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Show HN: Solo – App for sharing loneliness and aloneness
- Sytten 9y agoNot sure if this is terribly awesome or immensely sad
- ohstopitu 9y agoThere have been times when I've felt extremly lonely. I think an app like this which connects lonely people together would be awesome! I generally just visit some random subreddits or random rooms on Discord when I feel lonely.
- blueatlas 9y agoOr, connect lonely people to those that might lend an ear, offer advice, or just offer support in some other way.
- norlys 9y agoThat's 7cups of tea.
- ohstopitu 9y agoSuicide hotlines are generally under handed, I don't think we have enough people to help lonely people just yet.
- Fnoord 9y agoNormally, I'd say go see your doctor. I'm not sure if he has solid advice for einsamkeit but at least he can reference to a psychologist so you can get treated for depression. Many elder people are lonely, but the underlying problem is actually depression. There's an alternative to creating an Instagram or Facebook for lonely people: learn to deal with it, and take the positive out of loneliness. 1) You don't have to take other's viewpoints, desires, preferences, opinions into account. 2) You can live in silence, and can therefore decide if/when you play audio or video, read a book, play the piano. Heck, do a solo sport, or meditate. Once you have solace with being lonely, you can be productive. You'll be able to for example study, you'll be able to write a book. Then, when you do meet other people, you'll have something meaningful to sure. And then an application like this can hook these people up. But I wonder if platforms like Instagram and Facebook don't already also serve that purpose. Or, heck, something like deviantArt. If you can't entertain yourself while you're alone or if you can't be productive while you're alone that's not loneliness. That's depression. I adore being alone, its when I'm most productive. Then again, I'm a loner, and I embraced that, and because I was only child I learned to entertain myself whilst being alone.
- wtsui 9y agoThanks for the feedback. I created this project because I know many people who struggled with loneliness at times in their lives. My hope is that by sharing this experience we’ll feel a sense of connection when we’re alone, and find more acceptance of ourselves and our aloneness, however happy, peaceful, or sad.
- QAPereo 9y agoMaybe, although generally when you fill a room with sick people, they don’t make each other well. Group therapy can work, but it takes the guidance of people not currently looking up from a hole.
- wtsui 9y agoAgree with this. It'll be important for Solo to highlight and even celebrate the positive aspects of being alone to avoid this.
- IncRnd 9y ago> Maybe, although generally when you fill a room with sick people, they don’t make each other well. Group therapy can work, but it takes the guidance of people not currently looking up from a hole. Being alone is not a sickness. The site, when viewed on mobile even without an app, shows the first entry as someone who climbed a mountain when alone. Another learned about the three poisons, and yet a third chose to read a series of books.
- QAPereo 9y ago“App for sharing lonliness and aloneness...” Lose the semantic crap, and the cherry picking.
- IncRnd 9y ago> “App for sharing lonliness and aloneness...” The words "loneliness and aloneness" don't mean what you think. Read the comment to which you replied and which was written by the author of the app, "and find more acceptance of ourselves and our aloneness, however happy, peaceful, or sad." > Lose the semantic crap. There are better ways to relate to people.
- mr_spothawk 9y agoThis reminds me of Secret. I wish that I'd seen this before I messed around with Secret, I'd be more inclined to share some tidbits.
- kenning 9y agoMy pessimistic prediction is that this will either die or be overrun with the alt-right. They seem to gravitate towards the more anonymous social networks (4chan, yik yak). Also see "unpopular opinion puffin" memes on reddit -- a (now dead) meme format designed for people to share what they're afraid to say out loud to their peers, and quickly became a hub for alt-righty opinions on social issues.
- wtsui 9y agoYes, the unfortunate fate of so many anonymous apps in the past years. Moderation may be an ongoing challenge but without commenting or messaging, Solo should be a bit more resilient.
- pwaai 9y agoOne attack vector here might be trolls creating large number of accounts or manipulating the algorithm to share suicidal messages....I've seen far worse, the internet in all purposes does a lot of good but it's also emboldened incels
- nihilum 9y agoAnonymity also permitted the American Revolution, among other things. Meanwhile the most prominent example that comes to mind for attempts to end even the pretense of anonymity online is authoritarian China. And fwiw, most of the other boards on 4chan at least tend to push the more obnoxious sorts of commentary back to /pol/, its 'containment board'. Twitter likewise tends to isolate communities of extremists, on both sides, simply by virtue of explicit blocking or mere lack of sufficient interest to follow on the part of more balanced participants.
- pwaai 9y ago> Anonymity also permitted the American Revolution, among other things. Not sure what that has to do with anything. > Meanwhile the most prominent example that comes to mind for attempts to end even the pretense of anonymity online is authoritarian China. South Korea forces people to use their social insurance number to sign up to forums and commenting on social media. Again, not sure why you are using China, they aren't the only ones trying to deanonymize online. > And fwiw, most of the other boards on 4chan at least tend to push the more obnoxious sorts of commentary back to /pol/, its 'containment board'. What the parent is referring to is that online anonymous platforms attracts toxic trolls that overtake a platform, even with the moderation you mentioned. When people hide behind a faceless mask, it brings out the worst in people, simply because of the dopamine release from inflicting pain on others to feel good about their otherwise miserable life. > Twitter likewise tends to isolate communities of extremists, on both sides, simply by virtue of explicit blocking or mere lack of sufficient interest to follow on the part of more balanced participants. Twitter hasn't done a great job, it's overrun by bots with political agendas, people are mob attacked and it's a poor case to support your assertion that anonymous somehow works even against the mounting evidence against it.
