Stardew Valley

• Subscribed to lots of communities of things I like
• Posting and commenting to create more content (or even just reposting others' content) instead of just scrolling by uses more time, especially when you feel obligated as a mod (!otomegames@ani.social, !automationgames@lemmy.zip, !videogamesuggestions@lemmy.zip, !bunnies@lemmy.world, would love for Lemmy to grow and folks with more knowledge of those subjects to take mod from me. I'm just here to try to make activity happen and remove spam. Want to avoid the pitfalls of powermodding, or more frankly being called names by people over it given the way people react to Reddit mods, so the sooner someone passionate could take it from me the better, especially as my real life picks up and I have less time for Lemmy)
• Having things going on in real life so you have less time for online scrolling, so less content does not feel as bad because you're checking in less often too
• Holding the view that it is nice to check into a community and see their thoughts but you do not need floods of content to scroll or even necessarily want to be constantly engaging with social media
• I'd rather a dearth of content than the outrage I left Reddit over (for me it was sorting Home by Controversial with no way to take it back). While Lemmy is not purposefully trying to rank outrageous things higher, the fact remains there is a Hot/Top sorting that we can change and outraging things naturally generate more engagement—I have noticed myself typing multi-paragraph posts over things that anger me and quickly deleting them because I decide the fight it might spawn isn't worth it, way more than I type multi-paragraph posts about things I like. So outrage still gets lots of engagement. Lots of politics in the All feed. I already engage with it in real life in my small way, put my little drop in the big ocean of hopefully trying to make change, and don't want to spend more time being angry and stressed about it (especially since doomscrolling politics online leads me to inaction that helps nobody; when my diet of politics is strictly controlled I take more action). In short, not carefully curating my feed and allowing in everything Lemmy posts (frankly, lots of politics) would deal me psychic damage. I get exposed to opposing viewpoints in real life and online just fine, no need to get the most inflammatory, ad-hominem edition of them (sorry Lemmy, I do share most of the Lemmy hivemind views, but I dearly hope I'll never reply to someone with "bootlicker" or any other number of insults; while I understand civility above all else is damaging I think there is a difference between my nobody self adhering to my personal values of civility and politeness in interactions with other nobodies while still trying to take meaningful actions towards change in real life, and politicians who fail to treat what is going on today as far more than just a breach of decorum) when I'm trying to relax.

So why do I want to help Lemmy grow while also not wanting to be on it 24/7? I valued Reddit as a source of knowledge (or at least a jumping-off point to start), sort of a platform for hobbyists to gather and share knowledge and socialize, and I saw it turn into a we-want-to-keep-you-scrolling-forever outrage machine. I'd like that old Reddit back, in a more open-source, community-owned way. Alas, I'm no expert who can offer well-written posts or amazing original content, but I am stubborn and willing to keep posting every so often to at least try to help out.