Its rhe only thing I wish could change about my experience using Lemmy, for more active users in the communities like NFL or NHL and the affiliated team pages of those sports. I haven’t had any social media in decades, my main source for sporting news breaks up until 1-2 years ago was Reddit.
I love the small community that makes up Lemmy. As someone just posted, it feels like a small town community. I like the absence of corporate shills and ads and bots.
Back when I switched from Reddit to Lemmmy, I made an effort to upvote and comment on the NFL and Buffalo Bills communities. I eventually gave up because it was like months of posting, voting and commenting but when I would go back to check the communities, everything would still be sitting at like 2 up votes and 0 comment replies or if it was my own post, 1 upvote and 0 comments. For a majority of cases. Every once in a blue moon I would come accross a post where another user voted or commented but it was never more than me and one other user.
I know there is a certain demographic that uses Lemmy that is mostly driven by the required IT prowess needed to set up, use and even understand the federated concept. I also recognize that this demographic is traditionally disinterested in sports. Im not complaining about this or the users who are on Lemmy. Im also not wishing for any changes be made to aggressively expand Lemmy’s user base. Its just an impractical wish I have so I could get my sports news from the same source I get all my other news.
I will prolly spend more time this coming year settling on a 2ndary source for sports news from sources similar to sleeper app but it would be so nice if the Lemmy sporting communities blew up so I could keep everything aggregated to one source.
Dude. Sports is literally everywhere. It doesn’t need to reach its greedy tendrils into yet another corner of society.
Wow. I didn’t realize so many people here were anti sports. Interesting.
I do miss the sports from Reddit so I still go back for that. But I’ve also decided to try to be the change … So I’ve started to post more in the sports communities around here.
It’s probably the last thing I still go back to Reddit for. Otherwise Lemmy is my go to.
Yeah, the whole “anti-sports” thing always seemed like overcompensation for something? Like if you don’t like sports (I don’t, for the most part), then just don’t watch them.
It’s strange when people get like actively hostile about the existence of sports.
F1 sometimes reaches the frontpage
European sports on Lemmy are a lot more active than American ones
Everyone’s already hit the high points.
Sports fanbase tends to not be a tech base, which Lemmy primarily is.
Sports are paywalled to hell and back, the userbase here is far more inclined to avoid paywalls and the content behind it.
People dislike the celebrity gossip and stuffed suits surrounding sports.
My own personal disregard for sports leans more towards the dislike of the monied celebrity of the entire genre, the worship of the players, and the pointless obsession and discussion of things like stats that have all the meaning of dowsing rods. But that’s literally just my opinion and obviously plenty of people feel otherwise.
It does feel like a small town. Most small towns don’t have pro sports teams, though.
Oh shit this reminds me of a discussion I had on here a while ago when I found out there are only 40,000 daily active users on average and realizing that it was less than half of th capacity of highmark stadium. So yeah, Lemmy does have that small town vibe but its more of a small geographic community like, for example, New England or Western New York. I can go to any Bills game with 80,000 other fans and I can take a piss or grab a beer without running into someone I know. Its exactly the same with Lemmy too.
Try being into less mainstream sports. It’s like me and one other guy talking to each other over on [email protected]
That’s awesome. Happy to join.
It’s the middle of the current tournament-- great time to be watching!
When the sports centric folk start appearing here in large numbers so will a lot of the garbage that comes with having a non tech userbase.
Easy enough to block the sports communities from your feed if you browse c/all if you dont like them. I say someone set up the sports communities and start posting articles to see if we can get more adoption by the sports folks over here. I dont have the patience for sports but more users is good. Some sports people are obnoxious but some certainly aren’t (Bill Bppurr comes to mind) and userbase growth is needed.
I was hoping to post more often in the SF Giants instance. But with this post. I will try again. We need more sports options outside of Reddit.
As a Canadian, it’s the one place I can go to Canadian communities and not be completely buried by fucking hockey. Even this whole elbows up thing is fucking terrible. I get why. I understand that people have been indoctrinated to this and it’s part of their identity here. I don’t understand why it has to be absolutley everywhere though.
