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

Yet another reddit refugee, but the only thing I will miss is the niche animal husbandry subreddits.

My main interests are critter genetics & habitat management, and a lot of husbandry n enrichment on the side. Always been a bit of a pain to be lefty & interested in livestock, most of the old forums such as they still exist are full of people that are pretty aggressive in their disapproval of my sort. But maybe I'll find a niche eventually!

I do other science n tech reading and cruise some of the hobby stuff (carpentry, mini terrain, jewelry making... I like a little bit of a lot of things) but don't usually post as much as lurk those areas.

Hello! Quad Citizen reporting in, pretty active in the /r/Iowa and /r/QuadCities subreddits and poking around to see who's popped up in Lemmy.

MOST of our buildings are solid.

Thanks for your work @seahorse. I'm pumped to talk regional sports again. Big Ten, NFC North, NBA Central. Adios Reddit.

Howdy! I'm Evan, I'm from STL, and recently graduated from S&T with a BS in CS, going back for an MS. I'm a linguist, software engineer, musician, FOSS contributor, and Fediverse enthusiast. I build computers, run servers, write music, and get angry at the US/MO on the daily.

P.S.: call me scum, because I've only ever used Reddit via their official app, but at least I jumped ship!

Another former reddit user from the Twin Cities here. Enjoying learning about lemmy so far, still trying to figure out how it works! Big fan of disc golf, board games, books, and video games.

Minnesotan and architectural designer here. I'm giving lemmy a try after deciding to leave that other site, and I feel like this midwest instance has the right vibe for me. Looking forward to spending all my time here instead of helping a faceless company make more money on their IPO!

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.

Ohioan and electrical engineer here. Not exactly a refugee from reddit, since mostly all I did there was lurk, but excited to be here and distributed anything makes an engineer happy. At least this engineer.

Hey all! Lifelong Midwesterner and current Chicagoan. Refugee from r/Chicago and Reddit user of 11 years. I love baking, gardening, and currently engrossed in the new Zelda.

Osiyo (Cherokee) Oy li'one (Tzotzil: I'm here)

SW Kansas here, and my brain has decided to take a back seat to life, so throw in chronic pains, I'm just hunting for a new way to exist. Don't know what I'm doing yet, but I know I'm doing it, heh heh heh...What? I don't know. Do you know? No I do not, but would you like to know? Of course I would. Well tough luck there, pal.

Anyway, before the 'ol thinker decided to call it quits, I used to be quite the nerd. I dabbled in C, assembly, bash (Slackware user, so I better know bash, heh), calc, pari/gp, mathematics (Began aiming for number theory just before the brain gave out), native american languages, sharks, carnivorous plants, ferns, cooking, just to name the easiest.

Hey y’all I’m Josh and I’m from Iowa but go to school for Music in SoDak. Getting booted off Reddit because I only use Apollo and this seems like a pretty solid alternative. Looking forward to building the communities with y’all!

Upon further investigation of this comment section I may be the only SoDakian in here lol. Surprised SoDakZack hasn’t jumped over from Reddit

hello! I'm a non-binary Chicago-based cyclist, film photographer, 3d artist, and open source contributor when I get the time.

slowly getting my bearings out here in the fediverse; like many others I am yet another longtime Reddit refugee. stoked for Sync for Lemmy soon—that'll feel like I've officially switched over.

Hey friends! Twin Cities chiming in. Classic story of jumping ship now that reddit has struck the iceberg. Hoping to find new communities here for scratching my artistic itches. I'm a drummer, DJ, designer, illustrator, who dabbles with music production. Let's get weird.

Hi, Chicago resident primarily occupied with left-wing politics, board games, biking/public transit, and functional programming :)

Love the regional community server

Hello, Lemmy! Hikeandbike here. I'm an IT network administrator from Michigan.

I was never quite active on Reddit... So can't quite say I'm a refugee. But, heard about Lemmy on the Self Hosted podcast and thought I'd give it a try!

As my username says, I enjoy hiking, and more specifically, mountain biking. Just backpacked the Manistee River Trail and trying to find some time to backpack the trails along the Pictured Rocks.

Besides that, self hosting, rock climbing (mostly indoor,) and Linux & open source are how I spend my free time.

Chicago leftist here! I like to play games, do Mutual Aid when I can, and read a lot of theory. Came over here to find a new community and more opportunities to network with other lefties.

