For the curious, the original was actually /r/195 on Reddit. It started as a joke between some college roommates, in dorm room number 195. Then it eventually got popular as a sort of shitposting community. But the original 195 was basically unmoderated (because it was just a couple of dudes in college who started it for shiggles,) and was eventually brigaded and taken over by alt-right neonazis. The memes quickly devolved into straight up Nazi propaganda.

So 196 was created as a sort of “new” 195, and that original brigade and subsequent takeover is why a lot of the 196 memes tend to lean hard left. The 196 sub was sort of a rebellion against the 195 takeover, which means that conservative stuff quickly got shut down. It eventually became a sort of safe space for transgender memes as a result. From there it became a sort of self-sustaining reaction where trans people saw it as safe so more trans people gravitated towards it.

What if I visit the community/magazine without posting? How do they know?

Isn't it a rule to have rule in the title as well?

-"Oh no, not again"

Thought the petunias.

Douglas Adams strikes again.

Why does it hurt when I pee?

As was the style at the time.

It’s Wooster.

Unfortunately, the Fediverse shows you everything by default rather than things that you more or less want to

Uh no, that's a good thing.

A couple things. From my experience with Lemmy, you can subscribe to communities you want to see, the same way you could subscribe to subreddits. There's a subscribed feed, a local feed, and an all feed.

The way Reddit handled this is that there was a default set of subreddits that everyone would get. Things like /r/pics ... Whether you were browsing as a guest or as a user, by default, you could see that sub. I believe there was an option for "all" but nobody used it AFAIK. So you started with a small default (whatever Reddit thought you should see), and went from there. I'm sure, in more recent times on Reddit, it will also show you things that the algorithm wants you to see, either because Reddit is being paid to show it to you, or because it's adjacent to your currently subscribed subreddits.

Lemmy isn't substantially different when it comes to the subscribed feed, with one big exception: you don't really start with anything. So the subscribed feed is pretty bare, but the local feed is full of anything on the same instance as you are, and the all feed is everything that's local or has been brought in by federation. There may be some limits on this, for example, to NSFW stuff, but I'm not certain and it's likely up to the discretion of each Lemmy instance admin to make those choices.

The difference is in an exclusionary mindset vs an inclusionary mindset. Reddit follows an exclusionary mindset, eg. We're only going to show you what you say you want and exclude all others. Lemmy is more inclusionary, where you will see everything unless you say otherwise.

The same functionality exists here, like it did on Reddit, to only see what you're subscribed to, but you have to go and find what you want, subscribe, and then stick to your subscribed feed.

I've personally spent a lot of time on the /c/all feed specifically to find what communities I want to subscribe to so eventually, I can just stick to the subscribed feed. I'm not too the point where I think the subscribed feed has quite enough communities to keep me engaged, but I'm getting there.

The option exists and you don't need to block entire communities to get there, but you can use block for it if you want. There's nothing wrong with either methodology.

My blocked list is so long it's probably worth something.

So when you develop a dissociative mental disorder in your late 20s don’t come crawling back to me.