I’m not a sports guy, I’m pretty anti-sports actually (I can go on absolutely unhinged TED talks about how the local teams are trying to drain the city for taxes… I want to continue, so feel free to ask but not doing it here.) But I agree with you on the niche hobbies and local flavor.
I still have to use Reddit because there hasn’t been a good community for local on Lemmy (yes, I know everyone going “it’s user generated” but I’m like 1 of 5 instead of the hundreds still on reddit) and small hobbies in a lot of the crafting world is non-existent on Lemmy.
I don’t have an answer on this one, just sucks. It’s the trouble of being one of the first ones in the door.
So this is the type of discussion I was hoping for. I honestly didn’t even mean to trigger so many people by bringing up sports when the whole showerthought started cuz I missed my local team’s subreddit.
I can go on absolutely unhinged TED talks about how the local teams are trying to drain the city for taxes…
Don’t even get me started, we are in the same paddle boat when it comes to the ownership and the league’s use of tax payer dollars. The fucking Bills just set some sort of record I think for the new stadium they built by the belligerently small amount of money the owners are going to be contributing. The fuckin thing is costing billions and its just about entirely funded by 2 channels from the same source, the people of our our community. 1 channel is thru taxes and the other is thru some PPE shit where if you want to buy season tickets you need to give them like $40,000 as a one time fee into of the season ticket cost and also commit to like 10 seasons to even be able to buy a season ticket.
I know your reply will be “then why are you a fan still” so ill bashfully explain why in one word, community. The WNY community is my favorite part of the greater Buffalo/Niagara region and being apart of Billsmafia is such a huge part of it. We’ve never been a champion, until 5 years ago there were no bandwagons of fans looking to become Bills fans, its something you are just born into here. We put up with 8 ft snow storms, 17 years of missing the playoffs, losing 4 super bowls in a row, Damar Hamlin going into a freak occurrence of cardiac arrest and needing 10 mins of CPR to survive, and thats just the big stuff. At the end of the day tho, it forms a bond in the community like I’ve never seen anywhere else. When Josh’s Allen’s grandmother died, Billsmafia raised millions of dollars for his charity which came in $17 increments (his jersey number), now today there is an entire wing at Oshea’s Children’s Hospital dedicated to his grandmother’s name all funded by fans and member of the community. When we got dumped on with 6 ft of snow in 2 days, Bills players drover around house to house in skidsters plowing out people’s driveways. When Andy Dalton beat the Ravens against all odds and made it so the Bills would go to the playoffs breaking a 17 year long drought, Andy isnt even a Buffall Bills player he plays for Cincinnati but that didn’t stop Billsmafia from raising hundreds of thousands if not over a million dollars for Andy’s charity.
The idiots who own teams and run the league can get fucked, ill never argue against that but the men and women within each and every organization who have their boots on the ground, they are all amazing humans busting their ass off to make theirs and our community the best they possibly can.
Oh I get it completely. There’s a bunch of subreddits I miss, my industry I work in which is very niche, leatherworking, heck even the motorcycle community in Lemmy is… lacking.
On the other part you brought in… OH BOY! Unhinged TED talk time.
So I live relatively close to the Royals and the Chiefs stadiums. John Sherman, gas magnate, the owner of the Royals decided he wanted to move the stadium to downtown, where things have been picking up. Specifically he wanted it in the Crossroads where there’s a lot of local community shops and everything, because he wanted it near Power and Light district where there’s bars and the like which… oh right, he owns a lot of. Troubles came up that the stadium proposals took foooooooorever to even come up, looked like it was drawn on a napkin instead of anything serious, and wanted a tax levy to be put on the city to continue one that still hasn’t been paid off for the last time the two stadiums were built. The whole time saying “Look how the stadiums bring business in!”… the area around the two stadiums have managed to keep a Denny’s and a Taco Bell alive, the big resort hotel couldn’t even survive. Yea… real great for business.
