From Chicago. I made the plunge to Mastodon (and here) after the Reddit shenanigans and just seeing the repeated bad-faith policies by Twitter. I have been using redirector and libredirect for the last month or two to actively decide who I give my data to just as a fun experiment into best practices.

I think it's slowly starting to be clear that this type of setup will be the way forward for the more tech-savvy, privacy-focused users, and hopefully/eventually it hits the mainstream as well, but otherwise, it's just self-selecting into the type of people I want to be around, which will probably be better for my mental health anyways.

I'm into cycling, trading, sci-fi and FOSS. Currently reading The Expanse and taking a sabbatical year from work

Edit: Just want to encourage people to engage w/ and create content over the next few weeks. Activity and friendly faces are probably the most determining factor in whether someone becomes an active user or just browses for a few minutes

Hi y'all! I'm from Indiana. Nice to meet you all!

Hi there from Madison, WI! I am the developer of Voyager :)

Hello, 9thSun here. Chicago resident. Boost for Reddit stopped working so I wanted to check out Lemmy. Hella into technologies.

From a Wisconsin Exurb of the Twin Cities. I am an astronomer and instrumentation physicist, most of my day job is debugging software and electronics. But sometimes it is looking at galaxies and exoplanets. I am getting back into running after an injury and am currently reading about political economics.

Good morning, midwestern Lemmites! Actually a Hexbear refugee, I got banned when they found out I organize with Trotskyists. Don't worry though, my IRL organizing work creates enough personal irritation that I don't need to harass people who disagree with me in order to get it. I'm just here cuz its a leftish space of localish people, who post memes and stories I can comment on. I like Music, art, videogames, tech, books (history, social theory, sci fi)...well I actually have too many hobbies and interests to list. Thanks for letting me in your little instance!

Hello! Crushed by the Reddit/Apollo debacle and looking for something less…corporate. Glad I found Lemmy!

I live in central Iowa and am a techno nerd - I like self hosting, docker, home labbin’, home automation, and home AV.

Hi everyone. I showed up here because I saw Seahorse at the Akron pride fest with his awesome flag, told some of my likeminded friends about it, and they found his post. I showed up to applaud him, and decided to just stick around.

I used to use Reddit, with a very carefully curated list of subreddits, which I used replace my Twitter constant stimulation requirement. I had to ditch Reddit the day they killed Apollo and won’t be returning unless they reverse that decision.

I’m happy to have found this place, it’s nice.

I’m from Akron Ohio, work (remotely) in tech (job based in San Francisco), and do not like cops, landlords, or the ruling class really.

I feel like I’d fit in here pretty well.

Hi everyone!

I live in Chicago on the North Side and work in higher education. Been in the city on and off for about 10 years with a gap in the middle when I lived in Asia. I came to Chicago for grad school and really liked the city and the Midwest more generally.

I have been pretty active in the Fediverse for the past year on Mastodon, Pixelfed, and Bookwyrm and decided to give this a try! I'm also trying Kbin as well but really am not understanding the whole Threads + Microblogging. Feels kind of like a having a phone taped to a toaster. Am I the only one who feels that way?

Any good, active communities you might recommend? Any tips to make the most out of Lemmy?

I like reading a lot. I'm into fantasy, sci-fi, philosophy, and religion. I'm really interested in environment, ecology, and climate issues. Always looking for new things to explore in Chicago and the surrounding suburbs.

Hello, I'm void. Lifelong Michigander; catch me weekly dancing at R1 GLC. Other interests include free software, metal and industrial concerts, bio implants, and fermented foods—both homebrew and vegan goodies.

Hi everyone, another Chicagolander here, this time from the western suburbs. I just moved over here from kbin.social, which has been broken quite a lot lately. Prior to that I was on reddit for an embarrassingly long time, bailing on it when the shit hit the fan last summer.

I'm also on Mastodon where I post very infrequently - I prefer the link aggregator with comments style services such as Lemmy over microblog things.

