Their sidebar appears to be intentionally vague. It is overwhelmingly low quality memes.

  • jjagaimo@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    History wise

    195 was a college dorm of a few friends who made a reddit sub to share memes with each other

    Over time the sub grew really fast and became a major shitposting sub. I dont remember if it was while 196 was still around or after it shut down, but r/196 was made and became pro lgbt while 195 was kinda a cesspool. The guy running 195 shut it down because they were no longer dorming together or talking, and it was becoming hard to manage a huge sub alone with so many people posting hateful crap

    196 became the weird trans femboy lgbt shitpost sub

    197 popped up because people didnt like the lgbt stuff and it kinda became more like 195

    196 moved here but a lot of people jumping to lemmy havent actually interacted with 196 before do theyre just posting whatever whenever

    • Kinglink@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      That’s a great explanation. I love the idea of having an “internet historian” (other than the actual internet historian, who really doesn’t talk the origins of the internet). I guess there’s the meme databases but still, this is a great read.

      • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, what’s up with Internet Historian’s more recent videos? When I first found the dude, he literally did just do history about internet stuff. Now it all just seems like half hour long shit posts with no real info about anything in particular. Just strings of “lol so random” type humor.

        • Kinglink@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          You should watch only “Internet Historian” channel, he has alternate channels and those are of mixed quality (all far weaker). I avoid Incognito Mode like the plague, yet he links that channel off his main channel constantly

        • Purplexingg@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          The main channel is mostly still kind of an internet history. Concordia was an obvious outlier though. But yeah all of his other stuff is basically just him creating whatever he wants with his friends. Humor for me is kinda hit or miss.

    • Pika@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I was apart of r/196, I never knew there was earlier iterations, I thought it was just a drop a meme and go style place. this is actually interesting.

    • jonne@infosec.pub
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      1 year ago

      Oh thanks. I used to see them pop up on Reddit and never really got what it was about.

      • scutiger@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        What’s missing from this description is that the main rule of that sub/community is that you can’t leave without posting something, hence all the “rule” memes.

      • imPastaSyndrome@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Cut that shit out. Just thank them and move on, awards were useless trinkets that fed the spezmachine

          • klyde@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Excepts votes cost nothing while morons spend money on an icon instead of just saying thanks. Bit of a difference there.

          • imPastaSyndrome@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            No, it separated the bad comments from the good for free. The stupid icons were free just long enough to get morons addicted and thinking saying the words “thanks that was very valuable/helpful” wasn’t enough and they had to get the dopamine rush of patting themselves on the back for getting and receiving equally useless golden upvotes.

  • simple@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    It’s a meme community where the only rule is you have to post something before you leave, that’s why a lot of posts say “rule”. The reason it’s so popular is because it used to be a super popular subreddit called /r/196.

    As for why it kinda turned into an LGBT-specific community, beats me.

    • driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br
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      1 year ago

      Every meme community becomes a trans shitposting paradise or an alt-right nazi gamer hellhole after it reaches critical mass. There’s no alternative.

    • normalmighty@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      r/196 became all lgbt stuff, so it followed over. IIRC the mods were really trigger happy with removing stuff that didn’t align super close with them politically.

      r/197 formed as a direct response to this, and while at first they had issues with too much bounce back to the right with some gross anti-trans memes, once the dust settled and new mods were added, it became the best sub for just mindless shitposting without worrying about fitting a political theme.

  • BrerChicken @lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The second part of your question is the easiest. It shows up all the time because you haven’t blocked it yet!

  • errata@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Lemmy is young, so an enthusiastic community of a few hundred people can control the flow of the front page if they all upvote everything en bloc. I’ve had to block several meme pages for that reason. It will eventually even out, probably.

    Like I don’t hate memes necessarily but I hate meme communities. Forced memes are the worst.

  • rouxdoo@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    It shows up so much on all because you haven’t blocked it yet. Go ahead and kill shitposts and memes while you’re at it.

  • eee@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    i’ve blocked a few of the meme communities, not because i hate memes that much but just because they take up too much of my feed too.

  • danc4498@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I think it shows up so much on all because the algorithm for “hot” kind of sucks. I read earlier that subs that are more active get pushed to the top more than others. Not sure if that’s true, but that would explain why random subs seem to pop up on hot so frequently.

  • Sharp@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    thanks for letting me know that exists so i can block it before i see anything from there

  • Rick@thesimplecorner.org
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    1 year ago

    Gotta read the rule. I’ll subscribe to it for a day or two and then get tired of it. Read the rule and you’ll understand.