Another trouble is… as I say, I am one of those who actively detests sports… I wish I could find the post, there’s an old Reddit post describing what not liking sports was like and used archeology in how it invades everything around you so it’s easy to go from “I couldn’t care less” to “Okay, I hate this thing now. It is insufferable.” I say all that to say, just paying any attention to the news I knew at the time the Royals was the second worst team in the MLB, they were that bad. So they knew they couldn’t get this move off the ground so they went to the Chiefs who was the most recent superbowl winner which of course was happy to get money their way, and the ad campaign went out. And despite the Royals/Sherman being the push on getting this going, it was all Chiefs all the time. I literally even got a flier in my mail “The liberals are trying to take away our teams!” paid for by the team push, so yay politics even drug in. The whole time threatening “Well if you don’t vote it in, we’ll move. Maybe to Kansas (right over the border) or hey, even Tennessee.” Thing is, the state remembers St. Louis on the other side had the rams, built them a stadium and whoopsiedoodle they packed up and moved to California leaving a city with a stadium and fuck all to do with it.
So we’ve got all sorts of issue in state and local level, but holy fuck all the political pressure since the voters turned down the tax is “How can we keep these teams in Missouri!” And it’s funny, I said I’d be more okay paying for it if we got ANYTHING out of it… I don’t mind paying taxes to keep our zoo going and it’s nice I get a hefty discount when I go, but the Royals and Chiefs are giving a nice hearty “go fuck yourself” for us paying taxes so the billionaires have their teams.
On to the “Why are you a fan?” question you brought up. I don’t question it… but I’ve never understood it. I grew up in Arkansas that never had a pro team so college sports was big… I got to hear the “calling the hogs” my entire life and never comprehended the why. Probably because dad was not a sports guy and had the opinion “Why do I want to watch people play a game?” even though he played in high school and I’ve been pretty much the same. I get the community stuff, and that’s fantastic. I’ve just found a community outside of sports so it doesn’t resound to me. The reason I’ve become so against sports beyond it’s completely impossible to ignore it it’s so inundated in culture, is the sheer amount of money that goes into it in all levels. High school, if you’re one of the “football” schools, your school only has 3-4 sports, all the big stadium ticket getting team sports, the smaller less prestigious schools get more sports like wrestling and the like… guess which situation I ended up in? And watching schools dump money into the sports above all other things like theater, labs, etc. “But it brings in money for the school.” Cool cool… so why are we getting asked for a tax levy so the school can build yet another stadium? Repeat this for the college level so the “Hogs can have a proper place to play!” and now the city with pro teams level. And I hear the ticket prices and think I wouldn’t pay those prices to see my favorite band… and again, those ticket prices and yet we have to pay for their shit?
Thats because sports are shit, I hope they stay out.
Sports are dumb anyway!
So original and edgy! To each their own🍻
I should have used /s, just joshin
Just look at the rest of these comments… the /s was definitely needed unfortunately.
Nah, they promote teamwork and physical fitness which are both good things.
Is that why everyone is drinking beer during matches and eating tons of fast food?
The players?
You know, Lemmy is powered by the users. The sports community will never grow if no one is here to grow it. Most people that jumped ship to build and grow Lemmy are techies, and likely not interested in sports all that much.
You just planted the seed, will you also be a watering can?
We are in at the ground level of Lemmy. A lot of people like OP are passive consumers, but now is the time to step up, get out of your comfort zone and start building the communities you want to see. You might have to hustle a little bit
If you do start up a community you can link it like this:
Here’s a totally random community about strength and hypertrophy training for example
Thanks for that link! I was almost gonna start one myself. Gonna try that one instead, at least for a while.
We are in at the ground level of Lemmy. A lot of people like OP are passive consumers
For real? Im replying to almost every comment I get a notification, I made this post, I’ve commented on NFL posts among other comments in non-sports comms. How you guna just blindly call me a passive consumer lol? Not hating just couldn’t believe you coulld draw that conclusion while I felt I was borderline spamming the thread with replies hahah 🍻cheers tho, to your commitment to motivating any and all users to be more active.🍻
Gotta give props to active participation, upvotes, comments are helping too, you’re right. I was just focussed on community building, it might not be as fun but it’s important also
Nah, I’m just gonna do what I’m doing. Commenting on stuff I like or am interested in and that’s it. I’m way too anti-social to do something like building a community.
you dont have to be social or even reply to commenters lol
A lot of people like OP are passive consumers
Passive consumers make up the largest number; the base of the pyramid. But you seem to be implying that there’s nothing between that and the tip of the pyramid, who create their own communities and post their own content into them.
