I know a lot of lurkers like me out there are browsing, but there’s quite a bit of engagement capitol on the federated instances. If you find an interesting topic and the right community, you get a lot of feedback. There’s not much hate being thrown out there either.
For any lurker out there: a lot of it is just mental. It can be a hurdle to get over the first few times, but once you start posting and getting responses it feels more like a conversation than a feed, and you can get more out of it.
I lurked exclusively on Reddit because there were too many people to be able to talk to anyone (there’s a Yogiism for you). It’s all just a series of comments there.
So give it a chance, see if you like it some more. There are plenty of nice, knowledgeable and talkative people here to meet.
You perfectly describe how it felt on Reddit to comment and what turned me into a lurker after the years went by. Doing my best to be more active on Lemmy to help get this thing growing!
Same thing for me. Felt a little more free!