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Why Does Nobody Use Lemmy? (byte21516.xyz)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/fediverse@lemmy.world
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This is not going to be a blogpost about "Why do people still use Reddit instead of everyone moving to Lemmy?". I noticed that even with Mastodon users, who already understand and like the advantages of decentralized platforms, the usage of Lemmy is extremely small, and more people use Reddit. Most of them haven't even heard of Lemmy. To be fair, the Reddit usage also seems to be fairly low.

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[–] 8 points 1 month ago* (9 children)

Just gonna throw this out there: Lemmy is a bad and dumb name.

  1. It's a joke about users being lemmings
    • this subtly denegrates the user on every usage
    • this implies the app/product itself isn't that serious and sounds kinda childish
  2. It's not a satisfying word from a pronunciation standpoint. How many other company or product names can you think of that end with that ee sound? Reddit, Twitter, Threads, they all end with these conclusive consonant sounds. Lemmy sounds like it's trailing off while whining.
  3. At best it conjures up images of rat like rodents.
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  • [–] 20 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    I don't think you're wrong but I question how much the name really matters. As a name, Reddit is also kind of confusing until someone explains the pun and has historically been seen as weird. Only reason it's not weird now is cause it's popular. The name "lemmy" could just as well see the same happen.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago*

    I agree, Reddit's name isn't why people use it, but critically it doesn't hold people back from using it.

    Reddit is a satisfying enough word, doesn't disparage it's users or sound like a childish joke, and doesn't conjure images of rats or rodents.

    I don't love it but it is a much better name than Lemmy.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    Lemmy say that this whole "name dumb" thing is idiotic and completely subjective anyway. You should really go outside and take a look at the names of products people use.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    No, you're confusing partially subjective with completely subjective and the two are vastly different.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    And somehow magically all corporate product names land the one you want and all fediverse or FOSS inventions land the one you don't? Come on it's a quite common, low-hanging fruit complaint. Besides, the domain space for naming things is unpredictable.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago

    And somehow magically all corporate product names land the one you want

    No, it's not magic, it's called marketing, market research, and psychology. There are literally billions of dollars that go into advertising, do you think they just magically come up with names?

    all fediverse or FOSS inventions land the one you don't

    Literally never once claimed that. Mastodon is a little long but at least it's satisfying and conjures up images of a big fuzzy creature instead of a rodent.

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