Im sure some of it is staking out territory, but I think a good chunk of it is just that modern reddit mindset. The mindset is that of course you cant have good gaming discussion on gaming you need to have truegaming, and games, and linux_gaming, and patientgamers, and etc. The thing is you can and things are small enough on all instances even lemmy.ml and beehaw that you can talk about it in one place.

[–] Manticore@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

The reason reddit had so many is that it would rapidly homogenise into giant echo chambers with minimal community. Minority perspectives were supressed or drowned out by lurker voting.

New subs were being made to recapture giant subs' original intentions, or specialise, yo put minority perspectives of the Hot page and curate a community as a result.

Lemmy isn't big enough to homogenise like that, at least not yet.