Yeah FOMO is a helluva drug. I'd be willing to bet that while there are plenty of users on the newplaform, people actually posting is not there yet, and with the lack of content for users to doom scroll they're hopping back to whatever app they came from. Most people don't give two shits about actually engaging with a given userbase, they just want to doom scroll content and zone out.
It's generally when you're stuck in a loop of reading negative posts/articles. I think the phenomenon comes from how when you read a negative article/piece of news you feel down, so you want to scroll further in the hopes of seeing something positive to lift your spirits. But then of course it's only more negativity, and so you keep going. And the algorithms of Twitter/Facebook knows this, so they don't tend to help you find something positive.
Nothing positive is needed. It's an outrage engine that keeps you involved by edging on the max level of disturbance you are comfortable to consume. Seeing, posting reactions, having likes enables you to keep it going.
That's fair, I don't partake in that side of the web myself but when I get stuck in it it's usually because I read something depressing and am scrolling desperately hoping for good news.
I think alot of it relates to just scrolling through news and wanting more content/headlines. It's not that users are necessarily seeking out bad news or "doom", it's just that, given the state of the world today <motions broadly>, that's what a lot of the news ends up being. I think I often engage in "doomscrolling", but I'm not doing it because I want to see bad news, I'm an information addict and I'm just trying to get as much content as I can. Reddit fed that habit well, but I've moved on from there. And it's not necessarily a bad thing if Lemmy can't feed that addiction, not seeing new content pushes me off and forces me back into the real world or on to other sites/apps. I'm fine with that, I hated my constant need to flip through Reddit whenever I was bored before.
Covid era when many people had nothing to do, were more worried and anxious than usual, and the internet seemed full of concerning and bad news. The term has never meant that much to me personally. I’ve only regular scrolled.
I also think that there were linch pins with in the threads app, people followed shadow accounts for there friends etc. Now I wouldn't be surprised if alot of those friends then didn't get the app, making said shadow follow pointless
I wouldn't say its FOMO, I think most people just had higher hopes for it as a direct Twitter replacement instead of the cesspool of reposters, uninteresting celebs, and wylin' out social media managers that it serves up in its feed. I don't mind Meta, I don't mind that they want to eventually federate, I just wish the feed wasn't pure trash.
All the celeb shit is the number 1 reason I always hated these platforms. I also feel like the only people somewhat defending twitter are those with a large following/celebrity status