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Do we really call ourselves "lemmings"? I fee like that kind of portrays the wrong image of us.
I mean, it's like voluntarily going by "sheeple" or something. Do people not know what lemmings are anymore?
Lemmings don't actually jump off cliffs. The source of that myth comes from a documentary where the documentarians made them jump off cliffs.
https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=wildlifenews.view_article&articles_id=56
I mean, still. I associate them with the games more than anything. And that's definetily not the kind of look i'd want out of a community that originated specifically because they DIDN'T want to just follow the herd and use what's popular regardless of how shitty it gets.
Well maybe you should make your own community without that rule and it's NSFW.
So embrace it ironically then ;)
Idk, crusading against common myths is something that's pretty hot these days. Stuff like:
- Christopher Columbus didn't actually discover America, and he was actually kind of an asshat
- Bell didn't invent the telephone, he was simply the first to patent and subsequently litigate
- "Frankenstein" is the name of the scientist, not the monster
- Many modern tropes about Christian Hell stem from a 17th century political satire novel
Crusading for truth in easily verifiable matters feels very on-brand for the kind of people who use Lemmy. In that light, reclaiming a negative term that's only negative because of a false premise to describe ourselves doesn't sound so bad. At worst, we become a little insufferable as we have to introduce the term with a "well, ackshually", which a lot of us would probably do anyway.
Personally, I think "lemming" is infinitely better than "fedditor".