Comparatively to the rest of the internet, it seems like there are a lot more Germans here. I’ve always assumed it was just because I was on a German instance and was in a sort of echo chamber (join feddit.org btw 🥳), but I just checked Fediverse Observer and it’s the 2nd largest country by users. Additionally, the German instances seem to be the biggest non-English ones.

Why is this?

  • rumschlumpel@feddit.org
    0·
    9 days ago

    German subs were really big on Reddit, too.

    Germany is the second largest country in Europe by population, they don’t really have their own social media like e.g. Russia or China and they’re much better at English than most other big countries that are not already English native speakers.

      • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
        0·
        7 days ago

        I’ve only ever spoken to highly intellectual Germans who spoke perfect English, but I’ve spoken to thousands if not more than a million of the most concavebrain moronic Americans imaginable.

      • TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee
        0·
        8 days ago

        To be clear, native Germans are far better at English than most Americans are at this point.

        honestly from a linguistic perspective this is so painfully inaccurate. you’re talking about native speakers here. what you might mean to say is that Germans use English closer to how the Brits use it. that is a defensible statement. but you’re doing something different.

        just because native speakers change how they use their own language, they aren’t doing it “worse”. they are adapting their tongue to their needs. one’s mother language is deeply tied to identity, and cultural identities grow and shift through time. to say that their identity is “worse” is certainly a statement you could make, but you see the violence inherent in it, right?

        who knows, there’s plenty of criticisms to make of Americans. i probably have more than the average. but i’m not really comfortable with putting down entire groups of people based on how they use their mother tongue. and i’m certainly not going to try to pass off criticism of a culture as a statement of measurement like “you are bad at X”

      • Saleh@feddit.org
        0·
        9 days ago

        Depends on the age group imo.

        I think the people who experienced internet from ca. 2005-2015 will have the best English on average. Because in this time English was simply necessary to get a grip on a lot of media, games, websites… Now a lot of things are translated, sometimes by force (youtube, reddit…) and with bad auto-translation. Also German content creators became much more widespread since 2015, so now people might never need to look past their language horizon.

        Of course the dates and statements aren’t absolutes, just general observations.

      • dxdydz@slrpnk.net
        0·
        8 days ago

        lol, spoken like somebody who has never actually tried to speak English in Germany. As a shameful monoglot, I have had occasion to test the limits of English understanding in a variety of countries, and Germany has pretty low rates of English speakers in my personal experience. The Netherlands on the other hand…

        • Paper_Phrog@lemmy.world
          0·
          8 days ago

          This is true. But the general rule of thumb is that the farther you are away from a big city, the worse the understanding of English will get.

          Try speaking English in a rural Dutch town and you will get hilariously broken English. There’s a famous book about it - Make that the cat wise. Full of literal translations that make 0 sense.

    • DasFaultier@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      9 days ago

      better at English It’s been a while since you’ve been in a video conference with Germans speaking English, hasn’t it? /j

      • rumschlumpel@feddit.org
        0·
        9 days ago

        My pronounciation is awful, too, but that doesn’t matter on lemmy!

        And I’m still convinced that an English-language video conference with Germans is usually going to be better than with French people.

      • JustAnotherKay@lemmy.world
        0·
        9 days ago

        Gotta use two newlines with Lemmy’s markdown, else it ignores it and then your comment comes out lookin a lil goofy

        But with a second newline it’s fine

  • MyBrainHurts@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    9 days ago

    I’ve wondered and never thought to ask. Thanks, the resulting conversation has been awesome.

  • Zombiepirate@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    9 days ago

    Gotta say, I love reading the German memes in /all, even if I have a kindergarten-level understanding of German.

      • 0ops@lemm.ee
        0·
        8 days ago

        I don’t speak or read German but every once in a while a meme will have a critical mass of words I understand because of their proximity to English, and the German 100% amplifies the meme.

        • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
          0·
          9 days ago

          Zangendeutsch is killing me though. I’m a native English speaker living in Germany and it’s difficult not to internalize fake internet German

    • Kacarott@aussie.zone
      0·
      9 days ago

      In my experience, the mental effort spent trying to understand the German in a meme makes the comedic payout better

      • sbf@feddit.orgOP
        0·
        8 days ago

        I fully agree, lol. I browse ich_iel with reading glasses and a dictionary

    • 001Guy001@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      9 days ago

      a kindergarten-level understanding of German.

      I love the serendipitous use of kindergarten, with it being of German origin :)

  • Prime@lemmy.sdf.org
    0·
    9 days ago

    One factor is German history with Stasi und ww2 fascism. We like increased independence and privacy, so lemmy rather than Facebook

    • boonhet@lemm.ee
      0·
      9 days ago

      Now tell your car manufacturers that people would like privacy, not always-online cars.

      Not that the others are any better, of course.

      • bob_lemon@feddit.org
        0·
        8 days ago

        Always online cars are mandated by EU regulations, and for a very good reason: automated emergency calls including GPS coordinates in case of crashes.

