Its rhe only thing I wish could change about my experience using Lemmy, for more active users in the communities like NFL or NHL and the affiliated team pages of those sports. I haven’t had any social media in decades, my main source for sporting news breaks up until 1-2 years ago was Reddit.
I love the small community that makes up Lemmy. As someone just posted, it feels like a small town community. I like the absence of corporate shills and ads and bots.
Back when I switched from Reddit to Lemmmy, I made an effort to upvote and comment on the NFL and Buffalo Bills communities. I eventually gave up because it was like months of posting, voting and commenting but when I would go back to check the communities, everything would still be sitting at like 2 up votes and 0 comment replies or if it was my own post, 1 upvote and 0 comments. For a majority of cases. Every once in a blue moon I would come accross a post where another user voted or commented but it was never more than me and one other user.
I know there is a certain demographic that uses Lemmy that is mostly driven by the required IT prowess needed to set up, use and even understand the federated concept. I also recognize that this demographic is traditionally disinterested in sports. Im not complaining about this or the users who are on Lemmy. Im also not wishing for any changes be made to aggressively expand Lemmy’s user base. Its just an impractical wish I have so I could get my sports news from the same source I get all my other news.
I will prolly spend more time this coming year settling on a 2ndary source for sports news from sources similar to sleeper app but it would be so nice if the Lemmy sporting communities blew up so I could keep everything aggregated to one source.
As a sports fan (NHL, NFL, NBA, ATP) I feel lucky to have a bunch of sports fan coworkers. We talk sports and joke around at work all day.
I do wish the sports communities on lemmy were more active. It seems like lemmy’s left-wing community does not have very many sports fans.
I wont discount your assessment of the overlap (or lack thereof) between the lemmy demo and sports demo. But I’ll submit to you a factor you, and many others, may not have considered. I fit into both demos but simply lost all interest in keeping up with sports after the pandemic. It just really put into perspective how much they don’t matter to me and I haven’t gotten back into them. I’m curious if this happened in any kind of significant amount. And things haven’t progressed in the world to make getting back into them a big desire. I do still tune in the occasional Stanley Cup playoff game if I happen to come across it with nothing better going on. But I haven’t made sports a primary hobby of mine since 2019 and I don’t think I’m ever going to again. And it used to be my primary hobby. I wasn’t fantasy league and sport book level, but I scheduled life around games and teams and spent lots of time in forums.
I like to pretend that all the Lemmy communities have a unique participants but in really it is just the same people on the same few communities.
I also feel like we need some Lemmy specific lingo. Reddit has subs I wonder what Lemmy has. Communities is just to long to type out.
People refer to them as coms or comms.
Commies! Oh, wait.
It takes time to adjust to that
Coming from Reddit I was used to that level of crow anonymously and here people be remembering what you said in that other posts.
I have find out that since noticing that I tend to be more careful with what I post.
what about subs? lemmy subs
The Philadelphia ones identify as hoagies.
And all I want is to never see sports related communities. So I guess I win there…
Unfortunately I also never want to see anything that mentions anime or manga and in that department it’s serious whackamole for me.
So learn how to fuckin filter and subscribe to take control of your feed and go piss and moan in those threads.
I can and I do. Its easy enough to block simple angry fuckers like you one at a time. Thanks for volunteering to sit down and shut up in my feed.
👍🏿
Literally just post everything you find interesting and upvote elsewhere
HAHA SPORTSBALL GUYS.
! DAE HANDEGG???1PLEASE CLAP
Yeah but did you try Linux
I was gonna make the sportsball comment and you crushed my spirit.
Did you have a stroke?
Crazy idea: use a bot? A lot of communities already do it to help with lack of folks where the techies dont regularly post. You can still get your news here and you will likely attract other folks like you (maybe tell them over on other places that we now have sports news). Just trying to help
Please no
That’s not real content. It is just lots and lots of spam.
So don’t let your account see bot accounts
That’s a you problem
The point is that most people won’t participate in a community that’s the same bot, posting headlines over and over, with 1 upvote and 0 comments, day in and day out. I’ve blocked so many of those (especially the ones who’s RSS feed only refreshes like once a day and they vomit like 30 stories at once into some community that shows up in my All feed blocking out everything else for miles of scrolling.)
