Yeah, I was looking around at different posts, and that’s the conclusion I came to as well 😔 The closest thing to a functioning equivalent doesn’t appear to work much like Pinterest at all, at least not the way I’ve used it. I just want to add pretty/interesting images to boards for inspiration

Slightly off topic, but is there a Fediverse equivalent of Pinterest? I’m feeling the urge to make some boards. I want all the aesthetics please

OK, so Lemmy (or at least this corner of it) skews pretty hard toward atheism. That doesn’t match a typical IRL sample of people. OP, I think you should try to find some online spaces dedicated to different religions and see what people there have to say.

As for me, I was also non-religious at 25. A close friend, on the other hand, decided to join a church singles group, mostly for the community. I think a lot of people get into a religion for the community aspect. Some religious institutions have special groups for new/questioning people or young adults, and virtually all of them have volunteering groups of some sort.

You can also read books about different religions and see if anything resonates with you. I’ve done a little of this. It didn’t really lead my anywhere, but I’ve met people who got started that way.

You could also explore a particular religion for the heritage aspect. If your grandma was Catholic or your family came from a historically Buddhist part of the world, you could explore that. You might not end up believing in any of it, but at least you’ll know a little more about your heritage.

edit: also, make sure you get perspectives from people who are actually part of the religion when you’re exploring. I was raised Catholic, and it was ridiculous how many silly things the Protestants thought about us. A lot of the criticisms were outdated or straight up inaccurate, which was funny because there were plenty of current things to criticize (hello, scandals in the news?) I’m not trying to scare you away from Catholicism, most priests are normal non-abusers and it works for some people.

I’m puzzled that you think this is a uniquely American phenomenon. But to answer the rest of the question:

Most of these people are probably spending time on their causes that they’d otherwise spend working. Their need/desire for money didn’t suddenly go away.

1. Politicians need campaign money

2. Important figures in tech pretty much always want as much money as possible, whatever else they claim; that’s part of why they do what they do

3. A lot of feminists and social advocates probably need the money for their living expenses

Also, this plays into the norms of book publishing. People sometimes value things they pay for more. I tend to assume free books that aren’t classics are worse books, because in my experience, they often are. Traditional publishers usually won’t allow the book to be free (because they’re not charities, even if the book is about a cause), and self-published works have extremely variable quality.

I don’t agree. Yes, under our current rules, posting things in public means people can do things you might not like with your work. And technically you agreed to Instagram’s BS when you made an account. But for all practical purposes, the rules changed after the fact for most people.

Someone who made their Facebook account in 2009 couldn’t reasonably have guessed that their posts might be used to train misinformation machines that would be forced into everything in 2026. Most people could have conceived of strangers looking at their photos and maybe even photoshopping them, but could never have conceived of gen AI in its current form until it arrived. Bloggers could have conceived of people plagiarizing them or taking their words out of context, but not of having their own past work used to feed tools designed to replace most of their future work opportunities while also spreading hallucinations. And some people might have made very different choices if they’d known, myself included. No one gave informed consent for all that data to be used for LLM training, because no one could have imagined what they were consenting to. Even now that we can, we’re being held hostage in a sense. You can’t meaningfully opt out of AI scraping without giving up participation in society, not when leaked private data and copyrighted works end up being used for AI training too.

As for looking for alternatives, it’s true that you can leave Instagram and use a different search engine. But there are limits. Most people are stuck with whatever software their job or school forces on them, even if they use alternatives in their personal lives. I can’t just tell my boss I’ll no longer be using Google collaboration tools or Microsoft products. I can recommend alternatives, but I don’t have the power to make the entire organization switch, especially when said boss actually likes AI. And almost every other office job in my country will likely require using the same software.

