I think it’s a boon that we’re a tiny fraction of Reddit’s size. Reddit is something like 30+ million MAUs and Lemmy dropped recently from 62k to ~50k. We’re a grain of sand compared to Reddit, and I think the community is better for it.
Lemmy isn’t really a Reddit alternative. We’re too small to have niche thriving communities, and depend 100% on sorting your feed by “all” or “local” to get new content. What’s nice is it feels like one close knit community vs closed off micro communities inside of subreddits.
I get exposed to more things this way oddly enough- viewing content I normally wouldn’t in favor of my smaller selection of subreddits. People are more polite, more informative, and far more original with their comments.
Keep on doing your thing, everyone! We’re building something different here.
The niche interest groups are what I miss from reddit - I’m out of the loop for several things now I don’t lurk in the respective subs any more. I think I’ll start using their RSS feeds so I don’t miss out too much.
Memes are just easy to consume and upvote, so I understand them becoming popular. I’ve got multiple duplicate accounts with different communities added/blocked so can get the memes only when I choose.