        Other nice benefits include regular map updates.

        That said, there is a lot of garbage being attached to the online functionality nowadays. And the way data is collected and handled in the background it at least partially atrocious, so let’s attack that instead of the proverbial baby in the bathwater.

  • Zahtu@feddit.org
    0·
    8 days ago

    I guess, because Most of us are needs and Love the Open source Community. In contrast to nerds of other countries, we are far more interested in talking and participating on that stuff. Just as examples see KDE, Codeberg…

  • tischbier@feddit.orgEnglish
    0·
    9 days ago

    It’s because I’m specifically learning German and the universe shifted to my will. The universe created feddit.org to give me a clear path to achieve my goal of befriending Germans.

    This only happpened because me, Tischbier, decided to take an interest in Germany.

    You’re welcome.

    (Joking aside, I noticed on Reddit before I left and before I started to learn German, that ich_irl was hitting the front page a lot too. My family decided to learn German together probably in part because of how funny Germans are. I watch German YouTubers now too (Spacefrogs and Staiy). Germany is a pretty big country and I think them the top leader of the free world! I have enjoyed reading the actual Germans takes on this topic. Prost!)

    • Zacryon@feddit.org
      0·
      8 days ago

      “top leader of the free world”

      Yeah. We are currently hating on foreigners real hard again and want to introduce storage of IP connections for three months for everyone without reason. We are so free, that you can’t even change your name without psychological assessment. Even then it’s up to the arbitrariness of the clerk. And even then you are tightly restricted in how you can change it. We enjoy such freedom, that you have to wait 6 months or longer for specialist medical care (if you are not dying right now). But we are free to pay using private insurance, which instantly levels us up to superior class citizens. Much less of a hassle then, if you can afford it. We are so free that you can easily sacrifice most of your money just to get a somewhat minimal amount of living space for rent. Well, to be fair, this depends on your income class.
      This is especially free, if you have difficulties climbing up the income class, because you can’t get the medical attention you need to fix some stuff. Then you are free to revel in your freedom while not getting forward in your free life.
      And don’t mind those pesky little migrants again, who are free to stay dumb, because we allow ourselves the freedom to not integrate and support them properly.
      You see, freedom in Germany is often just a question of personal wealth. If you’ve got enough money, you’ve got a lot more freedom.
      Our freedom is also reflected in the world press freedom index which has worsened in the past years from “good” to “satisfactory”. When we vote for a political party that represents our opinions and interests best, there is a chance that this vote will be canceled out in the final election results, if that party doesn’t get at least 5% of overall votes. Such votes go directly to waste. Isn’t that great freedom of political choice?
      Let’s talk about freedom of movement: If you’re not a superior class citizen (somewhat wealthy) good luck getting around without a car. Especially in rural areas. Pack a good book and plenty of water. Oh, and I hope you don’t mind close personal contact to various strangers on a daily basis, because our public transport infrastructure takes it’s time and is overloaded with freedom.
      Also our politicians are very free in what they can do and how they can treat us. One guy, a chancellor nonetheless, used his freedom of thought to forget everything about an extremely severe financial scandal he was involved in (Cum-Ex, Scholz), another one enjoys his freedom after generously supporting a mask company using many many tax euros (during the Covid pandemic) based on a personal recommendation from party members (Maskenaffäre, Spahn), and then, politicians are also free to use the police as their personal intimidation tool when they have hurty hurt feelings after being called a dick (Andi ist 1 Pimmel). But I mean, that all makes sense. If we think of further cases like Nestlé-Klöckner, or Amthor-stocks, those people just want to ensure and expand their freedom.

      Ah… I could go on and on about it and tell you about the many facets of freedom we enjoy in Germany. But that’s enough for now. I need to get going to enjoy my freedom.

      Okay, to be even more fair, compared to the United States of Idiots, Germany is pretty cool. Also compared to a lot of other countries probably. But saying it is a “top leader of the free world” makes me scoff.

      • tischbier@feddit.orgEnglish
        0·
        8 days ago

        Haha I was kind of being a bit tongue in cheek and joking around about the state of the world. I’m sorry if it came off as super serious—I was making a goofy comment.

        The entire world feels like a matchstick—will it snap or set itself on fire?

        I do believe Germany is leading the world right now but that is not a great development. It’s actually a position that reinforces and exposes how fucked we all are. I also think that Germany’s leadership is incredibly tentative and fragile. Germany reminds me of America way too much in the worst ways.

        The state of German politics and the rise of authoritarianism in Germany is something I worry about, genuinely, daily. I follow your elections closely and your politics.

        This is the real reason I started learning German. Because I have no illusions that human decency will continue standing. Most of our shared suffering is because economically we are all being crushed by a few outrageously rich evil entities. We face this together.

        I do appreciate your perspective though and I am aware of what’s going on there with the Ausländer and systemic issues. It’s scary honestly and I’m sorry if my joking made it seem like I was making light of these issues—I never meant it to come across that way.

