New midwest.social users look here

From Chicago. I made the plunge to Mastodon (and here) after the Reddit shenanigans and just seeing the repeated bad-faith policies by Twitter. I have been using redirector and libredirect for the last month or two to actively decide who I give my data to just as a fun experiment into best practices.

I think it's slowly starting to be clear that this type of setup will be the way forward for the more tech-savvy, privacy-focused users, and hopefully/eventually it hits the mainstream as well, but otherwise, it's just self-selecting into the type of people I want to be around, which will probably be better for my mental health anyways.

I'm into cycling, trading, sci-fi and FOSS. Currently reading The Expanse and taking a sabbatical year from work

Edit: Just want to encourage people to engage w/ and create content over the next few weeks. Activity and friendly faces are probably the most determining factor in whether someone becomes an active user or just browses for a few minutes

Sup nerds. I'm Miah, I'm from Western Michigan. I'm a UNIX/Linux nerd, Right to Repair advocate, and transgender woman. I've been working on our cars by myself and would love to make some car nerd friends. My wife and I have 24 chickens, and a budding garden.

trans, married, AND you have 24 chickens? you’re winning at life
- I'm certainly trying =)
Hi Miah! What did you think of this year's pride events? Ottawa County had some really strong turnouts despite the commission being the worst.
Welcome Miah!

Hey all, I live in Wisconsin and am exploring moving over from Mastodon because I like the Reddit-style interface better than Twitter-style. Like probably most here, I'm a tech nerd who is forever trying to get people away from the centralized internet.

I find that Mastodon and Lemmy serve different purposes. I like both.
Welcome!
👋

Another former reddit user from the Twin Cities here. Enjoying learning about lemmy so far, still trying to figure out how it works! Big fan of disc golf, board games, books, and video games.

Thanks for your work @seahorse. I'm pumped to talk regional sports again. Big Ten, NFC North, NBA Central. Adios Reddit.

Hi, I'm in Central Illinois. Reddit doesn't let me make accounts anymore... they want email addresses and I want privacy.

Fellow Illinoisan (I'm from Northern)! 'Glad you're here.
Welcome aboard o/

Hello! Quad Citizen reporting in, pretty active in the /r/Iowa and /r/QuadCities subreddits and poking around to see who's popped up in Lemmy.

MOST of our buildings are solid.

Yet another reddit refugee, but the only thing I will miss is the niche animal husbandry subreddits.

My main interests are critter genetics & habitat management, and a lot of husbandry n enrichment on the side. Always been a bit of a pain to be lefty & interested in livestock, most of the old forums such as they still exist are full of people that are pretty aggressive in their disapproval of my sort. But maybe I'll find a niche eventually!

I do other science n tech reading and cruise some of the hobby stuff (carpentry, mini terrain, jewelry making... I like a little bit of a lot of things) but don't usually post as much as lurk those areas.

Howdy! I'm Evan, I'm from STL, and recently graduated from S&T with a BS in CS, going back for an MS. I'm a linguist, software engineer, musician, FOSS contributor, and Fediverse enthusiast. I build computers, run servers, write music, and get angry at the US/MO on the daily.

P.S.: call me scum, because I've only ever used Reddit via their official app, but at least I jumped ship!

Minnesotan and architectural designer here. I'm giving lemmy a try after deciding to leave that other site, and I feel like this midwest instance has the right vibe for me. Looking forward to spending all my time here instead of helping a faceless company make more money on their IPO!

Hi there. Iowan leftist fleeing the mainstream platforms to help my mental health. Feeling disillusioned with national political action and wanting to focus my attention locally. I'm and avid gardener, war-gamer/mini painter, and forever D&D GM.

Welcome!

Hey all! Lifelong Midwesterner and current Chicagoan. Refugee from r/Chicago and Reddit user of 11 years. I love baking, gardening, and currently engrossed in the new Zelda.

Ohioan and electrical engineer here. Not exactly a refugee from reddit, since mostly all I did there was lurk, but excited to be here and distributed anything makes an engineer happy. At least this engineer.

From a Wisconsin Exurb of the Twin Cities. I am an astronomer and instrumentation physicist, most of my day job is debugging software and electronics. But sometimes it is looking at galaxies and exoplanets. I am getting back into running after an injury and am currently reading about political economics.

Good morning, midwestern Lemmites! Actually a Hexbear refugee, I got banned when they found out I organize with Trotskyists. Don't worry though, my IRL organizing work creates enough personal irritation that I don't need to harass people who disagree with me in order to get it. I'm just here cuz its a leftish space of localish people, who post memes and stories I can comment on. I like Music, art, videogames, tech, books (history, social theory, sci fi)...well I actually have too many hobbies and interests to list. Thanks for letting me in your little instance!

I joined a while back (after the rise of Mastodon following some edgelord's purchase of Twitter, although I had heard about both that and Lemmy long before), and I still probably won't be active on Lemmy until Reddit dies off; I joined this instance because it's the most relevant (nothing akin to Mathstodon, where I have the same username) and I was advised against just flocking to the main one.

I was most active on /r/learnmath and /r/Buttcoin and I might go to refugee communities related to both, and to things like /r/learnjavascript (where I was active until a few years ago, also as an answerer of questions) and /r/badmathematics.

Hi everyone. I showed up here because I saw Seahorse at the Akron pride fest with his awesome flag, told some of my likeminded friends about it, and they found his post. I showed up to applaud him, and decided to just stick around.

I used to use Reddit, with a very carefully curated list of subreddits, which I used replace my Twitter constant stimulation requirement. I had to ditch Reddit the day they killed Apollo and won’t be returning unless they reverse that decision.

I’m happy to have found this place, it’s nice.

I’m from Akron Ohio, work (remotely) in tech (job based in San Francisco), and do not like cops, landlords, or the ruling class really.

I feel like I’d fit in here pretty well.

Hey y’all I’m Josh and I’m from Iowa but go to school for Music in SoDak. Getting booted off Reddit because I only use Apollo and this seems like a pretty solid alternative. Looking forward to building the communities with y’all!

Upon further investigation of this comment section I may be the only SoDakian in here lol. Surprised SoDakZack hasn’t jumped over from Reddit

Hi, Chicago resident primarily occupied with left-wing politics, board games, biking/public transit, and functional programming :)

Love the regional community server

hello! I'm a non-binary Chicago-based cyclist, film photographer, 3d artist, and open source contributor when I get the time.

slowly getting my bearings out here in the fediverse; like many others I am yet another longtime Reddit refugee. stoked for Sync for Lemmy soon—that'll feel like I've officially switched over.

Hi y'all! I'm from Indiana. Nice to meet you all!

Chicago leftist here! I like to play games, do Mutual Aid when I can, and read a lot of theory. Came over here to find a new community and more opportunities to network with other lefties.

Hi from Topeka, KS! I'm a software engineer who loves games, cooking, and his friends. Thank you seahorse for starting this up!

Hello, I am a lemm.ee refugee. I live in Iowa. I like to game and I am a hobbyist game developer. I have some strong political opinions that I try to express in a constructive way. I will be trying to move my "Open Source Gaming" community over here too. I look forward to interacting with y'all!

Welcome aboard!

Hi there from Madison, WI! I am the developer of Voyager :)

Hey friends! Twin Cities chiming in. Classic story of jumping ship now that reddit has struck the iceberg. Hoping to find new communities here for scratching my artistic itches. I'm a drummer, DJ, designer, illustrator, who dabbles with music production. Let's get weird.

Osiyo (Cherokee) Oy li'one (Tzotzil: I'm here)

SW Kansas here, and my brain has decided to take a back seat to life, so throw in chronic pains, I'm just hunting for a new way to exist. Don't know what I'm doing yet, but I know I'm doing it, heh heh heh...What? I don't know. Do you know? No I do not, but would you like to know? Of course I would. Well tough luck there, pal.

Anyway, before the 'ol thinker decided to call it quits, I used to be quite the nerd. I dabbled in C, assembly, bash (Slackware user, so I better know bash, heh), calc, pari/gp, mathematics (Began aiming for number theory just before the brain gave out), native american languages, sharks, carnivorous plants, ferns, cooking, just to name the easiest.

My name's Tyler. I live in NE Kansas, about an hr from KCK-Proper.

I get really into things quickly and then forget about them just as fast; Usually just enough to break something, get frustrated, and grab something else. My home is a monument to my family's abandoned hobbies.

Hello, 9thSun here. Chicago resident. Boost for Reddit stopped working so I wanted to check out Lemmy. Hella into technologies.

ohio resident here. reddit is not the site i once knew. So I'm joining this party

Hello. I'm a SE Michigander. Dad, Guitarist, bicyclist, humorist, hockey playerist, gamer, outdoor enjoyer. Currently sober after 20-something years of violent un-sobriety, but not in recovery. I used to be a PE teacher, but now I work with robots kind of.

Heyo! Checking in from Denver. Midwest Creds: both sides of my family are from Iowa (Waterloo area), I can name the 4 basic casserole ingredients, and I lived in Chicago as a kid and as an adult. I'm a Christian Reformed preacher's kid who is now an agnostic atheist. I work in data centers doing security and compliance.

Love fly fishing and tie all my own flies. Fish for all species with a fly rod! Read a lot of epic fantasy (Malazan, BrandoSando, WoT). Do a bunch of 3D printing and light design work, follow the maker scene and do small electronics. Not a programmer but learning Python and Rust. Play board games and love me some Factorio and 4X games.

