New midwest.social users look here

From Chicago. I made the plunge to Mastodon (and here) after the Reddit shenanigans and just seeing the repeated bad-faith policies by Twitter. I have been using redirector and libredirect for the last month or two to actively decide who I give my data to just as a fun experiment into best practices.

I think it's slowly starting to be clear that this type of setup will be the way forward for the more tech-savvy, privacy-focused users, and hopefully/eventually it hits the mainstream as well, but otherwise, it's just self-selecting into the type of people I want to be around, which will probably be better for my mental health anyways.

I'm into cycling, trading, sci-fi and FOSS. Currently reading The Expanse and taking a sabbatical year from work

Edit: Just want to encourage people to engage w/ and create content over the next few weeks. Activity and friendly faces are probably the most determining factor in whether someone becomes an active user or just browses for a few minutes

Good morning, midwestern Lemmites! Actually a Hexbear refugee, I got banned when they found out I organize with Trotskyists. Don't worry though, my IRL organizing work creates enough personal irritation that I don't need to harass people who disagree with me in order to get it. I'm just here cuz its a leftish space of localish people, who post memes and stories I can comment on. I like Music, art, videogames, tech, books (history, social theory, sci fi)...well I actually have too many hobbies and interests to list. Thanks for letting me in your little instance!

Hi y'all! I'm from Indiana. Nice to meet you all!

From a Wisconsin Exurb of the Twin Cities. I am an astronomer and instrumentation physicist, most of my day job is debugging software and electronics. But sometimes it is looking at galaxies and exoplanets. I am getting back into running after an injury and am currently reading about political economics.

Hey all, I live in Wisconsin and am exploring moving over from Mastodon because I like the Reddit-style interface better than Twitter-style. Like probably most here, I'm a tech nerd who is forever trying to get people away from the centralized internet.

Sup nerds. I'm Miah, I'm from Western Michigan. I'm a UNIX/Linux nerd, Right to Repair advocate, and transgender woman. I've been working on our cars by myself and would love to make some car nerd friends. My wife and I have 24 chickens, and a budding garden.

Hello 30 year old central Missourian. Had a Reddit and Imgur account, left Reddit at the last purge of subs and users. Have been using Imgur exclusively since then. Not quite the same, except for it also slowly getting worse as they monetize it. I enjoyed woodworking, blacksmithing, leatherworking, ren-faires (shocker given those previous two), and cooking. Past tense as I now have a 1 year old and there's no time for anything besides work and parenting a baby/toddler with my spouse. Wasn't planning to interact much, as agreeing to a popular opinion isn't helpful and I don't have time for arguing something pointless, however a post below reminded me that I should, as engagement does help grow this new platform. An attempt will be made.

Reddit refugee, Clevelander, home theater/surround audio nerd. Nice to be here.

Hi everyone, another Chicagolander here, this time from the western suburbs. I just moved over here from kbin.social, which has been broken quite a lot lately. Prior to that I was on reddit for an embarrassingly long time, bailing on it when the shit hit the fan last summer.

I'm also on Mastodon where I post very infrequently - I prefer the link aggregator with comments style services such as Lemmy over microblog things.

I'm a middle-aged immigrant dude who is into a lot of nerd shit like scifi, books, video games, electric vehicles, as well as photography and motorcycles. I also ride bicycles for fun and exercise when the weather doesn't suck.

Hi, it's just me, and thanks so much for having me. I had to migrate, I couldn't abide by the sheer onslaught of typical liberal stuff that began coming in avalanches, lately, and I've got a lot of unlearning to do as I continue to properly educate myself.

I was a little confused a while back at a post where a user complained of being banned, but his post was extremely misleading, so I apologize for my confusion. That cleared right up when he showed up in DMs talking about how weird our good host is.

I appreciate your patience and helping me learn. I'm a little slow on the uptake sometimes, so I appreciate directness. I'll get over hurt feelings, if any are caused by it. Thanks again for allowing me.

Hi. It's cold most of the year. The summers are dreadful. There's a couple of days in the spring and fall that are beautiful.