OP seems to be a user in the middle. Happy to contribute to ongoing conversations by commenting, replying, and voting, but not as comfortable starting conversations. Which, to be honest, is also where I’m at with sport threads. I used to love popping in to a live game discussion megathread to comment on a particularly outrageous call, or to see the community’s response to something controversial. But it’s not a subject area I’m invested in enough to start the community myself, or to make enough comments to help start a lively-looking megathread.
This is so dismissive.
I spent a full year posting to [email protected] and interaction there is still minimal to dead.
It’s not really the starting of communities that needs help. We need more people to be the second and third person to join and help communities that someone else is trying to start.
The problem there might be that people hate league of legends
Eh, the community is huge on Reddit so clearly the fans exist (and I’m one but just took a big social media break for awhile so that didn’t help). Lemmy just needs more people with more diverse interests.
This is so dismissive
It’s all the complaint deserves
We need more people to be the second and third person to join and help communities that someone else is trying to start
Sounds like you need to let your sports-liking associates elsewhere know about the platform to help with your problem, rather than whinge that the already existing userbase doesn’t like what you do
I didn’t claim it would be easy or even a guaranteed success
Reddit was relatively niche, Lemmy even more so. Who the fuck do you think is gonna be here!?
Not sure if agreeing with me, but yea that’s pretty much what I was getting at.
Reddit was niche, but I don’t think so anymore. Fidelity bank, Logitech, Microsoft, and many many more have official accounts and support subs on there, and have for many years.
Yeah, that’s fair. I think Lemmy will continue to remain niche for the foreseeable future…
Considering Mastodon has been around for a while, but people still flocked to another corporate-structured platform after Twitter, yea. It probably will never not be niche.
This 100%, it’s even harder when someone puts a posting bot in a sub and expects people to show up. The best communities started by someone creating a sub and posting things they found interesting. Treating it like a personal link archive. Then people would add to the discussion after finding you. If you are posting for a few weeks and then just gives up. It just makes the problem worse. Since now people have to sift through a bunch of dead communities on multiple instances all named the same.
It has to be built organically it’s like people with video channels on YouTube or peer tube. Making your first video and if it doesn’t do well they quit. Most successful creators made tons of videos before they took off. They kept at it because they were making the videos for themselves for just the sake of self expression as their first priority and the views will come.
This is kind of a problem in the NFL Community actually. There’s one user, I don’t know if it’s a bot or not, who just shotguns like 10 to 15 post at a time. It washes out any discussion in the entire community.
Yep people like that that use bots or worse AI to auto post think they are helping but are just bring the dead internet theory to reality.
I’ve noticed a couple of users doing this in the Music community recently, as well.
If it’s a bot, fuck the owner. If it’s a real person, chill the fuck out dude. Don’t bust a nut so quickly, it’ll be more fun that way I swear.
That pattern is 100% bots getting the posts from an RSS feed and it’s set to only refresh every x hours.
When it does and it has 15 new stories, it rapidly posts 15 times.
When those clog up my all feed, instant block. So it’s really having the opposite effect that the bot owner intends.
The shitty thing is that half the time they’re not even marked as bot accounts.
Well yeah I understand why bots are used for posting to communities, but at the same time it does have this effect of making people tip-toe around and hesitant to post themselves
You just planted the seed, will you also be a watering can?
Im not implying there is a lack of content just a lack of active users to fuel discussions. I leave a comment on every NFL post that I have some input or opinion on. Like I said to another comment in this thread there seems to either be a bot or a dedicated mod who is periodically supplying content in batches of posts. So maybe once a week or so (maybe once a month in the off seadon) the same user name will make a bunch of posts for all the news for that week.
Dude make an NHL community and I’m in
Lol there already is one. Just search NFL.
They said NHL lol
Hahahaha I totally meant to say NHL but I might be wrong now that I think about, it might be called hockey. Ill have to double check and will edit my NFL comment to include a link to the hockey sub.
Does a kind of underground system like Lemmy appeal to sports fans?
I think so yes where you can find out real, not paid for news
