There was a prophetic podcast episode from the series Plain English a while back that I constantly think about.

In that episode the author describes how the internet is going through a revolution.

Basically 20 years ago, the internet was all about gaining numbers. Companies could operate at a loss if they got people signed up. Facebook, Google, YouTube, Uber, Deliveroo, etc. they were all about getting you in their mailing list or consumer list and who cares what happens then.

Now there’s an issue because that model is not profitable. In order to continue, all the internet is moving towards subscription.

In a sense, I don’t think of that as intrinsically bad. Patreon is a good example. The internet is now filled up with so much shit that people are willing to pay to filter it. So with Patreon, you pay a fee to support an artist to produce the content you want. That itself isn’t a bad idea.

Now that being said, a lot of “bad things” do emerge. The fact that you can no longer buy software like Adobe and it’s all subscription based. That’s shit. But that also inspired software alternatives like Affinity Designer.

Hmmm. If abuse happens, is the right idea to say that “I don’t need this community”?

I’m not sure how that HackerNews comment helps in the slightest. If my university has an obscure basket weaving community and people are getting abused in that community, should I just say “Eh we don’t actually need a basket weaving community”.

It’s also amusing to me that a commenter on a relatively obscure and niche website is complaining that that don’t need (or care about abuse that transpired on) a niche community from another website. And then this comment is echoed in yet another niche community.

Nah this is changing.

This of course is what they said about tablets. Now people are replacing desktop or laptop workflow with tablets, or alternatively tablets are being designed with removable keyboards so the lines are blurred.

I know scientific researchers who now only travel to conferences with tablets instead of their laptops.

Finally, I predict that we’re moving to cloud computing. It’s the natural way. You VPN into a network and your computing is done on a cluster or on a central computer.

The same is already happening for gaming. People are connecting controllers and glasses like the Xreal Air to phones, then networking into a computer to play a desktop game on their phone.

I’m sure this “welcome kit” is meant as a helpful thing but I have to wonder if it is exactly the problem that prevents Lemmy from being adopted.

When someone joins Reddit, they don’t need to read a literal plethora of guides on how to use Reddit. It’s obvious.

What looks like a helpful thing to do is instead going to intimidate and confuse new people.

So ultimately the question is: why isn’t Lemmy obvious to use, and how do we make it so?