scene of a novel. It’s OK if your writing is crap (it probably will be for a long time). It’s OK if it takes forever to get words out. It’s OK if you get stuck. Just write something.

OK, so I replied to a couple threads, but I’ll put my direct answer here. You have to frame it in terms of something they ALREADY care about, not try get them to care about decentralization.

I’m a non-technical Fedi user. I didn’t give a damn about decentralization or FOSS when I first joined. I only vaguely understood what those things even meant. (I do understand and care now, but that came later after I kept seeing people talk about them in Fedi spaces.)

I joined Lemmy because I cared about getting away from the big tech billionaires, basically. I’m sick of AI and don’t want to use Reddit as long as it’s partially owned by Sam Altman. I wasn’t thinking in terms of joining the Fediverse, I was thinking in terms of “Reddit alternative that doesn’t directly support Sam Altman/OpenAI.” The “choose an instance” thing was a barrier, but that faded after I found out I could change it later and decided to just default to the most popular instance for now.

Your non-technical friends probably don’t care about decentralization (yet), but they might care about:

-Fuck AI companies and the big tech billionaires

-Avoiding psychologically manipulative algorithms that make social media addiction more likely

-More human interactions, fewer ads and bots.

etc.

This part is harder, but you’d need to find communities on here they’d be interested in. I joined when I was thinking about deGoogling, and the thriving tech communities on here appealed to me for that reason even though I wasn’t a techie. This might be easier with a different part of the Fediverse, depending on the person’s interests. Lots of creative people of all stripes are on Mastodon, for instance.

Maybe don’t explain the Fediverse. If they dislike AI, just say you use a Reddit alternative that isn’t partially owned by Sam Altman. If they’re concerned about being addicted to Instagram, say you use an Instagram alternative without the addictive algorithms.

Yeah, Lemmy/Fediverse has a very specific brand of niche and very few others. I’m missing those book/media-related communities here too. Fedi needs more niches.

I hope not. Surely we can come up with other ways to help people easily find stuff they like.

Yeah, this is smart. If we get more thriving communities for different interests groups, more people will want to come and stay in the Fediverse. And that naturally lends itself to getting your friends to join, too, because some of them probably share those interests.

I don’t think naming it “Fediverse” would help much. The Fediverse is already a confusing concept for a lot of people, while “better version of Instagram called Pixelfed” is more straightforward. I think the best bet might be to improve the UX on the official Mastodon app, make an official Lemmy app named Lemmy, etc. Have “make an account” default to the largest instance, but have a “choose a different instance” option in smaller font as well, complete with a question mark button that gives people a VERY brief explanation of what an instance is, reassures them that they don’t need to worry about it right now, and mentions that they can change it later. This might be tricky on Lemmy in particular, as the flagship instance from the lead devs is controversial and no longer the most popular one, but might work better on other Fedi platforms.

I kind of agree with the rest of this though. The Fediverse simply lacks most of the celebs, interesting people, and dopamine-providing stuff that mainstream social media has. You’d probably need to do some kind of big PR campaign where celebs talk about moving to Fedi platforms (and have them, you know, actually be on here.) Make a big cultural movement where all the cool kids are moving to Mastodon. I’d like to hope you could bring in some excitement without the kinds of shitty, manipulative algorithms that the big platforms have. But it probably would help to make it somehow easier to find interesting/fun/engaging stuff. You might need a more Reddit-style setup where you select some interests and it points you to related communities or hashtags that are popular on your instance or something.

Yeah, I’m also a not-very-technical user and I feel this. Fedi is great if I have a tech question or very general human question, but I miss seeing thriving online communities around some of my interests. The people organizing cool offline activities I want to participate in simply aren’t on here. My family’s not here, either. All of those are pretty important “social” aspects of social media that the Fediverse lacks.

I’m kinda baffled at the low-userbase-is-a-feature people. If decentralization and FOSS are so inherently wonderful and this kind of social media is so much healthier, wouldn’t you want all your friends and family to benefit from that? Don’t you want society as a whole to leave toxic algorithms behind and stop consolidating tech power in creepy dudes’ hands?

Yeah, the Fediverse needs different ways to promote itself. Very few people give a flying flip about decentralization or open source, but some people might be interested in:

-Giving less power to Sam Altman (partial owner of Reddit), Zuck, Musk et. al

-Not having everything you post directly given to OpenAI for AI training

-Lack of psychologically manipulative algorithms

-Fewer ads

-Different moderation, maybe (if someone has had issues with being threatened on Xitter or having posts auto-removed somewhere or something)

-More human interactions

You’re still not going to get most people to move over based on those things, but you might get more.

I’ll add Côte d’Noir and Old Zealand

Dang, we really should have learned about him in school. Talk about impact, and he even had a memorable name.

political opinions that differ from what?

Yeah, I keep having to remind myself of that. Healthier tech is less convenient and not automatically tailored to our interests/desires by design. More convenience and automatic personalization means more psychological manipulation (at best, into spending more time on the platform so you will see more ads), as well as more data collection and less privacy.

I used to think I was a pragmatic person. Decades later, not so much.

I’m kind of skeptical of pragmatism. Pragmatism too often leads people and businesses to do things that contribute to enshittification, marginalization of various social groups, and other social ills. Every time something gets worse, it’s probably because of someone’s “pragmatic” decision. There’s some value in being pragmatic in a lot of situations, but I think other values have to take precedence. If you put pragmatism first every time, you’re going to end up hurting people and adding to all the BS people live with.

I don’t quite agree. What you say won’t instantly change someone’s mind, but it plants a seed, sometimes even if the person seems to be doubling down hard.

When I’ve changed my mind about important things, it usually wasn’t because of one conversation. It was more like 100 conversations and articles that slowly built up doubt until one more point tipped me over. None of those individual conversations would have seemed to make a difference to the other person, but they ultimately contributed to me changing my mind.