        As for the crisis with your cost of living, economic opportunity and especially securing affordable housing. I saw one German comedy video put it succinctly: Was wollen Die Parteien eigentlich machen mit meinen hohen Lebenshaltungskosten zu helfen?

        And the “answer“ from every Partie was: Also wir wollen dir helfen indem wir Ausländer abschieben!

        Actually, I’m a lawyer so I appreciate the detail you put in to explain because the Tägliche Nachrichten I can read doesn’t go into detail like you have—so thanks!

    • sbf@feddit.orgOP
      0·
      8 days ago

      I’m learning German, too! I took 3 years in school and wanted to continue my education on my own. So far, it’s… going

      • tischbier@feddit.orgEnglish
        0·
        8 days ago

        Entschuldigung, was steht auf der Speisekarte? VERTIEFUNG DER DEUTSCHEN SPRACHKENNTNISSE

    • cows_are_underrated@feddit.org
      0·
      8 days ago

      The universe created Feddit.org

      Actually Feddit.org is only a follow up instance. Originally there was an instance called Feddit.de, which was basically the same as Feddit.org. however, last year the only admin travelled to south-asia and went missing. To this day no one knows what happened to him. In his absence the pictrs box of the instance overflowed causing image uploads to not work anymore. As time goes on the instance started to get more and more unreliable. It started getting downtimes, federation didnt work anymore. After months of seeing the instance degrade the community started to take matters into the own hands and create a new instance. However it was clear, that there shouldn’t be a single admin in order to not have the same problem as before. After some time where we considered creating an own association to care for the instance we decided, to instead hit up the “Fediverse foundation” which are now hosting Feddit.org

      • tischbier@feddit.orgEnglish
        0·
        7 days ago

        I actually knew this! The creation origin is why I inhabit feddit.org consciously. In a dying instance, you found each other and came together to build where we speak now. I found that very human. Poignant.

        I did a dive on the history of Feddit.org. I went back and read all your (our I guess) original threads. I have also read the posts where the decision was made to changeover. I liked that the posts were kind, empathetic, although slightly sad. It made me understand the spirit of this instance.

        So, it’s true that no one has had contact with him? No one has any scraps of information from his real life? My guess is some of us do and the leads were exhausted. I have tracked down a fair share of anonymous friends across the world whom have disappeared. That is very sad.

        I didn’t know about the “Fediverse Foundation” nor the multiple Admin. Where may I learn more about this? Or is this just word of mouth?

        Thank you for sharing.

        • cows_are_underrated@feddit.org
          0·
          7 days ago

          AFAIK no one knows anything about what happened to the old admin (he was called wintermute). The only thing that everyone knows is, that he went to south Asia and was expecting to not have internet access at all times. If someone would have known anything furthet I’m pretty sure I would have heard about it. You can find all the instances the fediverse foundation hosts here (German): https://fediverse.foundation/instanzen/. The thing with the multiple Admins is something known by the people. I know two people who are Admins ( @[email protected] and @[email protected] the first one was one of the people who was very invested in the creation of this instance), but I guess there are more and of course the fediverse foundation itself.

      • tauren@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        7 days ago

        How many admins feddit.org has and is there a policy prohibiting them from traveling to South-Asia together?

    • varyingExpertise@feddit.orgEnglish
      0·
      8 days ago

      Ah, that explains why I was cast into this existence last week after chilling in the void for eons, which I was actually pretty fine with, but here we are now, toast crumbs, income tax and all that. Thanks I guess.

  • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
    0·
    7 days ago

    They were also prevalent on Reddit but they’re more sensitive to the enshitification that some other countries like the USA and France are more accustomed to, so more Germans made the leap than Americans.

    A lot of the internet is USA and Europe, and more recently India, just in general. China, Russia, and North Korea all heavily restrict their internet access and normal people in those countries probably don’t use english-centric online communities anyways. I’m not sure why the adoption rate seems much lower in other places, perhaps they’re still developing.

  • wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    9 days ago

    Germany has always been a big hub for Free software as a whole, for alternative communications, etc. The CCC’s presence is a big factor.

  • Blaze (he/him)@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    0·
    9 days ago

    As a kind of unique exception ([email protected] being the other one), the mods of /r/ich_iel pointed out to feddit.de (previous version of feddit.org) in a pinned post: https://old.reddit.com/r/ich_iel/comments/14d65o7/öffentliche_dienstmeldung_änderung_der/

    Compare this to all of the other country/regional subs who would remove similar posts for “self promotion”, and you get why the German population was guided here instead of having to hear it from an second level comment on a Sunday thread

  • brognak@lemm.ee
    0·
    7 days ago

    No idea, but I love their here cus I realized I finally had a use for Gemini! Been using it to translate the memes 😅

    • TriflingToad@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      7 days ago

      I don’t translate their memes, I mostly ignore them. but sometimes there’s a meme that’s close enough to English that I can understand it and those are hilarious