I find myself to be a stereotypical Lemmy user. I’m trans, (anarcho-) communist, a programmer and Linux engineer.

I’m older, I transitioned (ugh I hate that word) about 2 decades ago. I got into computers consciously and very intentionally. I knew I’d need to support myself soon and spent a good amount of time thinking what industries or companies might be willing to hire someone like me (this was even before trans people had employment rights in California!). I chose computers because I felt like it was an industry where someone might hire me, I could make enough to survive and pay for surgery, and because it seemed one where my co-workers would be less likely to beat me up or kill me.

When it comes to communism, I have a hunch that being trans forces you to think about society and why you are not accepted, who is causing your troubles and why. It seems apparent why someone so low on the social acceptance ladder as a trans person would be repelled by exploitation based zero-sum systems and attracted to systems that would allow them to survive and thrive.

Linux seemed just fundamentally awesome to me. You mean people could just choose to get together, coordinate, and build one of the most complex things to exist on the planet and give it away for free? Sign me up! I think Lemmy and the Fediverse are attractive for similar reasons.

The Fediverse is home to a lot of young, tech-minded people distrustful of major corporations. The younger generations are more likely to come out as transgender due to greater awareness and acceptance of gender identity and dysphoria, and a decentralised, open platform is naturally going to appeal to communists, syndicalists and other left-wingers who don’t want some billionaire buying the next website they get comfortable on. And funnily enough, there are a surprising number of trans people in the tech sector, to the point where trans-flag socks have become a meme among programmers.

My assumption is that the bots, shills, astroturfers and other corporate interests haven’t arrived in sufficient quantities yet.

It’s not that there’s more here, just the volume of noise out there is far greater and most of the content generated is for parties who gain no advantage from posing as part of either of those communities.

People that are naturally drawn to fediverse tend to be:

• self-hosting enthusiasts excited to run their own social media platforms, which are tend to be big supporters of FOSS
• left-leaning idealists who want to get away from big corps platforms
• pirates (arrr)

So it’s not that surprising to see plenty of anti-capitalism and transgender stuff here if you consider this demographics.