Anti-capitalist, anti-theist, anti-fascist. No gods, no masters. "I've gone so far left I came back around to owning guns!"

Heyyy Denver represent ✊

Really Don't know how to introduce myself as an anon. I guess I live in ohio. Won't say where. I don't really have any other social media, I think it's all kinda a psyop now. Flesh simulator has a good youtube video about how reddit is a giant psyop. So i'm barely online. I don't watch tv, i stay away from chambers of influence. I think Tik Tok purposely pulled a facebook and got Drumpf elected. I am a leftist, F off if you don't like that.

Hi, it's just me, and thanks so much for having me. I had to migrate, I couldn't abide by the sheer onslaught of typical liberal stuff that began coming in avalanches, lately, and I've got a lot of unlearning to do as I continue to properly educate myself.

I was a little confused a while back at a post where a user complained of being banned, but his post was extremely misleading, so I apologize for my confusion. That cleared right up when he showed up in DMs talking about how weird our good host is.

I appreciate your patience and helping me learn. I'm a little slow on the uptake sometimes, so I appreciate directness. I'll get over hurt feelings, if any are caused by it. Thanks again for allowing me.

Was it the post I locked awhile back? Lol.
- Probably. The user was extremely disingenuous, the post showed up in my other feed about a week ago. When I saw the photos in the thread later, I got a clue and the DM was just creepy-cultish. The whole thread ended up being that way. Again, I apologize it took me a minute to catch on.

Howdy! I live in Indiana, reddit exodus member and I'm looking for a new place to call my internet home.

Howdy! I'm Mike and I'm in South West Ohio. Im an Ex Sync user migrating like a lot of others.

One question.... before I go scrub my, ahem.... account on that nameless platform, is there an online banking system that will allow my to transfer my hard earned internet points to another platform? You know, kinda like a rollover from one 401k to another?

Not that I had any huge amount.

Anyway...... OH!!!

Hello, I'm void. Lifelong Michigander; catch me weekly dancing at R1 GLC. Other interests include free software, metal and industrial concerts, bio implants, and fermented foods—both homebrew and vegan goodies.

Hey everyone. I am yet another migrant from reddit hoping for c/kansascity to grow into a full, active community like we once were on reddit.

Hello new friends. Name's Kenai, hailing from Kansas City, Kansas. Lived here most of my life, so I definitely consider myself a midwesterner with midwestern concerns lol the recent sociopolitical atmosphere has led to me wanting to find like-minded folk in my general area (similar concerns etc), so here I am. Am in my mid-thirties, technically married but not registered, kind of in that nonbinary blob end of the gender spectrum (he/fae). I have two cats and two dogs (Maine Coon, Orange Himbo(tm), Chihuahua, black Labrador), love animals of all kinds so I'll pet it if it's cute. Used to keep hamsters and educate others on proper hamster care. I am on the ASD spec so I can sound a bit weird sometimes I promise I'm not trying to be rude or abrasive; if I come off that way please let me know and how, so I can try and adjust my internal programming lol

I love video games, mostly witchy games, cozy homey games, fantasy, and Da Sims. Which stole my life for like four years straight. How rude. I'm also a software ... um. ... I make PHP web apps. Not sure how to call that. My life dream is actually to write books, not really for the money, more because books were a huge deal for me growing up and I'd like to be the writer of the book that helps some other kid someday. I'm also an artist, play violin, and speak five languages. Space and science are my jam, and if anyone had bothered to actually teach me maths as a child, I'd probably be working for NASA.

Glad to be here!

Hey Ya'll, 👋 I'm part of the adopted Midwest down here in Kentucky. My resume includes Euchre, the Boundary waters, fishing, and an old pair of boots. I work as a freight broker and I'm currently on the front lines for all the tariffs and logistics issues going on. It's been some rough sledding. Glad to have a community outside of purview to engage with. And yup, Bluegrass rules.

You a Sturgill Simpson fan?
- I am now. Great voice, and sound, will have to queue some up this week. I'm almost certain he gets radio time on our public radio channel, name rings a bell.

Hi there! I'm in Madison and am pretty active on the subreddit. I'm making my way over here slowly but surely. I am in grad school for urban planning. I enjoy talking and debating politics and philosophy, and am active on the Social Democracy subreddit.

Howdy folks - comrade here in Northern Chicago. New to Lemmy so if I do something wrong I'm sorry bout that.

I'm fairly involved in mutual aid, so if you feel like you need some help with getting started please feel free to message me. I can recommend groups in chi / cinci or help research groups in your area.

As Seahorse aptly mentions in the first pinned post - now is the time for organizing! As long as we don't give into despair we got this!

Hello! Crushed by the Reddit/Apollo debacle and looking for something less…corporate. Glad I found Lemmy!

I live in central Iowa and am a techno nerd - I like self hosting, docker, home labbin’, home automation, and home AV.

Hi!

Ohioan here... I too am a recent reddit refugee.... anyone else having digg deja vu?...

Likes: Nerdy things, Video Games, Animals, Ohio sports teams, Music, Traveling

Been on Mastodon for a few months (suck it twitter) and with Reddit's recent money grab figured I'd check out other parts of the fediverse.

Hello! I'm from Indiana outside of Chicago. This seems like a good group to join. Like most here, I work in tech. I like cooking/grilling, gaming, bad movies, and the outdoors. I am migrating from Reddit and looking for a place that reminds me of the early days of Reddit.

Hi, all! I signed up for Lemmy the other day using another instance, but thought this would be a better fit. I’m a 39 year old male who grew up in Ohio and currently resides in Michigan. By day, I'm a Technology & Strategic Project Manager at the University of Michigan. By night, I'm a technology-obsessed, music-loving vegan. I’ve been active on Reddit since 2010 and am disappointed to see the direction it’s going. I’m quite active on Mastodon, so feel free to connect with me there, as well!

Hello all, I'm a network engineer currently living in Grand Forks, ND, but from Sioux Falls, SD, and planning to move to Minneapolis in a few months.

I've been off Reddit since they killed 3rd party apps and figured I should finally replace it with something else.

Hello! I am not midwestern myself, but I got roots there via both parents (dad was born and raised in Iowa, maternal grandmother born and raised in Kansas, etc.). And the California Central Valley is basically the Midwest of the West. I am also what some would call "left", though more traditional socialists might dispute my credentials (Geoist/Anarchist). Looking forward to some good conversation.

Let's start with this: anyone know why my UI here defaults to Japanese? Yeah, I'm a weeb, but I'm not sufficiently weebish for that.

Hello! Indianapolitan (Indianapolista?) here. Mostly checking whether I was actually accepted. Thank you to the team that put this together, I was looking for a reddit community like this anyway. Indy_Involved is good but this is a bit different (and not reddit!).

Hello from Waukesha WI! IT geek, amateur (HAM) radio operator, husband, father, and grandfather.

Hey everyone joining from the beautiful city of Detroit, Michigan

Howdy all! I live in the St Louis metro east area. I'm also a reddit transplant and already really digging the community. I'm super excited to be here! I'm into woodworking, making lamps and other crafts. I'm also exploring producing a niche form of EDM music eventually. I'm a fan of general internet research and constantly learning new information.

Hi! STL based ttrpg writer. Pleased to meet you.

North burbs right on border of Chicago. Also a fellow reddit refugee. Can't believe how sad I was when baconreader stopped working, and my stubborn ass knew I'd walk away.

So happy to have found Lemmy, and a midwest instance to boot.

Still not sure how all this works, but it does more than fill the need of interesting screen time.

In to skateboarding, snowboarding, motorcycles, gaming.

Work as a systems programmer specializing in audio and video systems.

Michigan guy here. Been a programmer all my life, but I'm dabbling in photography too these days.

I also create games for fun, so there's officially a crowd of us now.

KCMO transplant here, currently studying ECE over at UMKC, and I like DIYing everything(because I believe in the right to repair my stuff). I have a completely DIY 80W CO2 laser table that I designed and built myself, and I also enjoy mycology, PC gaming and TTRPGs, I tinker around with music production, and to throw yet another project in the stack: I'm about to start brewing mead. Mostly here to make friends and find fun stuff to do in the KC Metro area. 🏳️‍🌈

Hiya! Greetings from Florida, land of the loony. Glad to be here!

Hi all, just joined. I live a bit north of Milwaukee. I've enjoyed perusing the local communities to see what my neighbors are up to.

Hello! Originally a Milwaukeean, currently living in the PNW. Love it out here but I miss the Midwest culture! I work as a theater tech out here and recently got into film photography as a new (and way too expensive) hobby. Good to meet you all!

Hi everyone!

I live in Chicago on the North Side and work in higher education. Been in the city on and off for about 10 years with a gap in the middle when I lived in Asia. I came to Chicago for grad school and really liked the city and the Midwest more generally.

I have been pretty active in the Fediverse for the past year on Mastodon, Pixelfed, and Bookwyrm and decided to give this a try! I'm also trying Kbin as well but really am not understanding the whole Threads + Microblogging. Feels kind of like a having a phone taped to a toaster. Am I the only one who feels that way?

Any good, active communities you might recommend? Any tips to make the most out of Lemmy?

