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Why is lemmy frontpage filled with memes?
(mander.xyz)
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this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2026
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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.
It's easier to create a meme than writing a title?
Lemmy all frontpage is filled with memes and shitpost, it's a fact you can check for yourself. I'm asking why is it filled with this content, are you saying that this is what most people want to see here?
It's easier to create a meme than it is many other sorts of content.
The All feed will reflect what people want to post, as it all shows up there (well, all the stuff in communities that at least one user on your home instance subscribes to).
That's why I'm saying that you're probably going to be happier whitelisting the content that you are interested in, rather than complaining that people on the Threadiverse as a whole aren't posting what you want. There are many different takes on what people want to see, so no one person is going to be happy with traffic as an aggregate. There are a bunch of furries here, who are happy with furry content. One of the first threads I ran into when I first joined
Kbin sent people to random posts to try to help them discover new communities
was a post talking about technology issues. Another user there, who also appeared to be a new user sent there randomly by Kbin, was upset that there was so many furries there and complaining about the fact. It was in a community on pawb.social, which is a furry instance. There's no reasonable way to make the guy who didn't want to see furry content and the people who do want to see furry content simultaneously happy with any one single collection of content. Gotta produce user-specific feeds for that.
EDIT: There are also some people who prefer to blacklist rather than whitelist. Like, browse All, but then just keep blocking every community that they don't want to see. I think that this doesn't scale well
I mean, there are tens of thousands of communities out there. Some people can create shit-tons of communities, and I suspect that sooner or later someone is very probably going to set up an instance that has auto-generated communities for one reason or another. Maybe to mirror RSS feeds somewhere or something, who knows. There's already one that mirrors Reddit subreddits, lemmit.online. Then it's going to flood the feeds of the blacklisters. But, well, that's another way to curate content.
Usually people do that in the same instance, so you just block the instance.
All frontpage is filled with memes and shitpost, again are you saying that this is what most people want to see?
I mean, I don't know how I can be clearer than I was in the above comment:
It will have everything that people are posting on any communities that any single user on your home instance subscribes to. This means that the proportion of traffic on All will generally reflect what people want to post.
There are some social media websites that try to profile you based on your viewing or commenting habits or other such things and then do recommendations of content. Some of these, like Twitter, have caught flak for recommending content that someone is likely to engage with, which causes them to tend to recommend ragebait material.
But regardless of the merits of one recommendation system or another, mander.xyz is running Lemmy. Lemmy doesn't, in 2026, have some sort of system to profile you, try to predict what posts you want to see, and then show you only that. Maybe it should and someone should write that, but today, it gives you three choices:
You can view All, which is all of the posts in any community that anyone on your home instance has subscribed to.
You can view Local, which is all of the posts in communities on your home instance alone. Unless you are only interested in using the Threadiverse for highly-specialized content and on a home instance dedicated to that content, this probably isn't what you want.
You can view Subscribed, which is all of the posts in any community that you personally have subscribed to.
What I'm saying is that it is very likely that the third option is going to very probably provide you with a higher proportion of content that you want to see. "All" will probably never reflect what you in particular are most-interested in. It's maybe a way to help expose new users to a sampling of what's out there, reduce the barrier to start them using the Threadiverse, but you're probably going to want a Subscribed list tailored to your interests.
But what I can say with utter certainty is that people who are posting memes will not stop posting memes because you don't want to see as many memes in your feed, and All is going to reflect what people post. Getting upset about what people are posting and then complaining about that won't solve your problem. Writing a recommendation system to profile users and provide recommended feeds for Threadiverse servers might, if you can code, but I'm guessing that the most-practical solution is going to be just doing a set of communities tailored to your interests, and then browsing Subscribed.
I asked a simple question and you are bringing in twitter and other stuff.
Heh. So, there's this Saturday Night Live skit from 1997:
https://youtu.be/OMNaTApbo8E?t=130
Harry Caray: "Hey, if you were a hotdog, and you were starving, would you eat yourself?"
Host: "What?"
Harry Caray: "I know I would. First I'd smother myself in brown mustard and relish. I'd be so delicious. So would you?"
Host: "I don't know."
Harry Caray: "Don't jerk me around, Norm. It's a simple question. A baby could answer it. If you were a hotdog and you were starving, would you eat yourself?"
He gave an elaborate yes. Yes, memes are frontpage because that's what is up voted. People like pics. Even in comments, I find my replies that include a photo get far more up votes than text alone.
Yeah maybe. If you don't want to see them just block them. Easy. Complaining about the frontpage here never change anything.
The only memes I see are from meme communities, and I see a bunch of communities dedicated to thoughtful discussion, because I'm subscribed to them. I never look at the frontpage, I only look at my subscribed communities, and I'm only subbed to a minimal amount of meme communities. If I unsubbed from them, I wouldn't see memes at all.
Also, the world is fucking dark and shitty. Sometimes people would rather make jokes about it than talk deeply about it because they're trying to not go crazy and end up suicidal from facing too much darkness. Humor is often used as a release valve for painful subjects. Why not let the people who don't have it in them to get into lengthy discussions just handle it in whatever way works for them.
Meme communities predates the frontpage
Look, people have explained it to you several times in here and at this point you're being purposefully obtuse. Go subscribe to non-meme communities, only look at your subscriptions, and maybe stop bothering people demanding they cater to how you want to communicate. Your life and experiences aren't a universal experience, let other people be.
If the frontpage wouldn't be filled with memes it would probably be more easy to find non-meme communities to subscribe to
Block the content you don't like, blacklist users, communities and instanced you don'5 like and poof you have the content you like!
https://mander.xyz/communities?listingType=All&sort=TopMonth&page=1
I count 25 serious communities just on the first page of your instance showing all communities from all instances (37 on the second page). This is the primary way to find new communities, and it's relatively simple to use, imho.
more than half of the most subscribed subs are meme subs.
And??
and you are on an asklemmy thread asking why lemmy frontpage is filled with memes...
You can also block individuals. As there are some idiots and trolls about.