Huh. I didn’t notice that. And I got this image from Pixabay, when I was unable to make an AI image that worked for the meme. At least up until now, Pixabay hasn’t had a bunch of AI images, but maybe this one is. It’s pretty good, though.

Yeah, pretty much. I’ve basically felt like I’ve been loopy on nitrous oxide, since about 2011. That’s been the subjective experience. World just started to go fully whack-a-doodle nuts.

At which point someone starts a new parody sub, with an even more bananas-ass name that nobody understands, because the ultra-mega-meta coded references it makes are, like, six permutations deep. And the whole cycle begins again.

This sorta reminds me of a dumb joke I could never make into any actual, concise, cogent meme format, so I’ll just describe it, here:

I think all the members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers got raped in a Gap store, way back in the day. And now they won’t go back to any clothing store, in the same way that Susan Sarandon’s character from Thelma & Louise won’t go through Texas. And that’s why they’re semi-naked, basically all the time.

Like, someone suggests they go and get some clothing, and they’re all like “NOOO! I WON’T GO BACK THERE! YOU CAN’T MAKE ME GO BACK THERE!”

I think you can see why I could never fit this into a meme. It’s more of a dramatically politically incorrect sketch comedy premise that nobody would ever want to do.

I don’t intend to participate, either way. I just think the impenetrable in-joke meta-culture of the subreddits in question has gotten WAY TOO STUPID.

I don’t think you’ve seen what I’m talking about. It’s fucking weird.

Yeah, but on rocket fuel and crack cocaine. People getting way too fart-sniffing with their own sarcasm and double-reverse trolling was always a problem. That shit has now been extra confounded and complexified by the sheer DENSITY of meme and shitpost culture, over there.

If you look away for a couple of weeks, you might as well have been in a coma for ten years. Nothing makes sense, even the comments on every post are dense and packed with in-jokes and sub-memes, and whole new communities are created every fucking day, just to delve further into the meta-meme-ification.

If old age was the only thing people ever died of, you really would have zinged me, there.

But alas, sweet summer child, none of us are guaranteed perfect health and good conditions, until we’re 100. And, as I’ve been trying to make clear, dying is just the most extreme reason that someone might stop frequenting a platform.

If the 9.5 per 1000 annual death rate is enough to make any impact on the population of these communities, what about other stuff? What if there are some days when the servers don’t work right, and some people just drift away because of that? What if another competing platform shows up and splits the community?

Again: a rough average of 2k per community is simply too small. It’s not enough to be safe, for the future. Remember that 20 or 30 thousand concurrent users is just barely sniffing the upper levels of what is considered a small subreddit, back over on Reddit.

It’s just ASTONISHING to me that I’m having to make this basic point, over and over and over and over again. Two thousand people can almost be crammed into a couple of bigass airplanes. WHY CAN’T YOU JUST SAY “yeah, I guess we could use a few more people.”

Why is that so fucking hard for some of you fuckers? I’m about to lose my shit, with this fucking conversation.

You’re just being obstinate, like several other people in this thread. I’m saying that there aren’t currently enough users to weather any kind of big problem, like an extended server outage, or anything like that.

It’s like if you’re supporting a family of four, and you consistently run all the way out of money, every month, with somewhere between twenty bucks and negative three dollars left in your bank account. And your spouse says to you “hey, we’re in major trouble, here. We need to start growing some savings, or else we’re eventually going to run into medical expenses or repair bills that will completely destroy us.” Annnnd you would apparently respond with something like “SHUT UP, DUMBASS. WE HAVE EXACTLY AS MUCH MONEY AS WE NEED, EVERY MONTH.”

I don’t pretend to know any kind of exact number, in terms of how many average daily users this platform needs, in order to be safe from future erosion. But it’s more than a couple thousand. I think that’s safe to say. Mid-sized Reddit communities have about 40,000 concurrent users, at any given time.

I just don’t think I’m being as unreasonable as you think I’m being, when I say the Fediverse/Lemmy needs to get at least somewhat bigger.

Meh. Probably.

BECAUSE 2K USERS PER SUB-VERSE, PER DAY IS NOT EVEN ENOUGH TO BE SAFE FROM THE ATTRITION OF NATURAL DEATH RATES, AMONG THE USERS.

Some of you guys really do not have even a smidgen of understanding, about how small the Lemmy/Fediverse platform is. More people probably get banned from Txitter/X every hour than the total number of users, in the whole history of this platform.

It’s not sustainable. It has to grow some more, or else it will die. You’re just being obstinate. It’s like if you have 12 dollars in your bank account, and your family is like “we’re going to starve, at this rate,” and you’d be like “HOW SO? WE HAVE 12 DOLLARS, DUMBASS.”

Well, if someone breaks their leg in a freak accident, BOOM, there goes your entire future.

Now, plenty of people are broke without it being their fault. And I’m not saying it’s anyone’s fault that the Fediverse/Lemmy is currently too small to guarantee its survival…but that’s the fact. It’s too small to be safe. It’s INCREDIBLE that I am having to patiently explain this obvious shit to so many angry people.