I like reading a lot. I'm into fantasy, sci-fi, philosophy, and religion. I'm really interested in environment, ecology, and climate issues. Always looking for new things to explore in Chicago and the surrounding suburbs.

Hi everyone, another Chicagolander here, this time from the western suburbs. I just moved over here from kbin.social, which has been broken quite a lot lately. Prior to that I was on reddit for an embarrassingly long time, bailing on it when the shit hit the fan last summer.

I'm also on Mastodon where I post very infrequently - I prefer the link aggregator with comments style services such as Lemmy over microblog things.

I'm a middle-aged immigrant dude who is into a lot of nerd shit like scifi, books, video games, electric vehicles, as well as photography and motorcycles. I also ride bicycles for fun and exercise when the weather doesn't suck.

Hello, all. I've done a bunch of weird stuff from injecting people with radioactive stuff, a pit stop at writing and publishing fiction, to renting virtual apartments for real money. Currently spend half my time in northern IL, half in southwest OH.

Reddit refugee, Clevelander, home theater/surround audio nerd. Nice to be here.

Reddit escapee living in Central IL. Remote enterprise application developer in a fairly niche insurance category. Grew up here but spent many years in Chicago and then San Diego. Came back to raise a family here and have been back for about 17 years now. Good to be here in midwest.social!

FemmeGauche here. I'm a lefty millennial in Michigan who can use the internet but new to this decentralized stuff... just trying to find community while asshole billionaires wreck the easier-to-access stuff

Western Wisconsin. Making my exodus from other socials.

Hello! I've lived in the Midwest for most of my life (Michigan, Chicago), with a couple of stops elsewhere in between. I'm part of rexxit and like the idea of the fediverse.

Hello folks! I'm another reddit refugee. I'm in tech support for a medium sized ISP here in the Midwest. The company is based in Indiana, but I live in Michigan. My most used subs on Reddit were FFXIV, D&D, Cocktails, and Cosmere. If anyone shares those interests, I'd love to chat!

Hello! I'm a Wisconsinite soon moving to Minneapolis. Born and raised in western Wisconsin.

Michigander, cloud IT type, and general geek of all trades. Figured I'd try this out and see what cool geeky conversation I could find here.

Hello! I'm Matt from northeast Ohio, another Reddit transplant looking for a new home. I'm mostly into photography, hiking , biking, and backpacking, and my homes of choice in the area are Cuyahoga Valley and Wayne NF

Checking in from Nebraska and learning how things work.

I'm a new Lemmy user, teacher, and cyclist from the St. Louis area. Hello everyone!

Southern Indiana, Hoosier native gamer and traveller.

Reddit abandoner

Hello 30 year old central Missourian. Had a Reddit and Imgur account, left Reddit at the last purge of subs and users. Have been using Imgur exclusively since then. Not quite the same, except for it also slowly getting worse as they monetize it. I enjoyed woodworking, blacksmithing, leatherworking, ren-faires (shocker given those previous two), and cooking. Past tense as I now have a 1 year old and there's no time for anything besides work and parenting a baby/toddler with my spouse. Wasn't planning to interact much, as agreeing to a popular opinion isn't helpful and I don't have time for arguing something pointless, however a post below reminded me that I should, as engagement does help grow this new platform. An attempt will be made.

Hey! Welcome. I understand the first year struggle since I have one of my own. Glad you decided to join and engage. If you want, join us on the Matrix channel. We have a lot of great fun talking there. Also, take we have a fatherverse community that might be fun for you as we all recount things about parenting.

Hello from /r/iowa!

Hello from Kansas (burbs of Kansas City).

Like many, I came from reddit. Spent about 10 years there; about 5 just lurking, then about 5 years a little more engaged.

My hobby is hobbies. I think I just like learning and tinkering. My list of endeavors includes photography, diy audio, camping, cooking/smoking, woodworking, beer brewing, gardening, music (making and consuming), home diy, etc, etc.

Some lasted, some did not, others come and go.

So many times Ive had a nuanced question posed to a community of enthusiasts yield 1000% better results than several hours of searching and reading. I'm looking forward to exploring and interacting here.

I'm yet another Reddit refugee - you might recognize my username from frequent comments in /r/athensohio, or less frequently /r/Ohio and /r/Columbus - and I made accounts at Beehaw, lemmy.world, and sh.itjust.works before discovering this instance. A whole instance of leftists in the Midwest?!?!!! 🎉 Very excited to have found you all.

My husband (42m) and I (41f) have been together just shy of 20 years and do small engine and outdoor equipment repair from our home garage; he turns the wrenches, I do the admin stuff, and we make small engine repair and enthusiast videos to encourage people to repair, not replace, which is something we're really passionate about.

We have a 16yo trans son, son and I are both bi, and we keep our pride flag up all year long because we've had repair customers mention that it helped them know we were a safe place to bring their equipment. 😕

We've got dogs and cats and live on a few acres outside Athens. Just 2 weeks ago, we received our newly-hatched chickens and guineas, so we're scrambling to get the coop and run done. I'm working on figuring out how to share the feed for the security camera I set up near their enclosure, so let me know if you'd like a link for the Poultry News Network when it goes live. 😂

Fellow midwesterner here, trying to figure out all this new fangled technology. Trying to find a new home knowing that Reddit will soon be going on the stock market which means it'll become an advertising platform on behalf of Wall Street.

Michigan/Wisconsin native, engineering project manager.

Here from West Michigan as well, long-time moderator on the other place in a cult-recovery sub, but I’ve been active across metal-working and woodworking communities. Big fan of forged in fire and have been dabbling. Love Michigan, spend a good amount of time in Chicago now as well. Really appreciate that for community exists, feels like the early days (which were the Best days) over in the other place. Looking forward to being a part of this community!

Hi everybody,

I'm a transplant from the Mountain West, moved out here for school and have been living in the Great Lakes region for just over three years now. Deleted my social media accounts at the end of last year and have been making an intentional effort to have a more engaging, thoughtful, and curated Internet presence.

I'm a bisexual, Spanish-soeaking immigrant, dating a trans man. Love learning and discussing science, history, and politics. Also into strength training (weightlifting and calisthenics) and looking for more cardio activities to rotate through. I was a chef in a past life so cooking and gardening are also big hobbies. Finally, I'm also getting into auto repair and photography in a big way, so hopefully I can meet some fellow enthusiasts in those realms! Glad to be here and thanks for having me.

Hi! Joining the Midwest group from just outside the St. Louis area. I'm a mom of 3, working in STEM. I found Lemmy on Reddit and am working on slowly transitioning over here. I like it so far (but still feel like a noob). Being a progressive in the Midwest can feel pretty isolating and I've come to appreciate some of the like minds I've encountered on Reddit. Hoping I can still find that here while moving away from centralized platforms.

Greetings! My name is Matt and I live in Indianapolis. I'm migrating over from a single-user instance. You can also find me over at @leopardboy@netmonkey.xyz. Thanks!

Ope! Forgot to introduce myself.

Erik St. Louis

You probably figured that out.

Come join us in !stlouis, or join me specifically in !stlouiscitysc

And if you haven't already, there's some fine folks on mastodon at social.stlouist.com!

New to midwest.social and lemmy in general and I had a question - I made some posts/comments from lemmy.ml but I noticed they weren't getting any interaction and they weren't actually showing up when I visited midwest.social directly. Additionally, when subscribing to a community, the button turned to "subscribe pending." Does this mean lemmy.ml is blocked here? I noticed there is a Blocked Instances list (https://midwest.social/instances) but lemmy.ml is listed under Linked Instances

Hi. It's cold most of the year. The summers are dreadful. There's a couple of days in the spring and fall that are beautiful.

I migrated from reddit a long time ago. I was on world, and realized world was really big and thought maybe I should get more out of the federation thing and go more local. So I did.

Hi new here from Saginaw, Michigan

Hi!

This is my second try at Lemmy...I got deleted in the whoops a few weeks ago. So far, so good

From Madison, WI. Avid fan of the Packers, Spotted Cow, and Privacy Advocacy. Loving the whole fediverse and not looking back.

New reddit refugee here

Mid-Michigan born and raised, but the western UP made me the man I am today.

Glad to find a place to experience the fediverse!

Kansas City resident here. I work in publishing and am a tech enthusiast, tinkering with Linux a lot. Not a Reddit refugee, exactly, but a Reddit lurker who decided to join the community here for the discussions I won't be able to find over there anymore.

VoIP / UCaaS engineer from Wisconsin

New St Paul, MN resident, Chicago born, raised in the greater Chicago Land suburbs, and Reddit refuge.

Hello 👋🏻

I am a fediverse noob from Missouri. Just started learning about Mastodon and Lemmy when Conman Musk took over Twitter.

I was a Reddit lurker for years. I like seeing the convos here but I’ve never really understood social media. My brain keeps telling me that no one will be interested in my ramblings, which sounds more depressive than it is 😅

Hi! I grew up in Milwaukee and am studying at UW-Madison. Really happy to be here in the fediverse!

reddit refugee here, had been a 12+ year user that started on f7u12 and rage comics, growing up as reddit did… and i, like almost everyone else here, do not recognize it for what it used to be.

anyway! i’m not exactly midwest, as i’m from tennessee, but i am a huge fan of midwest emo (am football, mom jeans, pinegrove, desaparecidos) and i commiserate with the best of them.

i’m into photography, woodworking, building guitars, architecture, design, bicycling, and basketball. so far lemmy has been a huge breath of fresh air!

