4 ms·

I find this area to be best filled by blogs. The format allows long ideas to be explored in a way no "social" site can. The comments sections are better at bei

I find this area to be best filled by blogs. The format allows long ideas to be explored in a way no "social" site can. The comments sections are better at being on-topic, because there are less people stumbling in from another corner of a generalist platform. Or comments are disabled, and if you want to participate in a back-and-forth, you need to start your own blog and have something worthwhile to say. Barrier to entry helps with signal to noise ratio. The youtube comments are widely regarded as worthless, but bad video essays on youtube don't make people give up on watching video essays in general. There is a lot of legwork in finding and following good blogs or aggregators. But if you're seeking out ideas (or "insightful commentary"), you can't avoid doing the legwork. Stopping in one place limits you to the scope of ideas found in that place. HN and (some) subreddits are certainly good starting points, but the content eventually become predictable, trite and cliche. Even here. (especially here?) The collective conscious of any one community amasses new ideas slower than someone seeking them out can consume them. And that's the best case scenario, it doesn't even account for for topics that have devolved into an echo chamber, or constant flamewars on certain topics. You have to constantly keep moving. Note: When I say blogs, I mean blogs. Not some hackneyed news-blog that will feed your mind poison just to keep you coming back. The Gawker properties were a FOX News for a younger, lefter crowd and it drove me up the wall when people didn't recognize that.

monk_e_boy 10y ago
I found this leads me into a bubble of internet that only shows me what I agree with. I've found myself going back to reddit just to get both sides of the story. It's useful when say the Trump fans post things that lefties find hard answering, those are the points that I find myself thinking about late at night.
type0 10y ago
> Note: When I say blogs, I mean blogs. I agree. The only problem is that it's in a way difficult to have a discussion with blogs. Let's say I read a great post somewhere, the person might or might not have comments on their page (embedded facebook comments are worst are ppl still not aware that not everyone uses it?). If they do have comments I probably wouldn't be able to reply (unless I'm a regular visitor of their site). If I write a longer reply and put it on my blog then there is this whole thing that if I put my link in their comments it's not as seamless. My best hope is some sort of IndieWeb solution for this but so far I haven't found anything that works any good.

monk_e_boy 10y ago

I found this leads me into a bubble of internet that only shows me what I agree with. I've found myself going back to reddit just to get both sides of the story. It's useful when say the Trump fans post things that lefties find hard answering, those are the points that I find myself thinking about late at night.

type0 10y ago

> Note: When I say blogs, I mean blogs. I agree. The only problem is that it's in a way difficult to have a discussion with blogs. Let's say I read a great post somewhere, the person might or might not have comments on their page (embedded facebook comments are worst are ppl still not aware that not everyone uses it?). If they do have comments I probably wouldn't be able to reply (unless I'm a regular visitor of their site). If I write a longer reply and put it on my blog then there is this whole thing that if I put my link in their comments it's not as seamless. My best hope is some sort of IndieWeb solution for this but so far I haven't found anything that works any good.