I'm quite lost, and don't think I fully understand the distributed nature of the various Lemmy instances (if I'm even using those words properly).

I'll do it like Reddit 10 years ago... wander in, poke around, make a snarky comment or 4 and see where it goes.

Check the sidebar. Name of the community is just “conservative” not anywhere do I see instructions to “only post viewpoints, imaginations, and out of context data that support the conservative worldview and racist dog whistle talking points.”

What? Why would you do that. I bet that’s wildly illegal.

The idea behind this place is pretty cool but I'm with you. Neither this place, nor are the users, ready for migration "today" to flip from Reddit to this experience.

It actually takes effort to understand what to do here. I deal with idiots at work all day, the first hint of effort or difficulty with anything, especially entertainment, people will walk.

Very helpful. I had a longer response typed out but lost it by clicking "next" instead of reply so I'll try to paraphrase. Is there a way to see a listing of instances and their size?

Not sure I get having communities spread across instances, seems like it would be rife for duplication and too spread apart but perhaps that's just the whole "fediverse" concept if I'm understanding that properly.

I created https://lemmy.world/c/paramore but I'm going to hold off on any other community creation until I understand things better and I'm confident I've found my home "country."

Dogs and neighbors come and go, though

I mind it a bit -- I had really gotten into a groove with knowing where to go for certain things. I was also spending way too much time on Reddit even after browsing through everything on value. If I'm scrolling r/all I've clearly crossed over into wasting time.

Yeah... and the odd site/UI bug happens and I don't know if it's me or the site -- that's the only bad part so far!

Thanks my dude! More helpful info.

As for the communities, makes me think like more back to message board driven web times, where yeah you could have a dozen Star Wars fan forums but each with their own flavor and eventually you'd find the one that's your own vibe. I did that and dove head first into a few specific places for retro video games (8/16 bit) and some other niche interests like a specific car model, etc.

There's an upside to it. I hope this approach gains traction, certainly has seen an injection of life from people jumping ship. But I imagine Reddit will keep plodding along in a week or two as there were a staggering amount of people who had a hard time even understanding why people would leave. Hope the blackout helps.

Ah, snap. I see that now, thank you. I may delete and retry?

Jerboa -- we're just adding more made-up words! I think that's the Android app. I'm on iOS. And honestly, maybe it's good I take a break from the Reddit itch, I'm getting so many projects done around the house.

Yeah, I don't think I get how communities are spread across all the instances. I understand you can view them if you go looking, but it seems weird to make it so things can be spread too thin or duplicated.