Cath 22 ? If you cant be ass'd moving why would others, you're just enabling the enshitifcation to continue

Community is what you make it.

From small seeds... I had noticed a huge improvement regarding lemmy posts and threads, before the US election, and then it all kind of went backwards.

But if you have any questions about anything - niche or otherwise, you should post them on lemmy, helping it to grow faster. Even if the answers can already be found in other community forums.
You should get specific replies to your question anyway, but also anyone coming behind you won't have to go to reddit or any other place for the answer. It requires everyone to help, but questions are the fastest way to grow in most cases. Not including the likes of subs that can post original content, A TON of reposts on them too, but some OC. But mainly asking for help with anything should get people with knowledge on the subject replying. With the idea that eventually many answers can be found here without having to go elsewhere. Start 'spamming' your genuine questions now..

I like to cook vegan food and post about it 😊

Niches really need a way to advertise themselves and then congregate in one place. It's a bit sad to see two communities for the same thing in different instances and neither get the critical mass of posters needed to survive.

Is there a way to 'view all images' like RES has a button for?

Here is a list of keywords that I filter out. I also block all political content communities.

Post what you want, comment on everything, make your own community, etc etc etc

I see this all the time like some kind of catch-all for complaints about how effectively dead this platform is.

Not everyone is cutout to pioneer any kind of community, let's just assume that OP takes this advice to heart, if their interest/hobby is niche enough, what's even the likelihood of someone else tumbling upon it? Let alone contributing. Maybe this hypothetical other person wants to contribute but they see that it's only one other person posting anything and they figure, "what's the point?" Maybe they don't agree with OP's opinions and would rather find another "community" where their opinions won't be contested even if it doesn't exist. There are a myriad of reasons why, this is going to happen with every channel, fandom, interest group, etc. it's a natural part of the process. The problem lies in the simple fact that there's fucking no one here, there are enough bodies to come and stay and go and continue the cycle until a community is established.

Yes, there are plenty of channels or w/e they're called here, but most of them are effectively islands in a sea of shit you don't care about (or bots.) They're not managed, and there's nothing going on in them. Why is it up to you the user to stop what you're doing and make something out of nothing? When there are already communities that do exist on other platforms, even if said platforms are trash like Reddit or Xitter are. The majority of users in large communities are lurkers, they might not actively contribute, but they do share content with their own friends or interest groups and that is what's more likely to bring people in, those people might be people that do end up contributing, or they might be more lurkers. But it feeds into the growth of the community either way.

Most of Lemmy doesn't have any of that though, because there's no one here.

Yet, it feels like an uphill battle.

In a way, it is. It's also much further uphill if you consider it a solo task. These are absolutely valid things to vent about, even if they are solvable.

(I felt a lot more like this before the reddit API exodus)

It's all I have for proper threading. I won't forgive Reddit for how they treated me and my communities. But, if you are willing to use Reddit, I'm sure it's going the have user advantage (and because of that niche interest advantage) for quite a while. I hope it serves your needs and brings you joy.

You might try building a community here, but that is the "slow boring of hard wood" and it can be difficult to find joy in, especially at first.

The timing of it all just didn't add up. Reddit started small, too. By the time Reddit failed, Fediverse was still in its infancy, and the communities either stayed in corporate hell or found somewhere else.

i would also like to like lemmy.

Unfortunately it's userbase seems to have a fairly significant infection of stupidity. (also the lemmy platform is just, underbaked, in general)

But i'm starting to think my standards of not being completely uneducated and spouting literal bullshit on things, is too high for most of the population...

I think i just have a problem with all of humanity, to be honest.