I joined around the time /r/chapotraphouse got banned. I didn't and don't listen to the podcast, but I enjoyed participating in an online community with a leftist slant and the cultural values that come with that. And a community that was more about memes and joking than just dry politics all the time. It was cathartic, and I thought the banning justification was total bull shit.

When I learned about the Fediverse and these open source, decentralized services, they struck me as projects that more aligned with my personal values compared to Twitter and Reddit. So I joined up hoping they'd eventually grow to replace those.

I actually have probably been using the Hexbear instance more than the federated instances though I cooled down on that instance over time. Still go every now and then though, but Reddit still has some subreddits that didn't have an analog there or here. Hoping that's going to begin to change.

I had been souring on Reddit for years as I watched the default subs get worse and worse over time and saw cracks in the general community that I either was ignoring when I was younger or better recognized as I got older. I no longer identified with the "average Redditor"