Right now the user count Lemmys is comparatively tiny when held up against reddit - but the user count isn’t the thing that makes a social media site, it’s the engagement
So even if you’re used to lurking, try to get a little more active! Post memes, vote on posts, talk in the comments, whatever!
If people come here and see activity, content, and discussions, they’re more likely to stay and contribute their own - if they come and see a ghost town, they’ll just go back to reddit
I definitely have nostalgia for it too! But as with all memories it can be hard to separate what’s me missing being younger and what’s me missing how things were back then.
I think with federation gets more popular a lot of it may come back in a way.
There’s nothing really stopping people from creating an non-federalized instance that would essentially be an old school forum. There was a pretty crazy lemmy frontend thing I saw that brings it all full circle too.
Lemmy as a phpBB forum: https://fedibb.ml/