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The feed is simply a reflection of what people submit and engage with. You have two choices:
It's that simple
Probably because they're easy to make, so there's a lot of traffic there.
I think the real question is "why does the content I see not reflect what I want to see", and I'd guess that that's most-likely because you're browsing "All", which combines all traffic from all communities on any instances that anyone on your home instance, mander.xyz, subscribes to. This is, for any given person, unlikely to be specifically what they are interested in.
I'd generally suggest finding a list of communities that you are interested in, subscribing to them, and then having your webpage/client/whatever set to show "Subscribed" rather than "All".
If you want a convenient way to browse a list of communities on all instances (even ones that nobody on your home instance has subscribed to yet
you can be the first one!), I recommend https://lemmyverse.net/ and clicking on "Communities". If you see one you like, say, !strategy_games@piefed.world, then just search for it on your home instance (like, the text [!strategy_games@piefed.world](/c/strategy_games@piefed.world)), and if your home instance doesn't know about it yet, it'll tell your home instance about it. Then subscribe to it, and traffic there will show up when you browse "Subscribed".
EDIT: Note that Mbin and PieFed communities are, somewhat-unintuitively, shown in their own lists, probably because the three software packages don't provide the same pieces of information about communities and lemmyverse.net wants to let you be able to search using all available search criteria, rather than just the least-common-denominator stuff. If you want to search for communities on Mbin or PieFed, select those from the menu in the upper left.
Memes are my love language.
I don't like anime, I don't demand that the endless anime pages close so I don't have to see them on all, I just make good use of the block button.
I block anime subs. I block furry subs. I think they should exist. I just don’t need them. Let people enjoy things, it doesn’t mean you have to.
Because it's what people post? If that's not your preference - which I can completely understand; I'd like more substantive content too - either post the content you want to see, encourage others to do so and / or block the communities or users that you don't want to see content from.
I'm kind of sad this thread has so much thoughtful discussion and so few memes.
Wouldn't it be better to have more serious threads and less memes that hint at political/news arguments?
No. It would not. There's plenty of thoughtful discussion to find here, but the memes are the joyful cascade that carries us between thoughtful discussions.
Wouldn't it be better to have more serious threads and less memes that hint at political/news arguments?
Wouldn't it be better to let people enjoy what they want and block the communities or posters who have content you don't like?
by default Lemmy's home page displays what people are sharing (the 'All' option). That's why my own Lemmy home page only display the content I'm subscribed to (no meme, or barely any)
As for the other part of your question why and how would people be forced to use memes? Memes are very low-effort, it's to be expected they gather more traction than more demanding type of contents.
Memes are very low-effort
Funny you should say that, I've spent like 4-5 hours revising a kinda niche vampires meme for posting soon. But yeah, most memes are a lot lower effort.
Indeed I should have been more specific and you're right: most of them are, not all.
Fast content takes less time than consume, so gets up votes faster than longer content. More people are likely to look at something that take 3 secs than 10 mins to read, this there's no barrier to even begin consuming it.
Memes good.
You ask 'wouldn't it be better' if there were less memes
The community, through it's posting, voting, and reposting, has chosen Memes regardless of whether it'd be better.
A lot of answers in here say "that's how the fediverse works, people post what they want and engage with what they want, what they don't want they can unsubscribe or block to curate their own feed, to avoid seeing parts of what the collective is sharing/talking about when using memes".
What you're describing requires unilateral control over what content various communities will engage in. It doesn't matter if that's what people like, so much as it's what people continue to choose. If they like it, great. If they don't, they'll either curat their feed and not have a clue what you're talking about regarding memes on the Frontpage, or they aren't bothered or even like the memes on the Frontpage and aren't looking to seek out more nuanced discussions and serious threads.
The community, through it’s posting, voting, and reposting, has chosen Memes regardless of whether it’d be better.
So why are people choosing memes over more serious discussions?
I don't know. My assumption is that they're easier to put together than well thought out titles and clear discussion lines, and there's a certain level of inherent 'safety' in posting a picture/meme that does a lot of the heavy lifting for you for a joke. Not that I don't like them, just that that's my read of why they choose them over discussion
Heat rises and some memes are fire.
Easier to spend 3 seconds reading a meme and updooting it then 3 minutes reading a article and doing the same. Don't use all if you're looking for high brow/non-sensational content.
I disagree, most memes have elaborated descriptions longer than the average title
What six paragraph memes are you reading?
hey, if you want a feed of lemmy communities that aren't focused on memes, politics, or tech, look at this: https://piefed.social/f/highsignal
Your question is confusing because:
Can you put an edit at the bottom of this, something like:
""" Edit: When I said frontpage, I mean the page that initially loads, the one that shows your subscribed channels or if you have none "All". """
I block all meme communities. It really cleans up the feed
It's an inevitable outcome of its structure. With memes, it's usually just the low-information image, which is typically visible from the post listing. There's no article to read, no video to watch (or just a very short one), no question to think about, and you can upvote it straight from the post listing, so there's not even a link to click. In other words, memes have a very low barrier-to-upvote compared to other types of posts, and as a result, are more likely to get upvotes and end up on the front page.
For serious conversation what you really want is a forum or only join communities on Lemmy where memes are frowned upon.
I personally use Lemmy for 2 things really, tech/foss/privacy news & discussion, and as a social media replacement (memes). When I used to be on the crappy socials, I would only really use them for memes, and left when I started to care more about privacy rights. The very first community I followed was 196 when they migrated away from reddit, so it was essentially what I came here for initially, and then found that the whole platform was miles better for discussion as well.
Quick answer is that memes and shitposts get upvoted more than discussion, which is why it appears in your Hot/Top/Active sorted feed.
Look at my post history if you like. My top scoring ones are memes and the more discussion and text only posts tend to get only a bit of traction. I think the number of votes is also affected by how many people are subscribed, people cannot upvote it if they or their instance don't see it.
If you want a "mostly discussion" feed with less memes and shitposts, try looking around for discussion focused communities (my local one is !actual_discussion@lemmy.ca), subscribe to a bunch and then make your default page the "Subscribed" feed. That way you can switch between what's trending on Lemmy in general (All/Local) and what new posts are coming up with your realm of interest (Subscribed).
I block most communities that aren't mostly memes.
Memes are even worse than short vids.
