I feel you. I am signing up for Lemmy, even though I still hope that Reddit's shitshow will be resolved by June 30th. I joined Reddit around 16 years ago and while I nuked many alt accounts in this timeframe, nuking the final one, knowing it will be my departure from the site feels... weird.

Lemmy has a long way to go before it can be an actual replacement, but seeing the steady stream of new users over the past few days, I can see the potential. It feels very much like when I first joined Reddit.

Why do you care about your account? I swap to a new Reddit account every 6-12 months. It literally means nothing. You can resub to everything you had before and it’s like you never left. I feel no love towards my account at all, it’s a tool for enabling me to engage, nothing more.

I feel like I'm getting more. Quality over quantity and really I didn't realize how I missed the community aspect that I used to participate in back in the early 2000 when I first started meeting people online and using forums and making my own web pages and using chat services. I wasn't interacting with anyone on reddit as I had experienced plenty of hostile interactions as well as pointless harassment. I used to be very friendly and helpful but this kind of stuff made me cynical and negative. I would comment on something, provided my insight or info or link or whatever to something and moved on. Didn't look for replies because I knew there were going to be people butthurt I didn't agree with such bigoted or racist or sexist or whatever comment or belief so there was no point in arguing with these people. I turned off notifications. I don't feel defensive here. I don't feel desensitized nor do I have my defenses up. I check my notifications knowing it's either a useful reply or a silly joke, so far lol. I'm definitely sticking around. Reddit is off the table.