You’re right that we should never have seen big tech as a benevolent public square. You’re right that from a legal perspective, this person has no grounds for complaining about Instagram. But from a human perspective, they do. I think it’s quite reasonable to be upset that anyone who ever posted anything publicly for other humans to appreciate has been effectively forced to contribute to gen AI training. I think it’s reasonable to be frustrated that many of the common collaboration tools most of us are forced to use (for now, at least) have had AI stuffed into them. In a better society, we’d be able to share things publicly with other humans while opting out of tech we find harmful.

OMG, I’m going to have so much fun at the job interview

When you want to be friends with new people

Dang, I was fully expecting all the answers to be like “how would anyone know,” but there actually is a way to research this. Thanks for sharing!

External deadlines really help with motivation. See if you can find a hobby group or writing-related Discord or something like that, something where people create goals for everyone to work toward and keep each other accountable. Like, we’re all sharing a short story by August 17th, or we’re all going to bring something new we’ve written to our next meeting.

As for starting, I feel like I had a ton of different starts as a kid. There were school projects, things I tried with friends, and lots of instances of me trying to make my own versions of things I liked, some of which were written artifacts. I guess I always started with whatever I wanted to write, whether that was a small project or a small part of a large one.

I think you shouldn’t worry about whether your writing project is the right thing to start with. Someone might tell you to start with flash fiction instead of a novel, but that’s no good if you don’t enjoy flash fiction, and flash fiction has its own challenges that might pose more difficulty than writing a scene of a novel. It’s OK if your writing is crap (it probably will be for a long time). It’s OK if it takes forever to get words out. It’s OK if you get stuck. Just write something.

I’ll add Côte d’Noir and Old Zealand

Dang, we really should have learned about him in school. Talk about impact, and he even had a memorable name.

Hate to day it, but every industry has turned into that. At least in my anecdotal experience and my network’s anecdotal experience, useless people using AI to create shit that means extra work for others is happening everywhere. Not saying you should stay in manufacturing if you hate it, but just be aware that you probably won’t be leaving that issue behind.

political opinions that differ from what?

I used to think I was a pragmatic person. Decades later, not so much.

I’m kind of skeptical of pragmatism. Pragmatism too often leads people and businesses to do things that contribute to enshittification, marginalization of various social groups, and other social ills. Every time something gets worse, it’s probably because of someone’s “pragmatic” decision. There’s some value in being pragmatic in a lot of situations, but I think other values have to take precedence. If you put pragmatism first every time, you’re going to end up hurting people and adding to all the BS people live with.

I don’t quite agree. What you say won’t instantly change someone’s mind, but it plants a seed, sometimes even if the person seems to be doubling down hard.

When I’ve changed my mind about important things, it usually wasn’t because of one conversation. It was more like 100 conversations and articles that slowly built up doubt until one more point tipped me over. None of those individual conversations would have seemed to make a difference to the other person, but they ultimately contributed to me changing my mind.

Social norms, basically. I have unusual ideals about some important but very personal aspects of a relationship. Talking about those aspects early on is seen as a red flag in my community, but not talking about them means we’re probably wasting each other’s time.

You could probably get around this with the right dating apps, but those are data privacy nightmares.

I don’t quite believe in that stuff, but it’s a fun way to think about all the positive coincidences in your life and maybe let go of anger about negative situations you can’t change.

Sir, this is Lemmy.

But seriously, we’re on a social media platform that is all about decentralization. Of course a lot of people here dislike the idea of a single world government, for all the reasons already mentioned and more. Everything we dislike about centralized social media platforms would be present at a much greater level in a single world government.

I found out that the $130 name brand of a particular item lasted about 10x longer than the $35 no-name equivalent. Someone who’s pretty thrifty helped point me toward the brand. If part of what you’re paying for is sturdier materials and build, it might be well worth the extra cost.

For most things though, it’s not worth the price as far as I can tell. Nobody really cares if you wear no-name clothing, or if they do, they’re an asshole you want to avoid anyway.

bonus: most of these (and some of the other suggestions on this thread, like SearXNG) protect your privacy better than Google does