How prevalent alcohol culture is in the West. I’m Southeast Asian and it’s more common for us to drink sugary drinks and have food at the local corner restaurant at night instead of having alcohol when we spend time with friends.
When I studied in the West, it really struck me how the only place you really could hang out at night was the bar, and alcohol was often the preferred drink. And they normally closed at 12am, so you can’t even stay out that late.
Personally I’m not very fond of inebriation just due to the issues it creates (not that my friends were alcoholics and got blackout drunk every time we hung out), so I found it kind of bad that it’s so socially accepted to see a need to get drunk in order to tolerate socialising with friends.
I think I find it a bit harder to find exactly what I’m looking for on Lemmy for support and help on various topics. So, it’s good and bad. When it becomes easier to search for content Lemmy will definitely improve on that front.
I’m still discovering new instances every day and it has been a much more slow paced browsing experience due to load times and the frequency of new content.
It’s definitely a different (but in no way worse) experience to what I’m used to on Reddit, but there’s a whole lot less upsetting content (like personal stories of abuse and such) that show up on Lemmy, so I think it’s been better for my mental health, even if I feel a bit less connected to the internet than before.
And let’s be fair, it’s probably for the best.