Instead of escaping out a tunnel in my cell wall, I knocked out a guard. I put on the uniform. I work here now

I'd say these three

• Sharing memes and clip highlights with the streamer communities I care about
• Learning new things from tech specific communities
• Troubleshooting to figure out if there's a solution someone already derived or share my own for those who end up with the same problem

This is how I've used Reddit

A lot of learning and reading. I spent most of my time on Reddit just lurking and reading things, but I can't help but notice the overall higher quality of conversation here. I'm pretty happy.

In general, responses and knowledge from actual humans with experience on the topic I'm looking for, in this age of generated SEO results and AI, that information is more valuable to me.

Niche stuff. I mostly came to reddit for discovering interesting/weird/rare plants and the best way to care for them. Googling has become absolute dogshit with obviously generated articles that are just parroting the same information (which for niche plants, can be false, speculation, and even harmful).

I'm in a couple of Discord communities (which have jumped up in activity in the last couple of days), but those communities are a bit harder to find that four year old post about "what does this type of growth mean", or something similar.

I also used reddit for tracking technology issues in much the same way - very specific, hard to locate issues that only a few people might be experiencing and talking about in a searchable way. Everything from video games, to work related technologies.

My need that I want to fill is a bit unrealistic and unfair to expect but... everything.

What made Reddit slowly morph from just another interesting webpage for amusement to a place where I spend a lot of my time and rely upon for so many things was how it slowly came to intersect with everything.

It became a kind of a separate google when you didn't get much joy from traditional web searching. It was a place to feel one belonged but at the same time a place for anonymity when I wanted it (at least to other Redditors anyway), a place for serious discussion and pointless shitposting seeing news as it unfolded but also stupid cat videos.

It was a placeholder for every niche you could think of so if you were trying out a new hobby, or watching a new show, or starting a new career, or trying new software there was always a sub for it.

Lemmy and other alternatives theoretically could do that, but, it'd be hard. Reddit couldn't really do that because of a great design, it just naturally progressed that way when it had more and more people in one place. That centralisation was it's flaw and it's strength so it's a difficult line for any would be successor to straddle. Ultimately though I think, if nothing ever does pull that off, Reddit ultimately created the need for Reddit and we were all fine before it and should be fine after.

The comments from knowledgeable individuals - frequently involved in the post itself. How often did I read of an astronomical paper, only to have one of the authors comment. Or read about some random fact about plumbing or medicine or whatever, and an academic or professional from the field would offer further insight

Not to mention the spectacular recommendations in various areas: whenever I'm in the market to buy literally anything, I'll search for the best of it on Reddit. The amount of high-quality information available on Reddit is not easily replaced. For that reason, I'll probably continue making such enquiries there, even if I do give up on Reddit in every other way

1. Same point on burning time
2. Specific in-depth discussion on hobbies and interests
3. Humor (the kind I like)

Primarily authentic opinions on things that I want some input for, like products, experiences etc. Also gaming communities for seperate games.

So many things. All the baking and cooking subs for inspiration and advice, my country's sub for daily banter (made plenty of IRL friends through that) and all the subs dealing with people and relationships (relationship_advice) to see what people from all walks of life are struggling with.

Creative posts and some "historical" lessons, like how being a hivemind isn't exactly too good of an idea for communities in Reddit...

Help was there when you needed it, even for niche software or usecases there was more often than not someone who had already asked the question or who could help. This has been invaluable every time I've tried something new (eg. Making a static website, learning Spanish, switching to Linux.)

I used reddit for news, socializing, and discussion/debate. along with niche hobbies/interests. I'm not sure how much the fediverse stuff can replace that lol. we'll see.

Excellent shitposting memes, I hope that community proliferates here

Most Google search involves the "Reddit" keyword, it's really getting in my way now that most subs are private! One of the reasons why I don't like the "delete all your own comments" thing people seem to be doing

For me, reddit killed hobby forums. I'm hoping lemmy can take it's place. I'm partular I'm looking for computer networking and infrastucture, and Judo/BJJ

amazing circlejerk subs

Mostly killing time in various situations. I do have a set of subreddits that I gravitate to for some news type situations, but honestly it's a pretty large time sink that I've really had my eyes opened to since yesterday. Hoping to find a happy medium between that and quitting this type of content entirely.

I went from the rough equivalent of graduating with a 1.5gpa in high school and suicidal to making a grand total of 1 application and getting into a top 10 CS university in the States, literally giving me a second shot at life.

I'm old enough to remember the earlier parts of the internet. I'm talking Prodigy and AOL keywords–the era of "You've Got Mail!" and 14.4k modem speeds. The era of if someone picked up the phone inside the house (the one that was tethered to the wall with a wire) you'd get disconnected and have to go through the logon process again.

