It really shook me. I started watching his videos and streams when I was 14. Gaming content as we know it was just getting started, and I’m pretty sure he started streaming on justin.tv before it became twitch. It felt like I was part of some new and exciting world, right on the cutting edge.

8 years later, I was 22 and he was dead at 34. There had been a couple kids in my grade that died growing up, but I had never truly been confronted by human mortality and how unfair it could be. It would only be a slight exaggeration to say I listened to him talk every day for over a third of my life. I knew it was coming eventually, but when I saw the news I was truly devastated.

Parasocial relationships are crazy. I was so young (and therefore broke) that I never got to meet him, but his death hit me harder than not only that of a couple pets, but also my great grandmother. In a way it makes sense, I literally “spent more time” with him than almost anyone else in the world. That may still be true even today. I don’t regret a minute.

I refuse to say anything that creates any unnecessary expectations of me. If asked whether I know something I will always downplay my knowledge. If asked whether I’m interested in something I will always downplay my interest. If asked whether I can commit to something I will always say something to the effect of “I’ll think about it” rather than yes or no.

I would like to be more open and easygoing but it’s hard to do. I would rather people expect little of me and be surprised than expect a lot and be disappointed. As I have gotten older I’ve started to suspect that this is more like building a wall between myself and the world than I’d like to admit.

That is probably the right way to get people started, assuming they want to do their browsing on their phone. The barrier to entry for those who just download Voyager is so low that it might help make up for a lack of understanding about other features. Then they just have to get over there not being an active community for everything under the sun.

Personally I find it worthwhile just for the extra civility there is here in the comments and the peace of mind I get from knowing that I’m probably interacting with real people rather than bots. Maybe those benefits of using Lemmy could be emphasized more than the benefits of instancing and federation.

Really? When I have posted comments on /r/RedditAlternatives about Lemmy being too complicated and that it won’t gain traction, I’ve been getting downvotes. Despite saying I use it.

Concepts like federation and instances are definitely part of the problem. Reddit is quite easy to understand. Make an account on the website (or not), go to /r/all or type in /r/whatever, and away you go. Lemmy is not that easy to understand. Many people that could be interested in Lemmy don’t have any idea what the different instances are or which they should use, so they just give up.

Lemmy doesn’t need to take off like reddit did, but those touting it as the next big thing are being very optimistic. The barrier to understanding is just too high.

Why would anyone want that? You mention “Lemmy’s core values of decentralization, privacy, and user autonomy”, but surely another “core value” is being a general use forum. One main benefit of a forum is that you can have discussions without necessarily having to have everyone together in the same place at the same time. Live voice chat is the opposite, so surely something like that would be better off as a feature of a platform that focuses more on live interaction.

Moderation challenges would be absolutely immense of course, that is not in question. Moderating a voice chat is all but impossible in a setting where anyone can join without an invite, and accounts are free and easy to create.