My name's Tyler. I live in NE Kansas, about an hr from KCK-Proper.

I get really into things quickly and then forget about them just as fast; Usually just enough to break something, get frustrated, and grab something else. My home is a monument to my family's abandoned hobbies.

I joined a while back (after the rise of Mastodon following some edgelord's purchase of Twitter, although I had heard about both that and Lemmy long before), and I still probably won't be active on Lemmy until Reddit dies off; I joined this instance because it's the most relevant (nothing akin to Mathstodon, where I have the same username) and I was advised against just flocking to the main one.

I was most active on /r/learnmath and /r/Buttcoin and I might go to refugee communities related to both, and to things like /r/learnjavascript (where I was active until a few years ago, also as an answerer of questions) and /r/badmathematics.

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

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

Hi from Topeka, KS! I'm a software engineer who loves games, cooking, and his friends. Thank you seahorse for starting this up!

Howdy! I live in Indiana, reddit exodus member and I'm looking for a new place to call my internet home.

Howdy! I'm Mike and I'm in South West Ohio. Im an Ex Sync user migrating like a lot of others.

One question.... before I go scrub my, ahem.... account on that nameless platform, is there an online banking system that will allow my to transfer my hard earned internet points to another platform? You know, kinda like a rollover from one 401k to another?

Not that I had any huge amount.

Anyway...... OH!!!

Hey everyone. I am yet another migrant from reddit hoping for c/kansascity to grow into a full, active community like we once were on reddit.

Hello from Waukesha WI! IT geek, amateur (HAM) radio operator, husband, father, and grandfather.

ohio resident here. reddit is not the site i once knew. So I'm joining this party

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.

Hello! I am not midwestern myself, but I got roots there via both parents (dad was born and raised in Iowa, maternal grandmother born and raised in Kansas, etc.). And the California Central Valley is basically the Midwest of the West. I am also what some would call "left", though more traditional socialists might dispute my credentials (Geoist/Anarchist). Looking forward to some good conversation.

Let's start with this: anyone know why my UI here defaults to Japanese? Yeah, I'm a weeb, but I'm not sufficiently weebish for that.

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.

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

Hello! I'm from Indiana outside of Chicago. This seems like a good group to join. Like most here, I work in tech. I like cooking/grilling, gaming, bad movies, and the outdoors. I am migrating from Reddit and looking for a place that reminds me of the early days of Reddit.

Hello! Indianapolitan (Indianapolista?) here. Mostly checking whether I was actually accepted. Thank you to the team that put this together, I was looking for a reddit community like this anyway. Indy_Involved is good but this is a bit different (and not reddit!).

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.

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!

Ope! Forgot to introduce myself.

Erik St. Louis

You probably figured that out.

Come join us in !stlouis, or join me specifically in !stlouiscitysc

And if you haven't already, there's some fine folks on mastodon at social.stlouist.com!

Michigan/Wisconsin native, engineering project manager.

Checking in from Nebraska and learning how things work.

Hello from /r/iowa!

Hi!

Ohioan here... I too am a recent reddit refugee.... anyone else having digg deja vu?...

Likes: Nerdy things, Video Games, Animals, Ohio sports teams, Music, Traveling

Been on Mastodon for a few months (suck it twitter) and with Reddit's recent money grab figured I'd check out other parts of the fediverse.

Southern Indiana, Hoosier native gamer and traveller.

Reddit abandoner

New to midwest.social and lemmy in general and I had a question - I made some posts/comments from lemmy.ml but I noticed they weren't getting any interaction and they weren't actually showing up when I visited midwest.social directly. Additionally, when subscribing to a community, the button turned to "subscribe pending." Does this mean lemmy.ml is blocked here? I noticed there is a Blocked Instances list (https://midwest.social/instances) but lemmy.ml is listed under Linked Instances

Hello! I'm Matt from northeast Ohio, another Reddit transplant looking for a new home. I'm mostly into photography, hiking , biking, and backpacking, and my homes of choice in the area are Cuyahoga Valley and Wayne NF

Michigander, cloud IT type, and general geek of all trades. Figured I'd try this out and see what cool geeky conversation I could find here.

Fellow midwesterner here, trying to figure out all this new fangled technology. Trying to find a new home knowing that Reddit will soon be going on the stock market which means it'll become an advertising platform on behalf of Wall Street.