At the time, just being able to access anything was a marvel. Then the internet exploded, and in just a couple of years modem speeds were 56k and it was wholly impossible to see it all. Then we saw the rise of one of the first iterations of a link aggregator in a browser tool called StumbleUpon.

I absolutely time-traveled with SU. One click and I was brought to the next quasi-random site that was generally within my predefined interests. This was about 2004-2009.

Then SU stumbled (I can't remember why) and I made my way to reddit. It had done a lot of what SU did, but condensed onto effectively one single page, and the community could vote on whether or not it was "good" and discuss nearly any aspect of the content.

It was that juncture I liked. It was part BBS, part StumbleUpon, and the entirety of the internet conveniently laid out. It didn't try to do too much. At the time, it didn't try to link us together, harvest our data, generate avatars or any of that other goofy shit. It just served all of the internet quickly, and simply.

My oldest reddit account is 11 years old and as reddit grew, I grew with it. I was there for the Chuck Testa memes. I was there for poop knife. I was there for the Coconut. I was there for /u/Hornswaggle rise to fame with 1985 Sweet 1985. That was big deal reddit news at the time.

And I was there for the rise and fall of Alien Blue, from whose ashes rose Apollo. I grew into a heavy mobile user that only third-party apps could keep up with.

I found reddit through the the fall of Digg because I was wandering from the demise of SU. Now it seems I'm cast into the Fediverse.

Hobbies, learning and hopefully a place I can share things I make with people without being called a spammer... At least for a few years.

I’ll co-sign all of that! Niche stuff is why I was on Reddit.

Fitness for FTM guys, my city’s local page, subs for my dogs’ specific breeds, Jewish cooking. The communities that grew organically in n niche spots brought me a lot of joy.

Also hey! Kayaking! If you know of a Lemmy community for it, I’m game! Always nice to run into other paddlers.

Reddit was a place to start the morning and get some news especially on the subs that I moderated. I spent way too much time with it. I am looking forward to friendly engagement of sane people. Reddit had way too much of us vs. them. And their Admins readily bannned all who did not agree with their political and cultural opinions. I enjoy engaging with those who have opinions different than mine, I just do not want them shoved down my throat as I would not force my opinions on others.

I highly valued the discovery of niche communities. Like solo ttrpgs as my current hyper fixation. I always lurked on reddit so I hope to be more involved here. And of course memes.

Definitely number 3. I completely agree that Reddit was great for the niche stuff.

I mean, if not for Reddit, I wouldn't have organised multiple hiking and backpacking trips, sticking up propaganda posters about kayaking.

Solutions to weird and oddly specific problems. If you go looking for a solution to a really weird, seemingly one-off issue with Windows, good luck finding an answer in any Microsoft forum. Put "Reddit" at the end of your search, and you'll find something helpful more often than not.

Also, shitposting. 4Chan and Weekendgunnit levels of shitposting.

Definitely want to continue the game threads for NBA/NFL games. It's really fun to have a small community of people you can shit talk with especially when they aren't around in person

Community/togetherness -- Since leaving Reddit, I feel more 'lonely'? Being here definitely scratches the social-itch.
Positivity -- Wholesome people and productive conversations.
Humour -- Some of the comments/posts on Reddit were wonderfully dry and/or edgy. One that made me giggle recently: "Avoid being misgendered at checkout by not paying :)"
News -- Following centrist/neutral subreddits, and r/outoftheloop was great too.
Niche interests -- As said in OP!

I think the only issue we may have is niche interests -- the other points are not contingent on 'size'. Loving what's here so far <3

music discovery/discussion. I found so much cool music on reddit communities for bands or genres I like

resources for learning about & discussing some of my hobbies and interests like FOSS software, Linux, gaming, guitar etc

communities for people local to the city/state I live in

The random really cool people that show up in the comments

these are the main things I care about, until a reddit alternative can provide this I'm going to stay mostly or frequently on reddit.

-somewhat reliable news headline feed from relatively neutral, serious center-right to center-left sources with little to no bad reporting/framing.
-reliably hear about social trends, but with some distance to them
-news discussion with some degree of different perspectives, some expertise, so it's not just all left to the popularity of the headline.
-discussion of movies and tv that is neither too fanboyish/popular leaning nor too indie/arthouse exclusive.
-collections of helpful pro-consumer information and resources, up to date megaposts in hobby communities
-a search function that will often enough lead to some helpful comments for most topics, googling "reddit xyz" was my go to for many years
-feeds for some types of videos, like publicfreakout, livestream clips.
-some communities that are more personal to me, like from my country or a political meme community, for venting and in-group discourse.
-control over what i see in my feeds, most recommendation algorithms and trending tabs just don't work for me
-control over where I engage with content and in what form it's presented, often I take a break from scrolling social media except for seeing some top posts in my rss feed. at some point I just want AI to read out summaries of all that stuff to me and actually visit website interfaces way less often myself.