You need users expressing their interest via posting. It’s community editorializing that makes platforms like this interesting, from Slashdot and Fark all the way to Lemmy today.
I’ve blocked so many of those
Disable bot accounts for yourself if you don’t want to see them, like I already said
For news and sport it could be useful.
Tag it as bot generated. Don’t allow bot comments.
Thanks for your opinion. Do you post in that community? Do you have a better idea? If you can answer both questions with no I would ask what differs your post from spam.
I’m not a sports fan what so ever but in other communities bots have been tried and it didn’t go well.
Okay, where did you get that info? Do you know what the term anecdotal evidence describes?
The !dailygames@lemmy.zip bot works very well.
Did you see that ludicrous display last night?
(The original site, vectorbelly, is not loading for me, but fortunately I found this backup)
What was Wenger thinking, sending Walcott on that early?
The thing about Arsenal is they always try to walk it in.
I did not. What’d I miss?
These are all nerds who don’t follow sportball most likely. They are quoting the TV show “The IT Crowd” where the main characters pretend to know about sports.
You know, Lemmy is powered by the users. The sports community will never grow if no one is here to grow it. Most people that jumped ship to build and grow Lemmy are techies, and likely not interested in sports all that much.
You just planted the seed, will you also be a watering can?
This is so dismissive.
I spent a full year posting to !leagueoflegends@lemmy.world and interaction there is still minimal to dead.
It’s not really the starting of communities that needs help. We need more people to be the second and third person to join and help communities that someone else is trying to start.
This is so dismissive
It’s all the complaint deserves
We need more people to be the second and third person to join and help communities that someone else is trying to start
Sounds like you need to let your sports-liking associates elsewhere know about the platform to help with your problem, rather than whinge that the already existing userbase doesn’t like what you do
The problem there might be that people hate league of legends
I didn’t claim it would be easy or even a guaranteed success
We are in at the ground level of Lemmy. A lot of people like OP are passive consumers, but now is the time to step up, get out of your comfort zone and start building the communities you want to see. You might have to hustle a little bit
If you do start up a community you can link it like this:
Here’s a totally random community about strength and hypertrophy training for example
Nah, I’m just gonna do what I’m doing. Commenting on stuff I like or am interested in and that’s it. I’m way too anti-social to do something like building a community.
you dont have to be social or even reply to commenters lol
This 100%, it’s even harder when someone puts a posting bot in a sub and expects people to show up. The best communities started by someone creating a sub and posting things they found interesting. Treating it like a personal link archive. Then people would add to the discussion after finding you. If you are posting for a few weeks and then just gives up. It just makes the problem worse. Since now people have to sift through a bunch of dead communities on multiple instances all named the same.
It has to be built organically it’s like people with video channels on YouTube or peer tube. Making your first video and if it doesn’t do well they quit. Most successful creators made tons of videos before they took off. They kept at it because they were making the videos for themselves for just the sake of self expression as their first priority and the views will come.
This is kind of a problem in the NFL Community actually. There’s one user, I don’t know if it’s a bot or not, who just shotguns like 10 to 15 post at a time. It washes out any discussion in the entire community.
Yep people like that that use bots or worse AI to auto post think they are helping but are just bring the dead internet theory to reality.
I’ve noticed a couple of users doing this in the Music community recently, as well.
If it’s a bot, fuck the owner. If it’s a real person, chill the fuck out dude. Don’t bust a nut so quickly, it’ll be more fun that way I swear.
That pattern is 100% bots getting the posts from an RSS feed and it’s set to only refresh every x hours.
When it does and it has 15 new stories, it rapidly posts 15 times.
When those clog up my all feed, instant block. So it’s really having the opposite effect that the bot owner intends.
The shitty thing is that half the time they’re not even marked as bot accounts.
Well yeah I understand why bots are used for posting to communities, but at the same time it does have this effect of making people tip-toe around and hesitant to post themselves
You just planted the seed, will you also be a watering can?
