Non-tech background. I'm a book editor and when the Snoopocalypse happened, most of the niche communities I was a part of were shut down in protest, so I decided to give Lemmy a try. Loving it so far, as it seems way less toxic.

It's been years since I reread this and I still call her "Pants".

Agreed! I've come across a couple of writing communities here, but they're still just starting out. Hopefully we'll be able to grow these communities. 🤞

That doesn't even remotely surprise me coming from Amazon, inflating itself with garbage.

I totally agree on giving Bookwyrm a chance. To be honest, I had no clue what a "fediverse" was until a week ago, but I'm fascinated and inspired by the idea of it. I am loving all of these new, interesting platforms that aren't run by some soulless billionaires who care more about ad revenue than actual content or users' interests.

You're right not to trust anyone. I stopped trusting GR when it started exclusively "recommending" books that were popular on Tiktok. It was a swift and merciless breakup.

I think it's still in need of some development, but it does the job well. And I love the lack of useless bells and whistles.

Tokophobia.

I'm liking Bookwyrm, it's simple and straightforward. Granted, I'd love to give Storygraph another go, but it really seemed to hate me and my phone 😅 I really liked their recommendations.

I really wanted to like Storygraph, but it constantly crashed on me. :(

So true about the long-winded reviews nowadays. I feel like they're one of three templates lately: grade school book report ; "omg yas best book ever" with descriptive gifs ; or pure vitriol. I miss when GR reviews were actually helpful.

As for Bookwyrm, that was one of the main reasons I made this post, because it didn't seem like there were many users, but the app itself is slowly growing on me.

I'm enjoying the lack of bullshit and bells and whistles. Sometimes it's a tiny bit buggy, like randomly logging me out or crashing while loading a book, little things like that, but I'm liking it enough to give it a proper chance.

I think that's what I'm essentially looking for at this point. I used to love GR for the reviews, but I guess I've just reached my saturation point with the platform in general.

And I so wanted to like Storygraph, but it kept crashing on me. :(