I've been struggling to find something that scratches the Reddit itch, in the lineage of Slashdot, then Fark, then Digg. Any recommendations? I don't mean niche communities, there needs to be enough of a mainstream critical mass the makes it _the_ place to go. I don't think it's Lemmy, though maybe it could be.

I really enjoy lemmy with summit client on my phone. Never been on it from my desktop though. Probably a good thing all things considered.

It's got pretty good coverage of most things related to my country and interests, but if you go too far afield/niche theres not many users on many topics

TikTok, but you'll have to suffer the video format

There isn't one unfortunately. Some nerd is ok on Lemmy but you'll never find stuff like knitting or local communities. Not with any people on them anyway.