Im not implying there is a lack of content just a lack of active users to fuel discussions. I leave a comment on every NFL post that I have some input or opinion on. Like I said to another comment in this thread there seems to either be a bot or a dedicated mod who is periodically supplying content in batches of posts. So maybe once a week or so (maybe once a month in the off seadon) the same user name will make a bunch of posts for all the news for that week.
Dude make an NHL community and I’m in
Lol there already is one. Just search NFL.
Imagine if some random medium sized sports forum decided to move/switch to Lemmy? Would be cool I guess.
Careful what you wish for
Lemmy is full of a bunch of older neckbeards, based on my observations. (Inclusive of me)
This is just one narrow view on things, tho.
Sometimes I wish that I was into sports, it seems very fun! I feel like I would need to know people irl who are into sports in order to get into sports though. Are sports memes a big thing? I feel like those should/could be a big thing.
Back on reddit, there was at least one sub dedicated to memes I between just a single division (nfcnorthmemewar, or something close) and it was always hilarious. Definitely miss the regular sub and the meme subs here.
Sometimes I wish that I was into sports, it seems very fun!
Of the top 10 greatest times I’ve ever had, prolly 7 are from attending Bills games, or thr PGA Championship, or Sabres games
I feel like I would need to know people irl who are into sports in order to get into sports though.
Just pick a team, start wearing their gear and the friends will come. Lol its a great way of meeting people. You dont need to learn too much to understand the game enough to become a fan. A quick youtube video to explain the game then look up any of the number of documentaries that exist for every amd any team to learn their story/history and you are good to go.
Once you start meeting people and tell them you just started getting into it, other fans are going to be delighted to share their knowledge or answer questions. You’ll be apart of a community that will always have your back.
My local team is thr Buffalo Bills, our star quarterback’s name is Josh Allen. When Josh’s grandma died, Bills fans everywhere started donating $17 (Josh’s jersey number) to his charity for children’s hospital. We raised over a million dollars and today there is a whole wing added to children’s hospital dedicated to Josh’s grandmother that was built with the funds of his charity.
Im not guna pitch any team for you to follow but I will say that if I were you, id want to join the greatest fan community of any sport of all time, the Buffalo Bills’ Billsmafia lol.
Are sports memes a big thing? I feel like those should/could be a big thing.
The sports meme market is booming. NBA is prolly the king of sports memes. There are prolly reation memes you have seen a thousand times but didn’t know were from sports.
The last bit of advice id give is to get into the fantasy sports of whatever team you choose. Its the best way of learning which players are good on other teams, what plays to cheer for or be pissed about, but mostly it’ll teach you how the game’s statistics work. Plus they’re really fun and great way meet new friends. If you are interested in learning more there was a comedy series on FX that was really good that was all about a group of friends and their fantasy football league called, “The League.”
Does anyone else feel like these national leagues have become just as disconnected from reality as any other hyper capitalist enterprise?
I want more hometown sports. I daydream about leagues funded by local communities, starring local talent, with smaller local crowds. Is there anyone else out there who would give much more of a shit if things were a little more close to home, reality-wise? Am I alone?
Guys getting paid literally hundreds of millions to play a sport is unrelatable. A local star making $300k and being a part of the community feels better to me. Seems like we should be able to afford a lot of those for the money we are spending.
I know next to nothing about sports or the business around them, but I know I remember summer nights with cheap hotdogs and minor league ball that seem to have evaporated as the wealthy accumulated. 🤷♂️
There are still lots of minor leagues and they still serve cheap hotdogs tbh
The western new york community is just a large scale hometown community. Prolly where Buffalo got the name city of neighbors. I get what you are saying but I dont watch many national sports coverage media, im just looking for a source for news breaks from people like Rappaport, amd Schefter. As for publications i generally stick to The Athletic and our local WGR550. Im definitely not interested in watching any of the ESPN shows for the same reasons I bathing you outlined.
!superbowl@lemmy.world is very active
When are the owls gonna play sportsball?
Hoot hoot, hike!
Hmmmmmm is it tho, WHO would be active there and WHO would only wanna talk about one game once a year? Lol im just assuming its a community dedicated to owls.
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