I'm a middle-aged immigrant dude who is into a lot of nerd shit like scifi, books, video games, electric vehicles, as well as photography and motorcycles. I also ride bicycles for fun and exercise when the weather doesn't suck.

Hi all, just joined. I live a bit north of Milwaukee. I've enjoyed perusing the local communities to see what my neighbors are up to.

Hello 30 year old central Missourian. Had a Reddit and Imgur account, left Reddit at the last purge of subs and users. Have been using Imgur exclusively since then. Not quite the same, except for it also slowly getting worse as they monetize it. I enjoyed woodworking, blacksmithing, leatherworking, ren-faires (shocker given those previous two), and cooking. Past tense as I now have a 1 year old and there's no time for anything besides work and parenting a baby/toddler with my spouse. Wasn't planning to interact much, as agreeing to a popular opinion isn't helpful and I don't have time for arguing something pointless, however a post below reminded me that I should, as engagement does help grow this new platform. An attempt will be made.

Greetings! My name is Matt and I live in Indianapolis. I'm migrating over from a single-user instance. You can also find me over at @leopardboy@netmonkey.xyz. Thanks!

Hello all, I'm a network engineer currently living in Grand Forks, ND, but from Sioux Falls, SD, and planning to move to Minneapolis in a few months.

I've been off Reddit since they killed 3rd party apps and figured I should finally replace it with something else.

Hello from Kansas (burbs of Kansas City).

Like many, I came from reddit. Spent about 10 years there; about 5 just lurking, then about 5 years a little more engaged.

My hobby is hobbies. I think I just like learning and tinkering. My list of endeavors includes photography, diy audio, camping, cooking/smoking, woodworking, beer brewing, gardening, music (making and consuming), home diy, etc, etc.

Some lasted, some did not, others come and go.

So many times Ive had a nuanced question posed to a community of enthusiasts yield 1000% better results than several hours of searching and reading. I'm looking forward to exploring and interacting here.

I'm a new Lemmy user, teacher, and cyclist from the St. Louis area. Hello everyone!

FemmeGauche here. I'm a lefty millennial in Michigan who can use the internet but new to this decentralized stuff... just trying to find community while asshole billionaires wreck the easier-to-access stuff

Hello! I'm a Wisconsinite soon moving to Minneapolis. Born and raised in western Wisconsin.

Reddit refugee, Clevelander, home theater/surround audio nerd. Nice to be here.

Sup nerds. I'm Miah, I'm from Western Michigan. I'm a UNIX/Linux nerd, Right to Repair advocate, and transgender woman. I've been working on our cars by myself and would love to make some car nerd friends. My wife and I have 24 chickens, and a budding garden.

This is my second try at Lemmy...I got deleted in the whoops a few weeks ago. So far, so good

Howdy. I'm a life-long Ohioan. I was never a Reddit person, but I figured I'd give lemmy a try. I'm on Mastodon as @stinerman@mastodon.social.

Just joined. Also, transitioning away from Reddit. From Pittsburgh (hence yinzer in my user name), then DC area for @ a decade, & last 2 decades in a state run by folks who think the Desantis nuttery is worth emulating. Lefty, divorced dad of 2, who I'm glad inherited the don't sit by quietly but stand up against bullies from their parents.

Nature is my go-to self-care & main hobbies. Nature photography & hiking, nature documentaries, learning about the regions native flora, fauna, geology, & environmental degradation, etc.

Hi there! I'm in Madison and am pretty active on the subreddit. I'm making my way over here slowly but surely. I am in grad school for urban planning. I enjoy talking and debating politics and philosophy, and am active on the Social Democracy subreddit.

Long-time fedi user here. I only ever used reddit for reference purposes since search engines are thoroughly broken, and I am hoping to build myself a feed here that can do some of that same research shortcutting. I don't know how much I'll post, but I'm here!

Reddit (and formerly Digg) refugee from Northeast Indiana.