EDIT: to be fair, I actually have every confidence that the Fediverse/Lemmy WILL show an increase in growth, and will probably survive, at least for several upcoming years. But some of y’all are like “NUUUUU, I THINK IT SHOULD STAY SMALL, THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT.” Nah, man. It can’t stay this small. It’s not sustainable for it to stay this small.

What part of “brace yourselves” are some of y’all not getting?

I am literally acknowledging that it’s not an unalloyed benefit that’s on the horizon, here.

But I also am not in control of what Reddit is about to do.

(edit: but just like with Winter/war coming, in GoT, you can also benefit from a crazy-ass situation)

Also, she was rubbing her ass and crotch on a foam “Go Team” finger, as if everyone was going to universally agree that was sultry and spicy. And you could tell she was just SO SHOCKED, when everyone was like “eeeew, what the fuck? Who even does that? And that’s Alan Thicke’s son? He’s supposed to be famous, or something?”

Then, when people were like “yo, isn’t your long-term boyfriend kinda being unnecessarily humiliated on a massive and painful level,” she had the gall to be like “YEAH, GIRL POWER! I’M MORE IMPORTANT THAN GRACE HOPPER AND SUSAN B. ANTHONY, ROLLED INTO ONE PERSON!”

And, through the whole era, she also managed to invent several faces more annoying than the duckface. Again, with an attending attitude of apparently pure pride.

Of course, according to some of the people in this thread, I’m a corpo-apologist, because I think the Lemmy/Fediverse has to grow beyond a level of about 2k users per day, per community, or else it will eventually die.

Face fucking palm.

You think you’re winning the argument, because you are denying such basic facts that it’s essentially impossible for me to prove them.

If this community had, say, 10,000 people active per day, I would not feel the frustration that I’m feeling. But I just can’t believe you’re truly being intellectually honest.

Please try to be honest with me, and try to give me an explanation for your own belief: without any growth to replace users who leave, do you REALLY believe that 1.8 thousand people per day will not ebb away to 1,500 in six months, 1,100 in a year, 800 a while after that, etc?

You think people here are made of some kind of different stuff than regular people? We’ve lucked into a group of hyper-loyal, saintly humans, who will 100 percent commit to a community forever, regardless of whether it provides them with the experience they expected?

Why should we expect that? Why am I being such an asshole, for simply assuming that we’ve got normal humans, here?

HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO SAY THIS???

IF. YOU. COME. TO. THIS. PLATFORM. AND. THERE. HAVEN’T. BEEN. ANY. POSTS. FOR. WEEKS.

YOU. WILL. LEAVE.

That is a fact. if you deny it, you are simply insane. We do not currently have enough people to avoid a situation where there can suddenly be days/weeks of time with no new posts, and certainly no good ones.

If that happens, the community will die. It’s like I’m saying “if you let go of a bowling ball in Earth’s gravity, it will hit the floor,” and you’re like “BUT PROVE IT! HOW DO YOU KNOOOOOW THAT’LL HAPPEN???”

It’s bloody goddamned obvious. This community is BEYOND TEENY TINY SMALL, right now. This SubLemmy has 1.8 thousand people active per day. That’s 75 per hour. You can fit that many people into a mid-sized bus. IT’S NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE TO GUARANTEE CONTINUED EXISTENCE.

Scream all you want, you’ll never make me incorrect about this.

I just did. Allow me to repeat it:

If you come in here in about a year’s time, and there haven’t been any new posts in three weeks, you WILL leave the platform, too.

You won’t intend to. You won’t do it out of spite. You’ll just keep checking for new posts, less and less frequently, until you eventually give up.

Growth is THE ONLY WAY to prevent that situation.

THESE ARE FACTS. THEY ARE NOT OPTIONAL.

EDIT: Also, I specifically said that the growth didn’t need to be infinite. But yeah, you go ahead and claim that I said that. Go ahead and just blatantly lie about what I said. Great intellectual honesty, right there.

I’m sorry, but I’m simply correct about this. If you come in here in about a year’s time, and there haven’t been any new posts in three weeks, you WILL leave the platform, too.

You won’t intend to. You won’t do it out of spite. You’ll just keep checking for new posts, less and less frequently, until you eventually give up.

Growth is THE ONLY WAY to prevent that situation. Does that mean Lemmy has to “go corporate” and start monetizing everything? No. Does that mean Lemmy has to become as huge as Reddit? No. I don’t want that. I don’t want this place to become so big that it inevitably repeats all the mistakes that Reddit made, over the years.

But the Lemmy/Fediverse platform absolutely does have to grow larger than this, in order to become a permanent, secure thing.

More users = more lifetime, for the platform. At the current level, I estimate that this platform will last about two years. Maybe three. Less, if some kind of significant problem occurs.

You’re right that the instant part could be dangerous. That could be the significant problem I just mentioned. But otherwise, Lemmy needs more users, desperately. All internet things have to grow or die. You can wish that wasn’t a fact, but it will remain a fact.

Exactly. Also, good luck searching, bookmarking, filtering, sorting posts, organizing actual communities, etc. The whole methodology of the platform basically disallows all those things.

Lemmy is a replacement for Reddit. That’s straight-up what it is. That’s why we’re here. Even if TwiX hadn’t become evil and insane, because of its insane master, it still wouldn’t be any kind of replacement for Reddit. Especially the NSFW Reddit communities.