I finally made the leap to Lemmy. It's a little confusing, but it's doing a pretty good job of scratching that reddit itch. Some random thoughts:

1. I just need a place to spit out my random thoughts and have random conversations and make random jokes; it's really not that demmanding. Do I miss having 400 upvotes instead of 11? Sure, but the main thing is that I'm communicating with people.

2. Definitely get an app. I'm using Voyager on my phone with a KBM--how I mostly get around.

Big difference from Reddit:

3. Those 400 upvotes come at a cost--posts are dead within a few hours. There's almost no point to leave a new comment in an active thread--nobody is going to see it. And there's also no point in leaving a detailed explanation of anything on reddit for the same reason.

On Lemmy, I'll get replies to posts and comments DAYS later, and people seem more willing to be helpful; maybe because things are less contentious, and maybe it's just people are naturally more helpful to strangers in smaller communities (see cities vs small towns)...

So really, the only downside to lemmy--the small size of the population--ends up being one the best things about it.

4. It's definitely nice not having to compulsively check to see if my comments have been shadowbanned--which happened quite frequently and seemingly without reason on reddit.

5. It's nice to be in a space where I can be more frank about political remedies.

6. It's nice that I can view the comment histories of people I'm talking with to determine if they're an inveterate asshole or just having a bad day (only found one asshole so far).

That's it! 10/10. I'll try not to burn my reddit account in case I have a tough question, but I honestly think a technical question is more likely to be answered on Lemmy with it's small platoon of nerds with little to chew on than the hordes of ignorami on reddit rapidly trying to solve everyone's problem by free associating the title of the post.