Hello! I'm in Minnesota. I'm a social worker, former therapist, and work for local government. I'm trying to exit as many other social media platforms as I can and get back to slower, more local, person- and purpose-centered internet.

I understand and like the basic idea of federated platforms, but find them a confusing learning curve after decades of being hand-fed and dark-patterned around, so am still getting my feet under me. I feel about as old as I possibly could in the process. But I'm glad to be here learning!

I'm mostly a quiet and introverted lurker, but will probably pop up with a long rant the first time something about the state of the therapy industry comes up, lol.

Welcome!

I’m an Iowan academic sociologist working in private analytics trying to address homelessness. Been a Reddit user for a long time (digg before that) and now I am here.

Hi! Also part of the migration away from reddit, seeing the writing on the wall there. I'm in Indy, I'm a software dev, and I'm part of a local midwest emo band that plays some shows around the area and just put out some music.

Hey, joining from the Metro East of the STL area. I browsed until I came upon this instance and took the plunge. Heard about Lemmy in a few places, including reddit.

Hello! I do IT for the government. Currently in STL (not technically midwest, depending on who you ask) but I grew up in Michigan. I came here due to the news that Reddit will be soon charging 3rd party apps exorbitant and unsustainable (which is probably their goal) prices. Also on Mastodon: https://hachyderm.io/@Arindrew

Yet another long time Apollo refugee joins the instance. Greeting from Omaha, home of the Henry Doorly Zoo, Runza and… uh… Berkshire Hathaway? M/39 software dev with some young kids and a dog. Looking forward to the same bullshit on Lemmy I enjoyed on Reddit: D&D memes, programming, college basketball (Rock Chalk) and video games.

Lifelong resident of Chicago. I like cats.

Hi all!

I’m in the Chicagoland area - deleted all social media besides Reddit, but Reddit’s platform continues to decline and I am exhausted with not being able to have any form of discussion that goes against any opinions of the “mods” and the big business/far right bots.

I would love to connect with likeminded people in my area, and be able to really connect to enact positive change and maintain our sanity. I think the world is in a very dark place, I hope we can be the light.

Very new to this platform - would absolutely love to connect with anyone who also has tip and trips to get the most of of lemmy! :)

Outside of being a passionate leftists, I am proud ADHDer and cat mom. I work two jobs to maintain independence and take care of the fur babies, but I am slowly trying to be more social and outgoing after everything the pandemic threw my way.

Hey, another Ohioan here, glad to join on this journey! Journo/editor by trade, so I'm always following news, but also have a lot of interests in gaming and outdoorsy stuff as well. Good to meet you all!

Lansing MI resident here! Dad, husband, fisherman, 3d printer dude, and drone pilot. Happy to be here :)

Hello all, frequenter of the r/cleveland boards. Former dig migrator leaving reddit. It was slow at both at first. What works takes time and looking forward to helping build a new awesome repository of knowledge here!

Been here one hour and totally prefer this to Reddit.

Hey, all. Like many, I'm bailing on Reddit given the drama and sheer disrespect for everyone, trying this community with a few friends.

I'm an Iowan, soon-to-be dad, equally-avid gardener and range time enthusiast, software engineer, gamer, etc. Based on the other intros, seems like I'll fit in well enough.

I wish I was consumed with exploring Hyrule; the pre-baby DIY crunch is too time-consuming.

Life long Mid-Michigan native here. Looking forward to finding and interacting with new hobby communities.

Howdy. I'm a life-long Ohioan. I was never a Reddit person, but I figured I'd give lemmy a try. I'm on Mastodon as @stinerman@mastodon.social.

Just joined. Also, transitioning away from Reddit. From Pittsburgh (hence yinzer in my user name), then DC area for @ a decade, & last 2 decades in a state run by folks who think the Desantis nuttery is worth emulating. Lefty, divorced dad of 2, who I'm glad inherited the don't sit by quietly but stand up against bullies from their parents.

Nature is my go-to self-care & main hobbies. Nature photography & hiking, nature documentaries, learning about the regions native flora, fauna, geology, & environmental degradation, etc.

Welcome to this little corner of the internet. I feel you on not being able to just sit around and hoping it blows over. I had a rather traumatic epiphany back in 2019 that I wasn't going to be able to sit on the sidelines while fascism takes hold. I feel a lot better nowadays despite everything going on because I started finding people in my local community who felt the same way and wanted to make tangible change in our lives and the lives of others.

Long-time fedi user here. I only ever used reddit for reference purposes since search engines are thoroughly broken, and I am hoping to build myself a feed here that can do some of that same research shortcutting. I don't know how much I'll post, but I'm here!

Hi all, I'm from the greater St. Louis area. I'm a queer, nerodivergent guy (he/him) looking for a more local internet. I've sorta been in college for a couple years now for multimedia and web development. It's had to be put on the back burner as of late for my mental health. I love art, games, music, and a bunch of dorky stuff. I work in home with people with intellectual disabilities and I didn't know that I could love a job so much. On of my favourite quotes is "The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." (Albert Camus) and if you were to ever see me in person I think that's a good summary of the vibe I give haha.

Hi all! Chicagoland checking in! Originally from rural central IL, moved to Atlanta and spent 12 years in the south, then came home to Chicago in 2016. Happy to be home and glad to find this community!

Hi, checking in from Grand Rapids, MI.

Nothing much to say but glad to be here. Been fun learning more about Fediverse.

Cheers, from Missouri.

I, like plenty of the other people here, come from Reddit. I'm into maker things, and I'm trying to improve those skills, learn to solder, learn CAD, etc. I also have IT skills regarding PC building and maintenance. Looking forward to being here.

Hello! I've been using Lemmy for about 2 months now (since the reddit disaster).

I've been trying to find an instance that would be a good fit for me and I'm in Ohio and I just thought this would be the best fit!

Hey all. Twin Cities native here, enjoys android, books, fountain pens, and more. I've always meant to dig deeper into the fediverse but mastodon wasn't calling to me. I'm glad to have the reason (reddit) to explore this one now.

Chicago, Linux, Cubs, Bears. Heyooo

Hello everyone! I'm currently living in Madison, WI, but I grew up in South Dakota. Definitely a midwesterner at heart. Currently living with my 4 ferrets, and getting used to the fediverse. 😊

Minnesota man who helped start a robotics team in 2009, love programming, snowboarding, hitting the lake, and my kids. Happy early 4th of July for at least the good parts of our often fraught countrym

Michigan man. Almost a decade in Tech. Checking this out after the Reddit event like many others. Happy to be here.

If anyone wants to refer me, either publicly or via DM, to some nice KC communities, I’d love it!

St. Louis metro area checking in. Long time Reddit user transitioning away from that site. IT guy. Older but not cantankerous (yet) : ) I like board games, playing and listening to music, hanging with the family, gadgets, Linux, 3D printing, homebrewing, blah blah blah.

Hello! Another Northern Illinois member here in the 25-35 age bracket. I have some potentially useful knowledge in web development, programming, a good intuition for structural engineering (mostly through woodworking and some 3D printing), and am currently working on some electronics projects.

Technically I'm now a refugee from vlemmy . net (the server suddenly disappeared a few days ago, their donation accounts are suspended/deleted), but before that I was on Reddit where I explored a lot of smaller niche information sharing type communities. I was a mod of a few relatively small communities there under a different name, but have pretty much abandoned the platform since they attacked their power users/mods and started charging exorbitant rates for their API.

Generally, the way I engage:

I try to follow the paradox of tolerance. I try to be tolerant of others doing/saying anything which does not reduce overall tolerance of society, and when pushing back against intolerant ideology, I aim to politely discuss ideas from a place of logic and reason.
I tend to engage in discussion of ideas and am happy to discuss hypotheticals that I find interesting. I like to solve problems, and have been known to come up with some atypical (and I'd argue interesting), if often unworkable, solutions/approaches.

I don't have time to devote to moderation/administration, but I'm happy to offer whatever advice I can within my knowledge areas to whoever may ask, such that it is.

@seahorse Hey everyone!

I'm primarily operating over on Mastodon, but I was a huge lurker of r/Indiana and r/Indianapolis on reddit, mostly for local news and city updates, and it's so refreshing to find this.

I'm located in the Indy area and I'm into making music, audio engineering, and a bit of photography. Huge runner, ran the Indy Mini for the first time this year and I'm already signed up for next year. Originally from NWI so a huge fan of the dunes and the outdoors as a whole.

Ohio gozaimasu! Fellow Ohioan here. I'm a software developer, so I'm really into tech, videogames, and anime. Along with tea and inline skating. I was never too active on Reddit, but Lemmy solves most of the issues I had with it, so it makes sense to join amidst the hopefully indefinite blackout to help the movement succeed.

From WI. Pretty liberal. Big nerd. Reddit and Twitter are turning to garbage. Howdy.

Hi guys, I'm from California but I like biscuits and gravy so i figured I'd fit in fine here.

Reddit refugee, fediverse newbie, zillennial. Spent some childhood years in Wisconsin and some adult years in Minnesota; plan to go back to MN within a year! Big fan of Tolkien, Studio Ghibli, Makoto Shinkai, metal, folk, and trance music.