I migrated from reddit a long time ago. I was on world, and realized world was really big and thought maybe I should get more out of the federation thing and go more local. So I did.

Hi, I'm in Central Illinois. Reddit doesn't let me make accounts anymore... they want email addresses and I want privacy.

I'm yet another Reddit refugee - you might recognize my username from frequent comments in /r/athensohio, or less frequently /r/Ohio and /r/Columbus - and I made accounts at Beehaw, lemmy.world, and sh.itjust.works before discovering this instance. A whole instance of leftists in the Midwest?!?!!! 🎉 Very excited to have found you all.

My husband (42m) and I (41f) have been together just shy of 20 years and do small engine and outdoor equipment repair from our home garage; he turns the wrenches, I do the admin stuff, and we make small engine repair and enthusiast videos to encourage people to repair, not replace, which is something we're really passionate about.

We have a 16yo trans son, son and I are both bi, and we keep our pride flag up all year long because we've had repair customers mention that it helped them know we were a safe place to bring their equipment. 😕

We've got dogs and cats and live on a few acres outside Athens. Just 2 weeks ago, we received our newly-hatched chickens and guineas, so we're scrambling to get the coop and run done. I'm working on figuring out how to share the feed for the security camera I set up near their enclosure, so let me know if you'd like a link for the Poultry News Network when it goes live. 😂

Hi there. Iowan leftist fleeing the mainstream platforms to help my mental health. Feeling disillusioned with national political action and wanting to focus my attention locally. I'm and avid gardener, war-gamer/mini painter, and forever D&D GM.

Hello! I've been using Lemmy for about 2 months now (since the reddit disaster).

I've been trying to find an instance that would be a good fit for me and I'm in Ohio and I just thought this would be the best fit!

@seahorse@midwest.social Is there a like a standard amount new people should donate to the server?

reddit refugee here, had been a 12+ year user that started on f7u12 and rage comics, growing up as reddit did… and i, like almost everyone else here, do not recognize it for what it used to be.

anyway! i’m not exactly midwest, as i’m from tennessee, but i am a huge fan of midwest emo (am football, mom jeans, pinegrove, desaparecidos) and i commiserate with the best of them.

i’m into photography, woodworking, building guitars, architecture, design, bicycling, and basketball. so far lemmy has been a huge breath of fresh air!

Most of the comments in here are from 2mo ago, seems like, but I'll give it a shot.

Michigander here. Lived most of my adult life here, but was raised in Illinois and bounced around for a bit in my 20s.

Started out with the standard rural Midwest set of beliefs (plus a few nutty ones like young earth creationism), but after a great many years of transformation I now consider myself a leftist (and/or socialist depending on my mood) and generally progressive dude.

Love me some tech, anime, video games, jazz, ttrpg, and so on with the nerd stuff. I also draw on the odd occasion, even a few commissions under my belt, but don't expect much. No academic or professional training here.

I do have an academic background in Japanese, Psychology, and general Social Science study methodologies, though I work primarily in IT these days.

I look forward to the discussions here!

Hi!

Ohioan here... I too am a recent reddit refugee.... anyone else having digg deja vu?...

Likes: Nerdy things, Video Games, Animals, Ohio sports teams, Music, Traveling

Been on Mastodon for a few months (suck it twitter) and with Reddit's recent money grab figured I'd check out other parts of the fediverse.

Hi all!

I’m in the Chicagoland area - deleted all social media besides Reddit, but Reddit’s platform continues to decline and I am exhausted with not being able to have any form of discussion that goes against any opinions of the “mods” and the big business/far right bots.

I would love to connect with likeminded people in my area, and be able to really connect to enact positive change and maintain our sanity. I think the world is in a very dark place, I hope we can be the light.

Very new to this platform - would absolutely love to connect with anyone who also has tip and trips to get the most of of lemmy! :)

Outside of being a passionate leftists, I am proud ADHDer and cat mom. I work two jobs to maintain independence and take care of the fur babies, but I am slowly trying to be more social and outgoing after everything the pandemic threw my way.