What brought me here:
When breadtube became a thing around 2016 it was my refuge from the horrible reactionary shitshow the internet was at the time. It opened me to things further left than Obummer.
I lurked on Reddits sorry excuses for leftist subs and heard them whisper about the CTH sub as being "bad leftists" but they never explained what was bad about them so I checked for myself and checked out the podcast and was like "They aren't bad they're just a bit obnoxious." I didn't really hang out on r/CTH, only saw the occasional post, and I listened to the podcast every now and again (and not at all anymore, stopped listening after the 2020 primaries) and that was about it. Then r/CTH was banned, this place was mentioned and I got curious.
It felt like I had finally found a place that wasn't going to demand I be civil towards Nazis. I wasn't going to be banned for saying "kill all slave owners." I also thought you guys were really funny. So yeah, Ironally r/CTH made you guys more appealing lmao. It also helped that you retained the "fuck being civil to horrible people" energy while at the same time attempting to make sure marginalised groups weren't thrown under the bus.
What made me stay:
A community of weirdos that genuinely
want to make the world a better place and stand up for their marginalised comrades. Whether it's the mutual aid comm helping people the best it can, the news comm shining a light on events the world tries to bury, or simply the movie comm providing a safe fun area to chill, I feel like this place provides something other places on the internet don't. It also is a place I feel like I can ask any questions about leftism and not be called an idiot. You guys taught me things ranging from practical stuff how to take part in my local org, to mundane things how to make a rad bean recipe. I think that's worth something. Also I still think you guys are hilarious.
EDIT: added some more context because I was reminded of stuff I had forgotten.
My political pipeline was Dem > DemSoc > Marxist-Leninist > something akin to Left Unity(currently closer to anarcho-socialism but I float)
I joke about it but I'm the meme where you go into college as a lib and leave as a socialist. But I also took a lot of econ, polysci, and history classes. They are a bit more gloves off in their history classes when they are behind a paywall.
I've been a redditor for like 13 pathetic years and gravitated towards /r/latestagecapitalism pretty early but I was still lib-brained and a reformist. Sometime during the Bernie era, I became a socialist but at that time I only heard bad things on reddit about all those tankies on /r/cth and /r/genzedong. And certainly a tankie I was not!
I kept reading theory and at some point, It sort of clicked and I was like, I'm a Marxist. It's me, the communist, etc. Basically I was radicalized at this point. Last year when reddit was killing 3rd party apps, I caught wind of Lemmy and went to look into it. I saw a bunch of horror stories about how bad the evil tankies were on Lemmygrad and Hexbear and sort of just went with Lemmygrad since it was federated with the wider server network. I hung out there for a few months, then y'all federated and I just sort of found myself on y'alls comms more and it felt more like home to me. I still love my 'grad comrades but the 50/50 split of shit posting and effort posting here jives better with my personality.
I stayed because I've never seen a more inviting place for marginalized people and leftists. I'm pretty serious about Left Unity and that include my brown, queer, trans, and fellow disabled comrades, and really everyone that just wants to see socialism realized. I hate seeing other "leftist" spaces close the door on people just because they don't fit their perfect mold.