Yeah I know what you mean about the "empty" feeling. Lemmy.world site info on the tab has 2.2k users a day and under 6k a week. Those are miniscule numbers compared to almost anywhere on Reddit.

I too used to post daily here to help generate content but got down voted so badly the thread was deleted, so now I don't post.

Edit- so many communities here are virtually dead. Federation may be a solution but it's a far cry from the user base even a decent sized forum has.

I didnt participate in the anime polls but remember that moat of it was episode discussions or fan art.
Also remember that the subs there were in the millions with probably high 50-100k posters and remaining lurkers.

I'll be honest, there was a recent thread bitching about me that got taken down where the dominant complaint seemed to be "The jerk just posts every little thing that pops up in his head, fuck that guy, but ya sometimes he creates some interesting discussion".

It was absolutely pathetic and banal and kinda shows why it doesn't always pay to be contributing and organically creating engagement. I don't post as much anymore cuz I just don't have as much enthusiasm for participating anymore.

Edit: to be fair, one takeaway for me that nobody actually said was I wanted to be way more handsoff in my posts cuz it was a bit much to be as engaged/in the weeds as I was gettting and also, I prefer to let my posts and top-levels + responders to speak for me and I can avoid tampering or influencing the way the discourse plays out as to how the truth-seeking dynamic of it is consequently served

And God forbid you're anywhere right of Marx himself or you'll get people telling you you'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.

Like come on, we want 95% of the same stuff, let's just work together and have some productive discussions and enrich our political mindsets instead of flinging shit at people who are basically on the same side as you.

I see way more comments complaining about tankies on a regular basis than actual tankies

Yeah I agree. The apologia for Russia, China and just communism in general (or what ever you want to call it) fucks with your mind a bit. If Lemmy is the only social media you use it quickly starts to seem like this kind of thinking is far more common than what it really is and it can make one question their own sanity when reasonable sounding critizism of this is met with huge flood of downvotes. Especially if the discussion is happening on a place like lemmy.ml. As an outside observer I find it interesting as I haven't really met people like this before but trying to engage with them is one of the most frustrating things I've experienced especially since a mod is going to ban you mid-discussion for "misinformation and bigotry" or something similar while it's clear to everyone it's just CCP level cencorship to silence all dissidence.