Great to see you on BE: 0.18.3 Lemmy progress

Hello. I have lived in Kansas for all but three years of my life. Liked Seattle and Dallas, but they weren't home. Been thinking about Lemmy for a while and, even though RedReader has gotten a reprieve, even QuantumBadger, the developer, doesn't like Reddit's direction. So, here I am and am looking forward to it. Retired now and getting ready to do some traveling, but I will always be a midwesterner.

@drifter @seahorse It would be nice if QuantumBadger made a app for the fedeverse. many will go to him, Even if it's paid

I of course found my way here from reddit. I started lurking on mastodon occasionally when musk first took over Twitter, but I didn't get into it. I wasn't a Twitter user either. This looks more like my jam though.

I'm a lifelong chicagoan (nw side). I've been daily driving slackware since the late 90s. I play a mean bass. I smoke meat when the mood strikes. I bought a fixer upper without the skills or budget to fix it up. I have a 4 year old daughter. I work in international logistics.

Just popping in to introduce myself. Lifelong Hoosier, currently in the Indy Suburbs. Used to be a reddit lurker on local subs and a few video game specific subs more than anything. Abandoned ship THERE though because waves around at everything

Wouldn't call myself a leftist nor a centrist. Somewhere in the middle of THOSE, ymmv. Bit of a sports fan, but my teams are all cursed lately. Indy Eleven, Everton, Pacers, Red Wings, St. Louis Cards... all shitty to mediocre. 🤷

When I have free time from work and family, I like video games. Currently playing: A re-play of The Outer Worlds, eagerly waiting on Starfield.

Anyway, howdy. Nice to be on this little corner of the internet...

Hello! I live in Kalamazoo, MI and grew up in Muskegon, MI. I'm a part of the mass exodus from reddit. So far I'm enjoying the fediverse and was glad to see an instance dedicated to midwesterners. I work in mental health and enjoy cooking/baking, crafting, painting, kayaking, gardening, gaming (DnD, Zelda, board games) and spending time with my loved ones. Excited to be here!

Decided to set up with a more localized instance instead of Lemmy.world. Was born in St. Louis, but grew up across Missouri and Indiana before settling down in a quiet little corner of Ohio.

Hello, I'm in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Even thought most of the state thinks we're basically NYC, it's definitely right wing town. Trying to get away from Reddit and a friend suggested checking out Lemmy.

Was the site down this morning? I had a bunch of 502 errors.

Howdy! I’m from the great khanate of Illinois, from the northern suburbs. I’m trying to jump ship from Reddit to escape the enshittification before it continues worsening. I’m a marketer by trade (the devils work, I know), however I’ve got hobbies in politics, light gaming, reading, and film. Big fan of sci-fi and alt-history.

Geezer Iowan here, getting the feet moist in anticipation of reddit (see account there of same name) becoming unusable/unpalatable for me. Too many interests/hobbies to list, but outside of work culture, the lion's share of my real life socializing is via local wind bands and orchestras; I'm a french horn player, and horn sections tend to develop into their own little social clubs.

Most of the comments in here are from 2mo ago, seems like, but I'll give it a shot.

Michigander here. Lived most of my adult life here, but was raised in Illinois and bounced around for a bit in my 20s.

Started out with the standard rural Midwest set of beliefs (plus a few nutty ones like young earth creationism), but after a great many years of transformation I now consider myself a leftist (and/or socialist depending on my mood) and generally progressive dude.

Love me some tech, anime, video games, jazz, ttrpg, and so on with the nerd stuff. I also draw on the odd occasion, even a few commissions under my belt, but don't expect much. No academic or professional training here.

I do have an academic background in Japanese, Psychology, and general Social Science study methodologies, though I work primarily in IT these days.

I look forward to the discussions here!

@seahorse@midwest.social Is there a like a standard amount new people should donate to the server?

Hello, it's yet another refugee from the sync for lemmy raft - i dont do much more than lurking and posting about pixel phones

Wisconsin native here! Software engineer, League player, and so forth. Came over here after seeing just how egregiously bad Reddit leadership has become.

Hey all! Nebraskan from the lone blue dot in a sea of red.

I have a question about Rule 1. Does this rule apply to posts within the midwest.social or does it prevent browsing and subscribing to NSFW content on other servers?

PA, programmer, working for a local nonprofit.

Currently living in Minneapolis, been here for....8 years after moving from WV. Making the jump since the other link aggregation site has starting warning and potentially banning people for upvoting comments about Lugi. Probably just going to lurk.

Bonjour, I'm Mak out of the Great Lakes Region. I'm out of NEOhio. I do Anarchist shit from time to time.

Hey there from the Minnesota side of the St.Croix Valley. "Build guy" by trade currently dabbling in Splunk and Cribl. Lived in Chicago for a while, but MN is home. Skol Vikes!

Hello! I am in Chicago and curious to explore Lemmy and shoot the shit :)

Moved east to Chicago but I'm still a South Dakotant at heart.

Hello fellow kids. Fellow great lakesian here.

Cincinnati guy! Live in Northern Ky, work in cinci, eat Skyline. Ohioan at heart. Happy to be here and figure all this shit out!

hey midwest, I moved to the chicago "area" recently and I'm fucking miserable. So I'm fitting in well. Got my family to keep me busy, it's an OK hobby. Hoping to see some regional progressive activity to direct some energy in to. I fuck with fighting games. That's it, don't meet your heroes. Skreeonk

Hola… from Colorado here. Hope everyone is doing well out there…..

Are folks from other instances welcome here? Still figuring out etiquette or whatever. I got impatient over the weekend and jumped into Lemmy through sopuli.xyz due to a lower barrier to entry.

I'm a Minnesota person living in St. Paul. I coordinate graduate programs, which basically means I'm a nanny for graduate students. Movie nerd and sweet tooth haver. 1 dog and 3 cats. I used to be a forklift operator and a freight railroad conductor. Formerly UFCW, BLET, and AFSCME. Now I'm IWW IU620.

Hi, I'm Corwin! TL;DR: wordy nerd for MN; lotsa kids, cats, GNU vol.

I'm yet-another-new-user bc Reddit; glad for the mass troop move toward FOSS and federated things, social especially. Over the last few years, I've been weaning myself off mass-media social: forgive me, hacker, it's been (only) three days since my last reddit/twitter/FB post. RE FOSS, I volunteer with some projects like EmacsConf and GNU Savannah. If you are looking to get involved with FOSS volunteering but aren't sure where you can get started HMU :)

Ahem. Meanwhile, in the interest of full disclosure. About Emacs...

Passion for Emacs has been likened (variously derisively or with found amusement) to religious fervor.

I help with the annual conf, like I mentioned. I make official binaries for Emacs available from GNU FTP servers/mirrors. I help with ERC, one of the IRC clients that ships with Emacs. I'm making an RPG engine for Emacs called dungeon-mode. I feel that this post will be incomplete unless I tell you even more about Emacs right now:

Emacs is a text editor built around a lisp machine. Most of it is implemented in Emacs Lisp (elisp). It can be customized using menus, like a normal program. Or using code, programs full of code, auto-generated programs, self-modifying programs, and so on.. such nonsense for a text editor to be doing any of this, of course.

Hopefully, you can see where I occasionally get myself in trouble. Every once in a while I need someone to tell me "no". To say "Corwin. Oh, Corwin. The X forum doesn't want to hear about how you integrated X into Emacs." "STFU about Emacs please Corwin", And so forth.

TIA if that's you.

In conclusion, when you are ready to talk about Emacs, find me on IRC corwin@libera.chat#emacs.

MN; 48/wm/2 partners 17y/5y, 5kids, 5cats. emacs4evah

May I create a South Dakota community? I noticed there's not one. We've got North Dakota, but not South Dakota.

For context, I live in South Dakota.

Been here a little while, originally from Wisco, went to Iowa to go to college and now live in Minnesota. I exclusively dated women from Illinois and took vacations in Michigan. Worked in a Supper Club, and when I drink I kinda sound Canadian. What do I win for being the most Midwest?

Looks like the site Avatar is down. My avatar didn't load either until I re-uploaded a new one. Some users are showing and others are not. Browser cache refresh doesn't do anything either, so it seems to be something on the server side. Other than that, I'm enjoying my time here. Cheers!

Suburban Chicago resident. Reddit Refugee.

Hello there. Born and raised in Ohio. Been here for about 20 minutes! Very new to Lemmy and the fediverse in general. This seems like a good place. :)

Hello all! I'm from the Northern part of the LP of Michigan. A progressive among regressives. I love the outdoors, hiking, and nature watching. I'm a transplant from reddit like most here. I left after I was banned for updoots and refuse to play by their draconian rules. I hope to find many great communities I can be a part of. Still learning this platform, but from what I've seen so far this place is pretty great!

Hi, Madison person here, giving this whole Lemmy thing a try. Into city politics, biking, transit. Let's see how it goes.

reddit refugee, 3d printing minneapolitan, technologist and all around tolerant nerd. Heya everyone!

Another reddit refugee, I'm using it as a kick in the back to disengage with most other social media. I'm from Florida but have enjoyed all my Midwest vacations and prefer tavern style pizza to NY pizza.

I'm into cars, outdoors stuff that doesn't require breaking bones, guns, bicycles, food, and antique bottles.

Hello! I’m from NW Arkansas. Here because I’m getting frustrated with reddit and suspicious of it as well. Lots of bots, and fear mongering.

