Truly a pretty terrible place for any kind of social activity.
People here are super self righteous and unwavering in their beliefs, quick to insult others and be generally bitchy, pedantic and quick to dogpile. Worst of all while still usually slightly wrong about a thing, but unwilling to hear it.
It’s basically the worst parts of reddit users where we have boiled it down to the most affluent or socially insecure.
Even if it’s as simple as a question people jump to defend their position with insults rather than answer it cause they get worried the person might be confused and it’s best to just make sure it’s a closed community as quick as possible.
This isn’t an open community it’s a private gated one where everyone jumped the fence and is scared that the wrong person might have come in with them.
Condescending is not welcoming.
Upvoting cause they are your in group isn’t community.
Berating outcasts cause you at least don’t feel like them is still bullying.
The problem with nich communities on Lemmy is that you can browse the entire contents of a community in 10 minutes, and then you’re stuck waiting for more content for days or weeks on end. That’s fine if you’re only interested in asking for advice, or occasionally contributing, but it’s very limiting for someone who wants ongoing discussions about their hobbies or interests.
What are your hobbies or interests? There is probably a community that could use more discussion indeed. I usually recommend moderators of niche communities to set up a weekly thread so that people can discuss things. The best is to have a few users posting daily, but that’s harder to find the most niche the community is (hence why focusing on more generic communities probably makes sense with the current userbase)
I’ve looked for and joined communities for my hobbies and interests. I have my app set up to hide posts after I’ve viewed them. Currently my subscription feed is showing posts from last December, because there’s no new content that I haven’t already interacted with. I always check subscribed first, but then I mosey on over to local or all, since my subscription feed is pretty much dead.
Maybe you can start discussions yourself? A generic “how is everyone doing with our hobby”?