How many Lemmings do you know IRL?

None. Although I've never asked

0 and I hope I never meet any of you.

I know myself.

Or do I?
- X-Files theme
- Vsauce intensifies

I've never met anyone in person who's even heard of Lemmy. Well, at least whenever it's brought up 😅

Lemmy? I can’t even get them off the goddamned Facebook.

Ha, I have a few of those myself

Trick question. I'm the only real user on the internet. Nice try.

Dead internet fact
That's what the bot would say.
Everyone else is an agent in this honeypot

Buddy, I don't even know myself.

Any time I’ve brought it up everybody glazes over the first time I say the words “instance” or “federated.” I’ve tried the email analogy, but they lose interest immediately.

Call them "communities", not "instances", that might work better
- This made me think about my struggles with trying to learn moves in fighting games.
  
  The tutorial can’t tell me the move with actual button combinations. No. Instead I have to read it as punch + kick + grab first. And because I’m a friggin’ noob, I have to try to interpret what buttons those actions are.
  
  How is this relevant? It really isn’t, the more I think about it. Bad comparison. Ah well. At least you know how sad I am at fighting games now.
- Perhaps there's a better term, because "communities" already means something else here. Last thing we need is another Discord-calling-groups-'servers' mess.
  
  "Homes" could be alright? or even "towns"?
Yeah it's an annoying stumbling block. Blue Sky "fixed" that by only having one instance.

It feels like there should be a sign up page that just gives users a default instance (randomly selected from the top 10 maybe), to avoid the problem.
- Blue Sky "fixed" that by only having one instance.
  
  I suppose we could "fix" it in a similar way by inviting people to a specific instance instead of pointing them at join-lemmy.org.(Although that site has improved massively since the last time I saw it.)
  
  Don't even mention instances or federation, just say "hey you should join me on <favorite instance URL>".
  
  Once they are using it, that's the first hurdle, and they'll notice pretty quickly that there are other servers that all (mostly) talk to each other.
Magic box is magic. Anything else hurts most people's brains.

In a way, it's impressive we got this far technologically before we started losing the plot, considering we evolved for the pointy-sticks-and-fire level.
Try 'non corporate reddit that isn't full of bots, and you can block assholes.'

2 in my local area. It's how I found out about it. We have been slowly growing the community.

Heck yeah!

Oh God I would never admit this to anyone IRL

Haha, I stop short of giving them my username

Seen with my own eyeballs?

2

But I'm pretty sure they post to Mastadon and it is visible here on Lemmy. Or maybe they have accounts on Lemmy.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Just my husband, but not sure he counts as he doesn’t have an account. I did meet one of my closest friends on Reddit though.

There seems to be 3 forum platforms.

Lemmy
Reddit
Gab

I hear about reddit on the radio and people talk about reddit. No one talks about the other two.

Interesting. This is the first I heard of Gab
- Gab's exclusively for nazis.

0, and happy to keep it that way.

Zero. However I would be interested in seeing anyone in real life. I feel like it would go do in Lemmy history.

I have at least 3 friends IRL that are on Lemmy. One of them I got to join, and two are friends I met doing mutual aid and other organizing projects. Later found out they're on here.

You are the only person so far that knows someone else's on Lemmy and you aren't reason they joined or vis-versa
- Huzzah! I know a bunch of geeks and radicals, so maybe that's why.
Woah very cool. Excuse my ignorance but is "mutual aid" a term for helping out your neighbor? Which is something people have always done but it often sounds like when people use the term "mutual aid" it is a bit more organized. Does that ring true for you?
- Yeah, that's pretty much it. "Mutual aid" is meant to be distinct from "charity" which has a different kind of implication. Mutual aid is more about "we help each other". Charity can absolutely be organized, but tends to be more "structured" than mutual aid efforts.

Zero. I know a couple of you nerds live in Philly and that terrifies me. I also know the reverse is true. This is the game we have agreed too.

Oh shoot, I'm not so far from you. I live more south of Allentown, but work closer to Philadelphia.
It's terrifying that some folks don't live in Philly? I have spent a good bit of time in Philly myself. You have been warned.
- No, it's because I live in Philly!

Zero. I think one lives near me based on some posts they made (as in near the same major city, could still be hours away). Another mentioned going to the same convention I go to every year but it's a massive convention that brings in people from all over the world. The two friends I have that used RIF is fun for Reddit back in the day switched to the official app instead of trying alternatives.

No. No one else, which is great.

None, as far as I know.

None, and that's probably a good thing. And also really not unexpected given how small the platform is.

Just my partner and I.

Big fat goose egg 0. A lot of people I talk to don't even know what Reddit is, really.

None. I normally don't give out my social media to people IRL, so there's no way they'd know I'm on Lemmy not I know they're on here either.

My partner was on it for like a minute but I don't think they use it anymore. Certainly not as much as I do.

I have had people who I know from other platforms come across me on Lemmy. Just got a DM the other day saying "Found you", we had a good laugh about it since we didn't know we both used Lemmy. However IRL I don't think anyone I know is nerd enough to be on Lemmy.

No. No one else, which is too bad.

Just my wife, who downloaded the app for me and subscribed to instances because it's too complicated and effort

Yeah that's certainly a weakness of signing up for the fediverse (Lemmy, mastodon, etc).

one of my friends uses lemmy

Two. The friend who sent me here and a friend I sent here.

None

I convinced one person to make an account but they don't use it. I do know another person IRL who uses Mastodon, so i send them Lemmy stuff there

None. Even trying to suggest Mastodon, still no luck which I just stopped as I'm just exhausted of hearing the answer "no".

I tell many people about it, probably none have signed up but it's not my business to know their username if they have. Might be fun to meet some of you.

I am morbidly curious what the average Lemming is like.

So far I don't think I've met anyone

PS. According to the subscribers of the Greek community, there are probably less than 70 Greeks online on lemmy (and probably some of them live abroad), so it's probably rather rare to find someone who uses it.

None here, had never thought about that. Now I feel lonely.

You have all of us and the Lemmy shenanigans. It's a pretty lively bunch.

I know one.

I know one who I stumble upon once in a while in the comments, we say hi to each other

Not a single one.

0

I have one friend that suggested him to use it, he tried it, he doesn't use it a lot, does it count?

Sure, I'll add you to the tally

Just one

Ha I'll add 0.5 to the count

0.5. One friend found my lemmy account when scouring the internet for TTRPG maps. I think that halfway counts, even if he doesn't have an account of his own.

I know some people using that big social network Lemmy-like. But none of them came to here.

I'm your neighbor.

Oh hi mark

-4

You know 4 people that left Lemmy?
- no they're just negative people