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

Howdy folks - comrade here in Northern Chicago. New to Lemmy so if I do something wrong I'm sorry bout that.

I'm fairly involved in mutual aid, so if you feel like you need some help with getting started please feel free to message me. I can recommend groups in chi / cinci or help research groups in your area.

As Seahorse aptly mentions in the first pinned post - now is the time for organizing! As long as we don't give into despair we got this!

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

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.

Reddit escapee living in Central IL. Remote enterprise application developer in a fairly niche insurance category. Grew up here but spent many years in Chicago and then San Diego. Came back to raise a family here and have been back for about 17 years now. Good to be here in midwest.social!

Hello from /r/iowa!

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

Southern Indiana, Hoosier native gamer and traveller.

Reddit abandoner

Michigan/Wisconsin native, engineering project manager.

Hello from Kansas (burbs of Kansas City).

Like many, I came from reddit. Spent about 10 years there; about 5 just lurking, then about 5 years a little more engaged.

My hobby is hobbies. I think I just like learning and tinkering. My list of endeavors includes photography, diy audio, camping, cooking/smoking, woodworking, beer brewing, gardening, music (making and consuming), home diy, etc, etc.

Some lasted, some did not, others come and go.

So many times Ive had a nuanced question posed to a community of enthusiasts yield 1000% better results than several hours of searching and reading. I'm looking forward to exploring and interacting here.

Hi all, just joined. I live a bit north of Milwaukee. I've enjoyed perusing the local communities to see what my neighbors are up to.

Hi everybody,

I'm a transplant from the Mountain West, moved out here for school and have been living in the Great Lakes region for just over three years now. Deleted my social media accounts at the end of last year and have been making an intentional effort to have a more engaging, thoughtful, and curated Internet presence.

I'm a bisexual, Spanish-soeaking immigrant, dating a trans man. Love learning and discussing science, history, and politics. Also into strength training (weightlifting and calisthenics) and looking for more cardio activities to rotate through. I was a chef in a past life so cooking and gardening are also big hobbies. Finally, I'm also getting into auto repair and photography in a big way, so hopefully I can meet some fellow enthusiasts in those realms! Glad to be here and thanks for having me.

FemmeGauche here. I'm a lefty millennial in Michigan who can use the internet but new to this decentralized stuff... just trying to find community while asshole billionaires wreck the easier-to-access stuff

Hi. It's cold most of the year. The summers are dreadful. There's a couple of days in the spring and fall that are beautiful.

I migrated from reddit a long time ago. I was on world, and realized world was really big and thought maybe I should get more out of the federation thing and go more local. So I did.

Reddit refugee, Clevelander, home theater/surround audio nerd. Nice to be 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.

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

I'm a new Lemmy user, teacher, and cyclist from the St. Louis area. Hello everyone!

Hello 30 year old central Missourian. Had a Reddit and Imgur account, left Reddit at the last purge of subs and users. Have been using Imgur exclusively since then. Not quite the same, except for it also slowly getting worse as they monetize it. I enjoyed woodworking, blacksmithing, leatherworking, ren-faires (shocker given those previous two), and cooking. Past tense as I now have a 1 year old and there's no time for anything besides work and parenting a baby/toddler with my spouse. Wasn't planning to interact much, as agreeing to a popular opinion isn't helpful and I don't have time for arguing something pointless, however a post below reminded me that I should, as engagement does help grow this new platform. An attempt will be made.

Hello. I'm a SE Michigander. Dad, Guitarist, bicyclist, humorist, hockey playerist, gamer, outdoor enjoyer. Currently sober after 20-something years of violent un-sobriety, but not in recovery. I used to be a PE teacher, but now I work with robots kind of.

Hiya! Greetings from Florida, land of the loony. Glad to be here!

Hello! Originally a Milwaukeean, currently living in the PNW. Love it out here but I miss the Midwest culture! I work as a theater tech out here and recently got into film photography as a new (and way too expensive) hobby. Good to meet you all!

Hello! I've lived in the Midwest for most of my life (Michigan, Chicago), with a couple of stops elsewhere in between. I'm part of rexxit and like the idea of the fediverse.

KCMO transplant here, currently studying ECE over at UMKC, and I like DIYing everything(because I believe in the right to repair my stuff). I have a completely DIY 80W CO2 laser table that I designed and built myself, and I also enjoy mycology, PC gaming and TTRPGs, I tinker around with music production, and to throw yet another project in the stack: I'm about to start brewing mead. Mostly here to make friends and find fun stuff to do in the KC Metro area. 🏳️‍🌈

Here from West Michigan as well, long-time moderator on the other place in a cult-recovery sub, but I’ve been active across metal-working and woodworking communities. Big fan of forged in fire and have been dabbling. Love Michigan, spend a good amount of time in Chicago now as well. Really appreciate that for community exists, feels like the early days (which were the Best days) over in the other place. Looking forward to being a part of this community!

Michigan guy here. Been a programmer all my life, but I'm dabbling in photography too these days.

I also create games for fun, so there's officially a crowd of us now.