It’s important to me to try to keep my life in perspective. Touch grass. Go on hikes. I am looking for a place where information is not censored by billionaires so here I am… hello.

Hello! Just curious, where did you hear about lemmy/this site specifically?
- I heard about it on Reddit. People getting warnings just for upvoting comments about protests. Not violent protests mind you…. Regular protests.

Morning everyone. Chicago suburb native of 42 years who doesn't really feel like leaving. Working at one of the many data centers in the Chicago area, if you can call it work, because I enjoy technology in general. I joined because I've been migrating from legacy social media to the Fediverse; Reddit's API nonsense helped that process along.

Contrary to what my parents and sisters drilled into my head as I was growing up, I've been leaning more and more left as I age. At some point, someone decided that giving our children a better life meant making them suffer. Seems like teaching my kids to be grateful for the opportunities they have, respect others' beliefs, accept people from all walks of life, stand up for marginalized groups, foster positive mental health outcomes, not expect anything to be handed to them, and just be good people in general makes me a communist in the eyes of many, including my own parents. I'm gonna have to pass on whatever ideology came up with that and work toward dismantling it.

Beyond that ... I'm pretty low key most of the time. I like PC (Linux) gaming, physical computing, 3D printing, video editing, analog media preservation, listening to open source-related podcasts, road trips, dogs, glamping, grilling, beer, grilling while glamping and drinking beer and hanging out with my dogs, etc. I listen to metal but have been on a Sleep Token kick since the newest album was released.

I don't speak up often because someone else typically said what I want to say first, posting responses like "This" is annoying, and upvotes are silent. At any rate, nice to meet everyone, hope to be able to contribute something useful at some point.

Another emigredditor here. I never posted much over there, I hope this platform stays cozy & welcoming after the inevitable influx!

I’m in Central Illinois, and I was very pleased to see there’s already a !cats@midwest.social community!

Hiya, all! I'm originally from IL and am now bouncing around the Upper Midwest a bit. I'm interested in a little bit of (almost) everything. I'm another person moving over to a Fediverse alternative to Reddit. I was an early adopter of Mastodon, which has been my main social media presence for some time.

Hello from the Joliet area of Chicagolandia...

From Iowa, moved to Wisconsin a few years ago after graduating college with my BSN. Most of my family has always been involved with the Democratic Party and have had a liberal, progressive views. I grew up loving history and current events which turned into an interest in politics that only grew once I got in high school. I’d say my liberal to leftist conversion began after the 2016 election and just started to learn how outdated the dems were and incompetent they have always been. I’ve only gotten more and more leftist as the years have gone by to the point where it’s hard to talk to people who only hold milquetoast liberal beliefs.

Why I’m on the fediverse? Curiosity: I had a random tab that lead to a link that explained the fediverse and just went down a rabbit hole about it today. After doing a bit of research, I finally looked into the platform and its quirks. Always been intimidated because it seemed too techy for me to grasp (still don’t have a total idea on how this all works just yet but I’m getting there) but realized the importance and the freedom that comes along with it. I was also a bit concerned about using the fediverse when I learned that it’s popular because it supposedly upholds “freedom of speech” to its truest form which I have always interpreted as a dog whistle for right wing lunatics to use slurs like an 8 year old. So it’s a massive relief to see a strong left wing presence here without having to utilize an algorithm to see such a community.

r/Chicago and r/ChiBike deserter. Would love to see a bike community flourish here. Active-ish on mastodon @pbrower@bigshoulders.city

I am Robbey, born in Iowa, live in tx now, used to be on Reddit, loving it much more on lemmy

Hi everyone! I’m a lifelong Iowan in my mid-20s. I work in small museums in the southeast part of the state as a consultant and contractor. So many of these small institutions have part-time volunteers and no professionally trained staff, so I offer guidance with collection management, exhibit curation, event planning, and digital marketing. I like to tell history through material culture and through a philosophy called post-humanism, which looks at the world around us in terms beyond the human perspective.

Outside of that, I am really into head-fi and am mostly listening to music in my free time. Additionally, I like to tinker with Arch Linux and FreeBSD installs and have been teaching myself how to code in Haskell. I’m still rather new to federated social media, but have really been enjoying my transition thus far.

Welcome! My degree is in archaeology, and I really really loved all the work I did in the historical archaeology arena while in school and for a bit afterwards. Your job sounds like what I wish I would have gotten into ten years ago.
- It’s really fulfilling work. There are just so many micro-museums that have never had a professional present to assess where the museum is at and what it can be.
  I did some archaeology research for my undergraduate senior thesis, lots of fun stuff! Something I love about museum work is that it is a combination of all the history related fields, science fields (for things like preservation ) and social sciences and education all in one institution. It allows me to wear many hats.
  What region/period did you mainly study?

Howdy. New user from the Chicago suburbs. Mostly lurked on reddit because it felt too big to get meaningfully involved. This seems like a nice change of pace.

Look forward to getting to know you all.

west burbs checking in! welcome :)
Cheers man, from one Chicagoan to another

Former Reddit user who is jumping ship after 13 years, I live in the Twin Cities I’ve been in IT for more than 10 years trying to jump ship to programming interest our programming fanfiction litRPG‘s and audiobooks not necessarily in that order.

Hey all. Another Reddit refugee from SE Michigan. Looking forward to discovering how this works.

Checking in from Kansas!

Hi. I'm looking for weird shit in the Internet. I decided to hop on Midwest.social to ease the burden in Lemmy.ml

Hello from St Louis! I love baseball and reading nonfiction books. I also watch a lot of Law & Order and The Simpsons

Hi! Just joined because of the BS happening over at Reddit right now (RIP Apollo 😞). I've enjoyed my experiences on my friend's Mastodon instance and figured a Reddit-adjacent service on the Fediverse could be fun too. Librarian and researcher from Michigan, into social computing/inclusive design, hiking in the woods, collections development, Melee, Dwarf Fortress, etc. Nice to meet you all 👋

Howdy, Chicagoland area here. I love the idea of a "location-federated" social media so I migrated here from lemmy.ml.

Migration was smooth however I'm finding this instance to be quite slow to load pages, is it just me?

This is a reposting from post-data loss:

I grew up in southeast Iowa (Davenport) and live there currently. I studied history (American Colonial Frontier era Indigenous Material Culture) and chemistry (physically) at Wartburg College, and went on to get a Master’s degree in museum studies from Western Illinois University. I always have loved history and the way we share stories of the past.

I am currently working as an independent museum consultant in southeast Iowa, wherein I hop around to small and micro museums to advise them on collections care, curation, education, and marketing. Most of these museums have one or two part time staff members or are all volunteer based. I come in to lend (a reasonably priced) hand with whatever may be holding that museum or historic home from being its best.

My master’s thesis was concerned with use of a Post-Human methodology in combination with New Materialism to provide new perspectives on objects housed in a museum collection. I really tried my advisor’s patience at times with this topic. I now use this approach in my research and work every day.

Outside of this, I am an avid head-fi enthusiast, I play the viola in the local symphony, I’m Lutheran, and I am linux and freeBSD tinkerer. I came to Lemmy following the loss of Apollo and have now really committed to federated social media. I look forward to connecting with some of you in due time!

Hello everyone. I'm brand new to lemmy and I hope that I understand it soon. LOL I'm in central Illinois, there's a little blue in the sea of red around me. I have been lazy lately, between work and working OT, I've been watching TV. I knit, love to travel, enjoy cooking classes, going to flea markets among other things. I would love to figure out how to rehab some of my furniture, do some minor home repairs and garden.

Hello and welcome! If you have questions about how Lemmy works feel free to reach out.

Hi! I'm Nolan from Minneapolis! Trying out this board as part of a broader effort to un-big-tech my life. Didn't see one, so I just created a community for posting about bicycles/cycling! I also love music, the outdoors, and dumb movies. Nice to meet you all!

Here's my "me too" post.

Reddit refugee fleeing the third party app bullshit. I'm in IT, HPC to be more specific, at a well-known university in the Midwest. I play lots of video games, and by lots I mean mostly Terraria.

Hello Lemmuels. Michigonian between 25 and 40, about this tall.
ex-paramedic. I came here for memes and because The Nothing has eaten the internet. interested in illustration, comics, mutual aid, music (metal, punk, disco, cumbia, funk, psychedelic, et cetera). terrible at speaking Japanese and Spanish. worse still at Arabic. Cops, fash and corporate flunky politicians can jump in a hole and go night-night.

Yo duders, Reddit refugee here like many of you. I reside in northeast Indiana. My hobbies include video games mainly on PC, anime, movies, hiking, and traveling. I'm enjoying being here.

Hello everyone, new user living in Northside Indianapolis but a lifelong Midwesterner that doesn't plan on leaving. I've been concerned with the trends on Reddit for years now since u/spez has been trying to make as much money off the platform as they can. The recent silencing of noncompliant users for opinions on what is supposed to be an open forum was the straw that broke the camel's back for me.

I am a firm patriot to the actual ideals of the U.S. and believe economic system should not be tied into it's governing documents as any kind of argument from the wealthy elites controlling the country and the media. The best system for all the people is the best system for the country whether its "Capitalist" or "socialist" or something else. The foundation of the country is a free, open, Democratic Republic not locked to one economic scheme and right now only the leftists seem to be trying anything like that.

