I’m in sort of a similar boat to you. I’d been keeping an eye on Lemmy in hopes that it might eventually see wider adoption as it became more polished in development. I think prior to the Reddit migration there were maybe about 10 or so servers running it, and of those 10 maybe a little over half had any semblance of a population and activity.

If memory serves some of the original instances were like:

• Lemmy.ml
• Lemmygrad.ml
• Beehaw.org
• Sopuli.xyz
• Mander.xyz
• Midwest.social
• Lemmy.ca

Of these, I think probably the most populated & active were maybe Lemmy.ml, Lemmygrad.ml, Beehaw, Midwest, and Lemmy.ca. Sopuli & Mander were (& I think may still be) smaller but they were still pretty active and have nice little communities.

Maybe I looked into them a little more closely than you, but I felt even then with their very small populations they had distinct cultures or at least cultural aims (probably most notably Beehaw & Lemmygrad at the time). However, you’re right that there wasn’t as much activity & content being shared by comparison to other networks just a year or two ago, which wasn’t surprising given how few folks were here.

Tbh I wish the Lemmy devs had had more time to polish the software before all this hit, but I’m pleasantly surprised to see folks weathering through its rough edges.