North burbs right on border of Chicago. Also a fellow reddit refugee. Can't believe how sad I was when baconreader stopped working, and my stubborn ass knew I'd walk away.

So happy to have found Lemmy, and a midwest instance to boot.

Still not sure how all this works, but it does more than fill the need of interesting screen time.

In to skateboarding, snowboarding, motorcycles, gaming.

Work as a systems programmer specializing in audio and video systems.

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.

Hi everyone!

I live in Chicago on the North Side and work in higher education. Been in the city on and off for about 10 years with a gap in the middle when I lived in Asia. I came to Chicago for grad school and really liked the city and the Midwest more generally.

I have been pretty active in the Fediverse for the past year on Mastodon, Pixelfed, and Bookwyrm and decided to give this a try! I'm also trying Kbin as well but really am not understanding the whole Threads + Microblogging. Feels kind of like a having a phone taped to a toaster. Am I the only one who feels that way?

Any good, active communities you might recommend? Any tips to make the most out of Lemmy?

I like reading a lot. I'm into fantasy, sci-fi, philosophy, and religion. I'm really interested in environment, ecology, and climate issues. Always looking for new things to explore in Chicago and the surrounding suburbs.

Hi everyone, another Chicagolander here, this time from the western suburbs. I just moved over here from kbin.social, which has been broken quite a lot lately. Prior to that I was on reddit for an embarrassingly long time, bailing on it when the shit hit the fan last summer.

I'm also on Mastodon where I post very infrequently - I prefer the link aggregator with comments style services such as Lemmy over microblog things.

I'm a middle-aged immigrant dude who is into a lot of nerd shit like scifi, books, video games, electric vehicles, as well as photography and motorcycles. I also ride bicycles for fun and exercise when the weather doesn't suck.

Howdy all! I live in the St Louis metro east area. I'm also a reddit transplant and already really digging the community. I'm super excited to be here! I'm into woodworking, making lamps and other crafts. I'm also exploring producing a niche form of EDM music eventually. I'm a fan of general internet research and constantly learning new information.

Hello, I'm void. Lifelong Michigander; catch me weekly dancing at R1 GLC. Other interests include free software, metal and industrial concerts, bio implants, and fermented foods—both homebrew and vegan goodies.

Greetings! My name is Matt and I live in Indianapolis. I'm migrating over from a single-user instance. You can also find me over at @leopardboy@netmonkey.xyz. Thanks!

Checking in from Nebraska and learning how things work.

I'm yet another Reddit refugee - you might recognize my username from frequent comments in /r/athensohio, or less frequently /r/Ohio and /r/Columbus - and I made accounts at Beehaw, lemmy.world, and sh.itjust.works before discovering this instance. A whole instance of leftists in the Midwest?!?!!! 🎉 Very excited to have found you all.

My husband (42m) and I (41f) have been together just shy of 20 years and do small engine and outdoor equipment repair from our home garage; he turns the wrenches, I do the admin stuff, and we make small engine repair and enthusiast videos to encourage people to repair, not replace, which is something we're really passionate about.

We have a 16yo trans son, son and I are both bi, and we keep our pride flag up all year long because we've had repair customers mention that it helped them know we were a safe place to bring their equipment. 😕

We've got dogs and cats and live on a few acres outside Athens. Just 2 weeks ago, we received our newly-hatched chickens and guineas, so we're scrambling to get the coop and run done. I'm working on figuring out how to share the feed for the security camera I set up near their enclosure, so let me know if you'd like a link for the Poultry News Network when it goes live. 😂

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!

Hello folks! I'm another reddit refugee. I'm in tech support for a medium sized ISP here in the Midwest. The company is based in Indiana, but I live in Michigan. My most used subs on Reddit were FFXIV, D&D, Cocktails, and Cosmere. If anyone shares those interests, I'd love to chat!

Hello! I'm a Wisconsinite soon moving to Minneapolis. Born and raised in western Wisconsin.

Hi! STL based ttrpg writer. Pleased to meet you.

Hi there! I'm in Madison and am pretty active on the subreddit. I'm making my way over here slowly but surely. I am in grad school for urban planning. I enjoy talking and debating politics and philosophy, and am active on the Social Democracy subreddit.

Hello, all. I've done a bunch of weird stuff from injecting people with radioactive stuff, a pit stop at writing and publishing fiction, to renting virtual apartments for real money. Currently spend half my time in northern IL, half in southwest OH.

Hi! Joining the Midwest group from just outside the St. Louis area. I'm a mom of 3, working in STEM. I found Lemmy on Reddit and am working on slowly transitioning over here. I like it so far (but still feel like a noob). Being a progressive in the Midwest can feel pretty isolating and I've come to appreciate some of the like minds I've encountered on Reddit. Hoping I can still find that here while moving away from centralized platforms.

Hi! Also part of the migration away from reddit, seeing the writing on the wall there. I'm in Indy, I'm a software dev, and I'm part of a local midwest emo band that plays some shows around the area and just put out some music.

Hi, checking in from Grand Rapids, MI.

Nothing much to say but glad to be here. Been fun learning more about Fediverse.

This is my second try at Lemmy...I got deleted in the whoops a few weeks ago. So far, so good