Why are text-based communities on Lemmy NSFW so difficult to get going? - eviltoast

Back when I was on Reddit, I was of course subscribed to a lot of the porn subs, but what really made the experience special for me were all the text-based NSFW communities — the R4Rs, the RAOs, the gonewildstories/slutty confessions/etc.

There seem to be a fair number of people who have come over to Lemmy from Reddit but these sorts of communities just haven’t taken off. This instance has dirty chat and r4r communities but they’re sparsely populated, and the latest content is 3 or 4 months old. The main source of gonewildstories is the bot that reposts from Reddit.

Do people here just not like to engage with other users over text like this? Or is there a secret trove of filthy communities that I just don’t know about? More and more I’m starting to regret nuking my porn Reddit account and wondering about going back.

  • MaybeALittleBitWeird@lemmynsfw.com
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    1 year ago

    Text based communities require a large population to really work. R4R style communities will be limited by the regional limitations of a smaller community. If you’re looking to meet up(or even for just chatting), fewer people means less of a chance of finding a compatible person in terms of turn ons/fetish alignment who is also in your geographic area.

    Aside from the meetup communities, the story oriented communities require a lot of effort. It takes time and effort to write a story that doesn’t sound like terrible fanfic and chances are high you’ll put that effort in for it to get lost in the void. Most people probably won’t read it, let alone interact. Finding the people who will go that far is again just a factor of how large the population is because it’s a less popular form of media.

  • pinkpint@lemmynsfw.com
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    11 months ago

    The best thing you can do is help get those communities going by contributing your own stories. I’d like to get /c/stories_gonewild going, but I don’t want it to just be me.

  • crypticthree@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    It takes a lot of people to support those communities because they have a very high proportion of lurkers.

    • DoctorFunken69@lemmynsfw.comOP
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      1 year ago

      So it’s simply a matter of network effects working against us? Lemmy hasn’t attracted a critical mass of perverts to be viable in this way? Depressing if true.

      • Pornphilosoph@lemmynsfw.com
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        1 year ago

        The whole Lemmy Fediverse has a total of 1,5 M Users. Only /r/SluttyConfessions has 1,5M subscribers.

        People massively underestimate how small Lemmy is compared to the established networks.

  • willya@lemmyf.uk
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    1 year ago

    We’re mostly nerds here. We need more users of all backgrounds before we get any of what you’re talking about going. Use both and mention Lemmy to help the growth. You’re free to create communities like you mentioned on my instance.

    • DoctorFunken69@lemmynsfw.comOP
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      1 year ago

      I appreciate the invitation but I don’t have the time to effectively mod a community. Yes, I’m a free rider, lol.

      I am starting to think that the best bet is to keep my SFW Lemmy account but go back to Reddit for my NSFW needs. It’s not like they can monetize me on there anyway.

      • Anonyguise@lemmynsfw.com
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        10 months ago

        I here you. I ditched my regular reddit, but kept the NSFW (pictures come so much faster), but I do miss some interaction.

        I’ve thought about starting a community, but—yeah—moderating…