Going in with the aim of making Lemmy “more popular” is not the best approach.

This (and the rest of your excellent post) reminds me of a fantastic quote from a letter J. Robert Oppenheimer wrote to his younger brother:

“Everyone wants rather to be pleasing to women and that desire is not altogether, though it is very largely, a manifestation of vanity. But one cannot aim to be pleasing to women any more than one can aim to have taste, or beauty of expression, or happiness; for these things are not specific aims which one may learn to attain; they are descriptions of the adequacy of one’s living. To try to be happy is to try to build a machine with no other specification than that it shall run noiselessly.”

Similarly, Lemmy being popular is not a specific aim which we “may learn to attain.” Rather it is a description of the adequacy of the content. Build the community we want, the popularity may follow, or it may not! But to try to make a popular website “is to try to build a machine with no other specification than that it shall run noiselessly.”