I mean, to be fair, in lemmy standards, having 23 people interacting with your post to vote and/or comment is a good sign that the community is visible enough at this point that it should be a short hop to being popular—by Lemmy standards. It’s “dead” in that no one is posting. But you could post if you want to do that work of uploading highlights, dutifully making posts, etc.

That’s where Reddit had a huge benefit. It was well-known enough to be a status symbol while still seen as a kind of mainstream “nerdy” thing. So people committed hours and hours of their lives to building and maintaining their popular accounts. It gave a visible outlet to people that wanted to be into niche stuff, but wanted to be known for being into “interesting” niche topics. It’s the hot topic of websites. “I’m so different, I pay top dollar at The Different Shop.” Reddit offers people that image in return for their labor hours.

Lemmy is just truly niche and unpopular and doesn’t really boost the quirky-cred of anyone (yet). So this is truly a passion-based slog if you want to make a community grow. You have more people with nothing but genuine interest here, but fewer people.