For all its faults, one thing I deeply value about Lemmy is the lack of ridicule even when sharing the most niche and out-there interests and hobbies.

Many people here get quite touchy when it comes to politics and such, but outside of that it's pretty nice that I can pretty much post about whatever interests me and people show up in the comments being encouraging and genuinely curious.

So many times in real-life interactions I start talking about something I'm into, only to realize the other person doesn't really get it or just isn't interested so I just then steer the discussion to other things. Over time you learn to keep all that stuff to yourself, and it almost starts building up inside you. Then you end up dumping it on someone again and immediately regret it, which then just reinforces this negative loop.

Not here though. I could probably start making animal figures from pine cones tomorrow and posting them, and it'd likely hit the "front page" with dozens of comments in no time.

It's almost like there's this inner child in me who still wants to play, but that's embarrassing so it needs to stay hidden from "normal" people. Still, I suspect pretty much everyone is hiding that same part of themselves, and we'd all be a lot better off letting it out and not taking ourselves so seriously all the time.