Long time deep thinker on civics, political ideology, systems of all types (controls, engineering, human). And how they should best function. A big passion for history. Love gaming of all types, sci-fi and fantasy nerd. Will take a strong opinion and debate about anything for the fun of it as long as it stays intellectual and not an emotional topic.

Looking to start actually being involved in community both here online and in the local area as well and this seemed the place to be. More than willing to discuss anything I said here and would love recommendations for communities.

Reddit (and formerly Digg) refugee from Northeast Indiana.

I am a leftist and an atheist. My hobbies include tech, pc gaming, rock/electronic music (consuming), programming, and recently collecting oldschool smartwatches. I also love cats.

Lemmy.world was having some technical issues, so I decided to make the move to midwest.social. I'm really liking it here so far. What I like most about Lemmy is actually being able to have conversations, rather than having my comments get buried in thousands of other comments.

Greetings, all. Former Game Developer, located in the Metro Detroit area, looking for an alternative to Reddit. Presently in an offshoot of the game business, doing simulations work with game engines, but nothing real fun and interesting, and mostly can't-talk-about stuff.

Also have done some maybe interesting work in online resale.

Huge Star Trek nerd right now, mid Superhero pop culture nerd, fan of 80's-00's alt/rock/metal.

This makes me wonder if this site has a spot for user profiles, and stuff like that. Always interesting to try out new things, and so far, this doesn't turn me off... although I could wish for some adjustments to the UI. If I get particularly vexed by something, but I still like it, I might dig into developing something :)

Are you there, fellas? It's me, Bizzle.

Lemmy.world wasn't working for me so I jumped ship over here.

David-Ray here. I live on the western edge of the Ozark highlands. Would like to see a server even more localized to my area. Guess I'll have learn how to run one.

Hello! My name is Klumpmeister! I am a 30 year old IT synth nerd who plays guitar and retro games. I currently live in Columbus, OH. Formerly, Bloomington, IN. I loved twitter and reddit and both of them have imploded. I loved Tweetbot and Apollo specifically. Once tweetbot was gone I knew Apollo would be next.

I am happy to see midwest.social and lemmy embrace the fediverse while trying to take on the format of reddit. I would love to see what kind of things lemmy can offer in the topics I liked about reddit. Synths, video games, local topics / discussions.

I am on mastodon as well: @Klumpmeister@mstdn.games

Hi, former Wisconsinite in exile, trying to move back.

South Central Nebraska here, born and raised! I love living and working out here in rural Nebraska. I'm an Electrical Engineer by trade and an Open Source/Linux Enthusiast for fun! I was glad to see there's some other stuff like a woodworking community here also! Looking forward to a replacement for the centralized social medias. I'm already on Mastodon and Pixelfed, so this should be a nice addition for me.

Hi there! I'm from Colorado, which is almost the midwest! I saw the community and decided to pop into Lemmy through here, though, since it seemed to be friendly and welcoming. I write queer fantasy romance and love a good book!

Former midwesterner, moved out of Columbus, OH with my wife to be closer to her family in PA, so midwest adjacent. Also 100% new to the fediverse (looked it up and explored it just this morning), and loving every corner I've visited so far.

I'm a tech/gaming enthusiast, who works from home, and also happens to live on a 170+ year old 12(ish) acre farmette just outside of Gettysburg, so I will be hunting down the garden and farming posts on here o.o

Hello! Grew up in the Chicago area, and now lived most of my adult life in the Detroit area. I've been mostly lurking on Mastodon for several years now, but somehow didn't know Lemmy existed until the Reddit meltdown. Really glad to be here.

Hi I am from the Detroit area, and happy to join a regional Lemmy instance. I am actively involved with a local opensouce convention called penguicon. And I'm hear to hang out and stuff

Hello everyone! Yet another Reddit Refugee, here. I'm a network engineer and DIYer with a passion for calculators, fountain pens, and mechanical pencils. Been on Red Matrix/Hubzilla for years, and I'm looking forward to seeing what this part of the Fediverse is like!

Hi! I'm @slackadelic as you can tell! I've used this moniker for many years. The root of the nick comes from Slackware Linux many, many moons ago. I'm a father first, a husband second, and a gamer the rest of the time!

I like to play a lot of different games including #TheDivision2, #SeaOfThieves, #Battlefield (4 or 2042, either works for me).

My biggest hobby is streaming! You can always find me on #YouTube under my tag of slackadelicYT (yeah, whomever has my proper moniker never uses their account! ARGH!)

My main concentration right now for gaming is #TheDivision2 right now.

Other things I'm into:

Information Technology - This is my primary field of study and have been doing it for many, many years My main concentration is networks and network engineering. I do have a pretty complicated setup at home, comes with the territory!
Date nights with my wife! Love hanging out with my lady!
Spending time with my kiddos. When they're not fighting each other and making a mess :)

I'm also a proud father to a recent high school graduate! Very, very proud of her!

Anything else, just ask!

I'm pretty much going to echo a lot of the same sentiments. I expect my Reddit usage will plummet when the third party apps are killed so I've gotta waste time somewhere.

I'm a long time, old school nerd. Tabletop games, video games, fantasy books, enough programming know how to make lives difficult, all that kinda thing.

Been rereading some old Spider-Man comics on Marvel unlimited lately. I've probably got a bit of a Tears of the Kingdom addiction going on as well. There's plenty more about me and I'm hoping this will be a fun, new internet home for the immediate future.

Hey all, small town Illinoisan here. I've been in IT for over a decade, but I'm trying to transition to pretty much anything else at this point.

I'm also a game developer, solo in my free time. Anybody know of any good gamedev communities here?

Hey all! Long time Apollo user jumping ship with all the 3PA shenanigans going on. 32, he/they, leftist, pagan, living in WI. Into video games, nature, d&d, fantasy books, NFL, and my wife. Usually more of a lurker than a poster but who knows, maybe that’ll change? Excited to be here and get to know everyone!

was searching for some other communities and i noticed the following servers are blocked?
lemmygrad.ml exploding-heads.com

Is there a reason these are blocked should we steer clear of any of the communities on those servers?

Hello all! Reddit user of ten years. Struggled during the blackout. Turns out I might have a problem, a Reddit addiction. Withdrawals weren’t too bad… who am I kidding, they were awful! Thrilled to find my fix here. Excited to join a developing platform to replace Reddit. I will confess I was mostly a lurker on Reddit. Tend to not engage much in social media, but I am going to try and be different on this platform. I would like to see this platform thrive and recognize engagement will be key. By the way, I downloaded the iOS lemmy app, Mlem through test flight. Like it so far, but can tell it is a work in progress. Excited to participate in its evolution.

A bit about myself, work in healthcare, just bought a new house. Have far too many pets in the house (all rescues). A progressive living in the more conservative parts of the Midwest. Isolating and scary at times, but will always hold true to my values.

I have deleted my Reddit account. RIP Reddit, welcome Lemmy!

Yes i too am from reddit 😂, currently in southern IN, i like houseplants, memes and ortdoors/hiking

Hoping lemmy can fill my reddit urges lmao

Hey everyone, started exploring Lemmy the other week and really jumped in after the Apollo news broke.

I’m gamer/podcaster/dad/wannabe bourbon enthusiast from Michigan.

I have a tech role in logistics and am just looking for a chill community to be a part of.

Currently consumed with exploring Hyrule.

For my introduction, hello!

I am a geeky CTO focused on encouraging a distributed grid and clean energy production/optimisation. I am a long-time Linux/UNIX user and spent my early life hacking on things when we called it infosec.

I live in the small rural town of Standish, Michigan, "up north!"

My interests are clean energy, tech, Unix, security, energy policy, aviation, EVs, and travel. Great to join a fellow group of Midwestern Geeks.

Fellow from Lansing, MI here. Joining as part of the reddit exodus, and because I like the concept of the fediverse.

Michigander through and through. Will be hanging out in the Detroit sub.

55/m from the Downriver Detroit area, Michigan. 17-year R*ddit user, been around forever (started with BBSes, moved on to Usenet). Black Guy on the Internet. a2.mi.social member.

Used to run a freeform streaming radio station. Apple user since the ][+, love music.

Hi everyone! Like a number of new users here, I’m coming over from Reddit due to the recent changes there. I grew up in central WI, and currently live in Milwaukee. Work as a software engineer, and in my free time, I love to nerd out on rollercoasters, hike, and whatever tech projects I get myself in to.

Hoping to find a community as nice as people are in the Midwest, as well as a place to see pictures of everyone’s cats

Hello, another redditor joining up here. Intermittently into Linux and other FOSS stuff. Gamer, mostly pc, into boardgames, reading, many other things. Located in metro Detroit area, currently excited about Street Fighter 6

Yo, just some dude who lives in Chicago and likes open source stuff and wanted to move to a reddit alternative. Love all different types of stuff as long as it's new and interesting.

Hi yall! I'm a Chicago resident but have lived all over the midwest (and Louisville, but that's south-lite basically). I like reading all things History and poli-sci related though I've been on a personal finance kick lately. I love the idea of a regionally focused message board and hopefully we can get some good discussions goin!

MI here!

Hoping for regional news and weekend mini-vacation discussion

Hey everybody! Twin cities reddit/twitter expat. I’m a goofy laid-back leftist who likes freedom of information and social settings not run on selling products. I like gaming on Switch, PlayStation and Mac (I know. It sucks.), drinking fancy espresso drinks I made, and listening to hard rock + nu metal. Talk to me about homelab stuff and capitalism-free computing!