I am a leftist and an atheist. My hobbies include tech, pc gaming, rock/electronic music (consuming), programming, and recently collecting oldschool smartwatches. I also love cats.

Lemmy.world was having some technical issues, so I decided to make the move to midwest.social. I'm really liking it here so far. What I like most about Lemmy is actually being able to have conversations, rather than having my comments get buried in thousands of other comments.

Hello! I've been using Lemmy for about 2 months now (since the reddit disaster).

I've been trying to find an instance that would be a good fit for me and I'm in Ohio and I just thought this would be the best fit!

Hello, all. I've done a bunch of weird stuff from injecting people with radioactive stuff, a pit stop at writing and publishing fiction, to renting virtual apartments for real money. Currently spend half my time in northern IL, half in southwest OH.

I'm yet another Reddit refugee - you might recognize my username from frequent comments in /r/athensohio, or less frequently /r/Ohio and /r/Columbus - and I made accounts at Beehaw, lemmy.world, and sh.itjust.works before discovering this instance. A whole instance of leftists in the Midwest?!?!!! 🎉 Very excited to have found you all.

My husband (42m) and I (41f) have been together just shy of 20 years and do small engine and outdoor equipment repair from our home garage; he turns the wrenches, I do the admin stuff, and we make small engine repair and enthusiast videos to encourage people to repair, not replace, which is something we're really passionate about.

We have a 16yo trans son, son and I are both bi, and we keep our pride flag up all year long because we've had repair customers mention that it helped them know we were a safe place to bring their equipment. 😕

We've got dogs and cats and live on a few acres outside Athens. Just 2 weeks ago, we received our newly-hatched chickens and guineas, so we're scrambling to get the coop and run done. I'm working on figuring out how to share the feed for the security camera I set up near their enclosure, so let me know if you'd like a link for the Poultry News Network when it goes live. 😂

Hi, it's just me, and thanks so much for having me. I had to migrate, I couldn't abide by the sheer onslaught of typical liberal stuff that began coming in avalanches, lately, and I've got a lot of unlearning to do as I continue to properly educate myself.

I was a little confused a while back at a post where a user complained of being banned, but his post was extremely misleading, so I apologize for my confusion. That cleared right up when he showed up in DMs talking about how weird our good host is.

I appreciate your patience and helping me learn. I'm a little slow on the uptake sometimes, so I appreciate directness. I'll get over hurt feelings, if any are caused by it. Thanks again for allowing me.

reddit refugee here, had been a 12+ year user that started on f7u12 and rage comics, growing up as reddit did… and i, like almost everyone else here, do not recognize it for what it used to be.

anyway! i’m not exactly midwest, as i’m from tennessee, but i am a huge fan of midwest emo (am football, mom jeans, pinegrove, desaparecidos) and i commiserate with the best of them.

i’m into photography, woodworking, building guitars, architecture, design, bicycling, and basketball. so far lemmy has been a huge breath of fresh air!

Most of the comments in here are from 2mo ago, seems like, but I'll give it a shot.

Michigander here. Lived most of my adult life here, but was raised in Illinois and bounced around for a bit in my 20s.

Started out with the standard rural Midwest set of beliefs (plus a few nutty ones like young earth creationism), but after a great many years of transformation I now consider myself a leftist (and/or socialist depending on my mood) and generally progressive dude.

Love me some tech, anime, video games, jazz, ttrpg, and so on with the nerd stuff. I also draw on the odd occasion, even a few commissions under my belt, but don't expect much. No academic or professional training here.

I do have an academic background in Japanese, Psychology, and general Social Science study methodologies, though I work primarily in IT these days.

I look forward to the discussions here!

reddit refugee, 3d printing minneapolitan, technologist and all around tolerant nerd. Heya everyone!

Hello! Another Northern Illinois member here in the 25-35 age bracket. I have some potentially useful knowledge in web development, programming, a good intuition for structural engineering (mostly through woodworking and some 3D printing), and am currently working on some electronics projects.

