It is probably due to a number of people stopping using their alts after some instance hopping.
Also a few people who came to see how it was, and weren’t attracted enough to become regular visitors.
Curious to see at which number we’ll stabilize.
Next peak will probably happen after either major features release (e.g. exhaustive mod tools allowing reluctant communities to move from Reddit) or the next Reddit fuck up (e.g. removing old.reddit)
Stats on each server: https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list
Sorry you had a bad experience.
I am myself trying to get out of the tech/politics/memes bubble with communities like !chat@beehaw.org , !casualconversation@lemmy.world , !moviesandtv@lemmy.film , !personalfinance@lemmy.ml , etc.
I’m afraid at some point a lot of people like you will just leave and we’ll be left with Linux memes (and I use that OS)
Thanks for the community recommendations, they seem like great points to explore from. I also love Linux and tech in general, otherwise I probably wouldn’t be here. But I have other interests too. That’s something I find to be decent about tildes surprisingly, considering you need to be a massive tech nerd just to access one.
You are welcome!
There is also !trendingcommunities@feddit.nl that has a daily report of rising communities
I think this fact really makes the issue salient. There’s got to be something about the ranking that’s the problem. The fact that you could find better niche communities on tildes is insane.