I am from Bloomington Indiana and I am originally from St. Louis. I do a lot of natural language processing for my day job and as part of my PhD. I am into homelabbing, coffee roasting and gardening. I'm hoping to link up with some other Blooomingtonians on here if they're around.

What up doe!

From Detroit - waiting for some good communities for Techno, Bicycle Touring, Backpacking, and SynthDIY. Excited to start this journey on a new platform which feels very good to be on so far. Hoping for a bright future :) :)

o/ Chicago native investigating potential alternatives now that 3rd party apps on reddit are getting nuked. Happy to chat, and interested in hearing more :)

Just another in the Reddit exodus. Southern Indiana. I enjoy gaming and programming. In my spare time I enjoy working on anything with an engine. Although since my back went out the most of the work has been light stuff.

I'm new to Lemmy and the Fediverse been here a whole 3 days! I'm usually a lurker but will occasionally comment. Thanks everyone!

Howdy y'all. Central Illinoisan, reddfugee, & night shift worker. They/she.

Currently glutting on various cyberpunk media in anticipation of DMing a tabletop rpg for a group of friends that I met at the local kink dungeon. Last night I watched a Japanese cyberpunk musical from 1982 called Burst City, which was beautifully chaotic, & then started rereading Neuromancer on audiobook (just finished rereading Altered Carbon.)

I'd give up a kidney for a sequel to the Return of the Obra Dinn. Just putting that energy into the universe.

Hi all, with Reddit’s big API change I thought I’d get my foot in the door for another home. I’m back in Minnesota after being born here like 20 years ago (that’s how long it’s been since the 80’s, right?) I’ve lived in Lafayette, Indiana; Kansas City, (both sides), and Eau Claire, WI. I was a semi active, mostly lurker in a bunch of subs for ereaders, Minnesota, Marvel stuff, Forged in Fire, etc…

Stereotypical nerd: Books: Fantasy & Sci-Fi Gaming: Mostly Tabletop & Board, but PC & Console aren’t out of the question. PC: Typically a Mac because I like having access to a big name with integrated Unix, though I have windows Pcs and *nix utility boxes around. Last job: IT support, now stay at home dad.

Hope you guys are ready for the flood of reddit refugees. I'm an avid paintballer out of Nebraska and fully intend to start the paintball community in these parts. Hit me up if you play, you might see me at a scenario at some point!

Hi there! Another refugee checking in [35F IL]. On the other site I mostly participated in sports discussions, issues affecting women over 30, some crafty/journaling things, and lurked hard on local food recommendations, tattoos, funny Bravo tv discussions, and some gaming spaces (mostly wownoob). I spend my non-working time gaming, napping, art journaling, learning, and have recently started watching anime. Looking forward to more of the same, here!

Hi all! Another person escaping reddit here. I'm from Madison, WI, so finding this server was exciting. Professionally I'm a software/Linux engineer. Personally, I'm an audiophile, progressive metalhead, anarcho-communist, esperantist, and horror novel enthusiast. Nice to be here!

Reddit-refugee here. I'm originally from MN. Looking forward to taking part here.

My primary hobby is books/reading as well as gardening. Mostly classics and speculative fiction.

Hi! Reddit refugee, Iowan, computer person. 2 cats. Too much DnD, too much fanfiction. First time on Fediverse.

Hello from Northern MN! I like memes, gaming and tech stuff!

Southeast here! Kinda outta place but my application was approved, so here I am! Reddit refugee like most here, just made a Mastodon account as well. Linux and FOSS user, local truck driver, Mutualist and casual gamer

Reddit refugee from Nebraska. Work in IT, game when i can, and try to learn as much as i can.

Hi there, folks - I'm Scott Starkey, a software developer and part-time magician living in Indiana. I'm not a big fan of the stuff that Reddit is doing, so I thought I'd explore other options.

I'm also available on Mastodon with a bevy of accounts:

We seem to be lacking some communities that I'd like to see on Lemmy, specifically #Magic, #Esperanto, #GameDevelopment, and maybe #Freemasonry. Maybe I'll volunteer to set those up, once I figure out all the stuff.

Edit to say, I found an Esperanto forum: !Esperanto@sopuli.xyz

Hey guys! I'm originally from Green Bay, Wisconsin. I live in rural Vietnam now. I used to travel as a network technician for large events with media streaming and broadcasting. Excited to have a new community and looking forward to lending a hand where I can!

Hello! Originally from southeast Oklahoma, currently in southeast Wisconsin. I moved to Wisconsin from Oklahoma a two years ago and I'm really glad to be here. I'm liking Wisconsin so far. Both of my little ones were behind in language skills and education in general. (especially coming out of COVID) and the care and attention they've gotten from our school here in WI is so much better than what we had back home. I myself am an electrical engineer and software programmer. I came here looking for a better job. Most of my friends had already fled OK or would like to soon. I enjoy retro gaming and game console mods. I also recently became a certified ham radio extra class operator.

Hi, I'm Fuzzy!

I'm a network engineer from northwestern Indiana (but not "the region"). Basically same story as a lot of new people, I've been a reddit user for 7 years (80% Baconreader 20% old.reddit) and with the API changes I'll probably be using reddit a lot less. So I'm looking for some new site to waste my phone battery while I wait on switch reloads.

Still a little confused about how the servers vs communities work in my short time here but I'm sure I'll figure it out.

Hello, I'm Brian Lawson and live in Lebanon, IN (just a little NW of Indy). I'm the owner of the hoosier.social Mastodon instance and am expanding my reach a little further into the Fediverse.

Indiana/Ohio native here. Interests include tech, cooking, running, and nature. Been on the Fediverse for a while and figured I'd give Lemmy a try.

Reddit emigrant here, exploring the site (or should I say federated sites?) Seems promising though! As for myself, residing in Columbus, OH. Hope to interact with some other cool midwesterners.

Howdy! I'm from NE Ohio,I've to see more midwesterners on fedi!

Hello everyone. 26/m living in Peoria IL metro, working in a small evangelical church leading music and trying to not be outed as a leftist and an exvangelical. Interested in movies, Lego, urbanism, fantasy football, and craft beer with a new budding hobby of cocktails. Grew up in Champaign though, so by default I’m into college sports as well.

Another MN reddit transplant, loving it here so far. Been following the news sources of the evolving dumpster fire and am overjoyed at the solidarity of the community.

I have many hobbies I cycle through like a merry-go-round. I'm a sucker for stringed instruments, Minecraft, neurodivergence, and lately a lot of plants and Zelda.

Peace and love y'all! I'm excited to be here.

Howdy all. Think I'm figuring out how Lemmy and the Fediverse works. Neat stuff. Hoping to see midwest.social take off as reddit implodes.

HI! I guess I'll just c/p my Masto intro in here...

I’m argentcorvid most other places (not Instagram though, that person is not me) I hang around on metafilter and reddit I don’t plan on posing much.

American living in Rural Central Iowa (Marshalltown-ish). I don’t really post much. He/Him, 2 kids, currently catless.

ADHD, and in typical fashion I am a serial hobby-haver. Currently collecting and refurbishing Vintage Coleman Lanterns, other interests include Home Brewing, cooking, smoking, motorcycling.

currently working as a Product Development Testing Technician (that means I break stuff on purpose) for a large company. Before that I was in the Navy.

edit: my mastodon is @argentcorvid@mstdn.social

Chicago resident, pizza enthusiast, web3 maximalist, excited to break free of Reddit 🤙

hi from Peoria, IL. Been here about 6 months and just found the docs, lol. Thanks to all you admin types driving. Good times.

Lemmy docs

Hello everyone. I'm from S.E. Michigan, north of Detroit. I happened across these communities by accident. I don't like to troll or harass. I was raised with old morals, treat others as you would like to be treated, respect is not given, it is earned and so on.

Hope ya'll have a great day.

Hey everyone. I’m a lemm.ee refugee too, looking forward to learning and building community here. Is Denver the midwest? No matter how many here vehemently deny it, we all know the truth (yes). I’m a recovering anarchist turned revolutionary M-L.

Hi all! I'm a month away from a big move to Lansing, and probably somewhat less than a month away from a big move away from Reddit. This seems like a cool community! I'm curious to see where the Lemmyverse goes from here.

I like programming, cycling, VR, and Star Trek. I'm intermittently into sewing and playing interactive fiction.

Hey! Yooper reddit refugee checking in, was pleasantly surprised to find a midwest-focused instance! Hoping there's another yooper on here, there's not too many of us though :)

I do not-so-exciting software development for a property & casualty insurance company, but try to add spice to my life with lots of bike rides, motorsport, and travel. I'm into nerdy tech and financial topics, Scandinavian culture (am Swedish/Finnish American), and F1. Glad to be here!

I joined Mastodon a bit ago & loving it, so let's give the Reddit equivalent a spin. Chicagoland here.

I have to admit though it's pretty jarring to see self-professed leftists toss around "refugee" casually.

Hello hello. Redfugee, St Paulite, night shift worker in healthcare, vaguely leftist, spend far too much time thinking about ttrpgs and video games. Popped into Beehaw first, but something about this place really drew in in. Maybe we really are as parochial as they say :D

Bloomington IN represent!

I also do all sorts of cooking, tech, miniatures, and just having fun!

And also a r/efugee from for-profit social media site...