Technically I'm now a refugee from vlemmy . net (the server suddenly disappeared a few days ago, their donation accounts are suspended/deleted), but before that I was on Reddit where I explored a lot of smaller niche information sharing type communities. I was a mod of a few relatively small communities there under a different name, but have pretty much abandoned the platform since they attacked their power users/mods and started charging exorbitant rates for their API.

Generally, the way I engage:

• I try to follow the paradox of tolerance. I try to be tolerant of others doing/saying anything which does not reduce overall tolerance of society, and when pushing back against intolerant ideology, I aim to politely discuss ideas from a place of logic and reason.
• I tend to engage in discussion of ideas and am happy to discuss hypotheticals that I find interesting. I like to solve problems, and have been known to come up with some atypical (and I'd argue interesting), if often unworkable, solutions/approaches.

I don't have time to devote to moderation/administration, but I'm happy to offer whatever advice I can within my knowledge areas to whoever may ask, such that it is.

Reddit refugee, fediverse newbie, zillennial. Spent some childhood years in Wisconsin and some adult years in Minnesota; plan to go back to MN within a year! Big fan of Tolkien, Studio Ghibli, Makoto Shinkai, metal, folk, and trance music.

Hi, Madison person here, giving this whole Lemmy thing a try. Into city politics, biking, transit. Let's see how it goes.

hi from Peoria, IL. Been here about 6 months and just found the docs, lol. Thanks to all you admin types driving. Good times.

Lemmy docs

This is a reposting from post-data loss:

I grew up in southeast Iowa (Davenport) and live there currently. I studied history (American Colonial Frontier era Indigenous Material Culture) and chemistry (physically) at Wartburg College, and went on to get a Master’s degree in museum studies from Western Illinois University. I always have loved history and the way we share stories of the past.

I am currently working as an independent museum consultant in southeast Iowa, wherein I hop around to small and micro museums to advise them on collections care, curation, education, and marketing. Most of these museums have one or two part time staff members or are all volunteer based. I come in to lend (a reasonably priced) hand with whatever may be holding that museum or historic home from being its best.

My master’s thesis was concerned with use of a Post-Human methodology in combination with New Materialism to provide new perspectives on objects housed in a museum collection. I really tried my advisor’s patience at times with this topic. I now use this approach in my research and work every day.

Outside of this, I am an avid head-fi enthusiast, I play the viola in the local symphony, I’m Lutheran, and I am linux and freeBSD tinkerer. I came to Lemmy following the loss of Apollo and have now really committed to federated social media. I look forward to connecting with some of you in due time!

@seahorse@midwest.social Is there a like a standard amount new people should donate to the server?

Wisconsin native here! Software engineer, League player, and so forth. Came over here after seeing just how egregiously bad Reddit leadership has become.

If anyone wants to refer me, either publicly or via DM, to some nice KC communities, I’d love it!

Great to see you on BE: 0.18.3 Lemmy progress

St. Louis metro area checking in. Long time Reddit user transitioning away from that site. IT guy. Older but not cantankerous (yet) : ) I like board games, playing and listening to music, hanging with the family, gadgets, Linux, 3D printing, homebrewing, blah blah blah.

Just popping in to introduce myself. Lifelong Hoosier, currently in the Indy Suburbs. Used to be a reddit lurker on local subs and a few video game specific subs more than anything. Abandoned ship THERE though because waves around at everything

Wouldn't call myself a leftist nor a centrist. Somewhere in the middle of THOSE, ymmv. Bit of a sports fan, but my teams are all cursed lately. Indy Eleven, Everton, Pacers, Red Wings, St. Louis Cards... all shitty to mediocre. 🤷

When I have free time from work and family, I like video games. Currently playing: A re-play of The Outer Worlds, eagerly waiting on Starfield.

Anyway, howdy. Nice to be on this little corner of the internet...