And I used it since ~2007. Sure, I'll concede that OC existed back then, but expectations/standards were far lower. Simply starting topics or a meme template that hadn't been done before were fine, often times even hailed. Two broken arms, jollyrancher, coconut, whatever other gross ass viral thing weren't even pictures/videos, they were comments and/or text posts. They became Reddit legends/mythos/lore, regardless.

Anyway, that type of OC isn't going to invigorate the masses like it used to. Any of those stories nowadays would be met with heavy cynicism/skepticism (rightfully so, I might add). I guess my point is, Lemmy has only been somewhat known for a couple of years. It takes a lot of time to build momentum. Reddit continues to enshittify ever further, just like Digg did. Times are different now, there's a fuckton of competition in this type of social media format. What will make it successful is hard to say for certainty. I think sticking to link aggregation and topical discussions is a good start.

i think OC started to increase after 45 1st term, thats when people really jumped into social media for all the drama and content, and then found more drama(like livestream, and youtube,,,etc). i unkowingly used reddit(dint know it existed) around '13-14 ish for a console game. only til drumpf was elected then i moved over, before that i was still on Y'a answers enough.