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

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

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

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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. 😂

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.

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!

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 @[email protected].

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 @[email protected]. Thanks!

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.

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.

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!

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!

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, 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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

@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.

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

Great to see you on BE: 0.18.3 Lemmy progress

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

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!

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

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!