- rdiddly 9y agoIronic that Facebook is not doing this job!
- djsumdog 9y agoHow could it? No one trusts it. It is literally impossible for Facebook to ever provide an anonymous service of any kind, because they will always be able to implement some algorithm to at least try and associate you with your real identity.
- rdiddly 9y agoYeah obviously what I'm portraying as irony is really just the contrast between Facebook's marketing itself as a wonderful new way to "connect" and "share," and the actual truth that it's a surveillance machine.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- kowdermeister 9y agoIf this is a web app, why can't is use it from my desktop browser?
- wtsui 9y agoBuilt mobile first so people could share experiences on the go, but desktop version is planned.
- rishidevkota 9y agoSame Korean app "MOCI" been around since 2014.
- Raphael 9y agoMaybe I build my apps in an amateur way, but I've never had this problem, except that it might look comically large.
- jonathankoren 9y agoWhy does the desktop experience have to be different? It's the web. If you're building for a browser, you failed.
- devgutt 9y agoIf you are in Chrome, use developer tools and device toolbar. Enjoy.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- addict3d 9y agoWhat people do alone is very interesting and this site does a really good job at capturing that. HN is a place of very constructive and brutal criticism, so you will probably be disciplined on what it should do or what's wrong with it. But in my eyes this is a really interesting piece of art and social media that people like me really appreciate. Keep up the excellent work!
- soneca 9y agoHN has always supported and cared about loneliness for all the time I've being here. I expect nothing but encouragement and helpful advice in this thread.
- addict3d 9y agoBut at the same time we're engineers with pessimistic minds focussed on failure and monetization so I sadly expect different.
- wtsui 9y agoThank you! That's what Solo is all about.
- whyagaindavid 9y agoPlease enable https. Its free at letsencrypt
- anonytrary 9y agoI didn't have a chance to use this on my phone, but from the landing page, this looks no different than Whisper. Knowing that, I probably won't look into this app any further. Is it worth looking into? Did the landing page miss some key features?
- cyberferret 9y agoAs an INFP persona who has worked remotely and solo for many years, I'd like to break the stigma that "alone = bad". I find it incredibly energising a lot of the time, but then there are the odd times when I crave a little human social engagement. Traditional social media channels have devolved into a cesspit of noisy pollution, but I tend to occasionally post right here on HN, guitar forums, or even on obscure Reddit threads just to hear the rare "Thanks", or "Wow, that was something useful". I guess while I don't find loneliness a depressing thing, I just want to feel as if I am heard or making a difference to the world every now and then.
- barbs 9y agoI think there's a difference betweek being alone and being lonely. The latter implies that you're wanting for company, the former less so.
- DeusExMachina 9y agoTangentially, since you mention INFP. It seems to me that the Myers-Briggs test is becoming mainstream. I see people mention these personality codes more and more. But the test seems to have no scientific validity: http://www.indiana.edu/~jobtalk/Articles/develop/mbti.pdf http://www.indiana.edu/~jobtalk/Articles/develop/mbti.pdf
- Jach 9y agoI don't think it's becoming more prevalent in the last 10 years, at least no more than mentioning your birth sign... But anyway (take with a grain of salt) the last time I looked at M-B it seemed that although there's no reason to take it very seriously scientifically, nevertheless it correlates surprisingly well with one of the psychology crown jewels, the Big 5, and misses out only on testing for neuroticism.
- seawlf 9y agoThis site has an exposed Git directory, so you can clone the whole thing. Funnily enough, it appears to be actually talking to a MySQL database. http://sharesolo.com/get_notes.php http://sharesolo.com/get_notes.php Also, all of the credentials are there. I won't post them, but lordy, please close this before your database is wiped.
- wtsui 9y agoCareless error. Removed, thank you.
- tomcooks 9y agoBravo for pointing that out! Care to explain how you discovered this? Making such security mistakes is what my nightmares are made of
- aw3c2 9y agoProbably tried to access http://sharesolo.com/.git/ http://sharesolo.com/.git/ for the repo and looked at the network traffic to see the get_notes.php.
- swyx 9y agogood on you for pointing out the security hole. i'm still a newb when it comes to it.
- krotton 9y agoIt's pretty moving. I just wonder what the dynamics may be when this gains traction. I guess it could make you feel ever more lonely when you get down to posting something and nobody reacts in any way.
- ajeet_dhaliwal 9y agoGoing viral with this particular market might be tough :-) Jokes aside loneliness is a big deal and I enjoy reading about it but as some other comments mention there is a confusing conflation of ‘being alone’ and loneliness here. Some posts are describing doing something alone (in a positive way) and others are talking about loneliness (negative). Are you actually targeting both?
- pat_space 9y agoAwesome. I wish Instagram was still this way.
- djsumdog 9y agoI like how it's all in the browser. I'm sick everything requiring an app download. Still, you should be able to just use it from the Desktop. Why force people? Also, why do you need access to my microphone? I really want to post something. I am alone this holiday. But I don't want to give you access to my microphone. Why do you need it? It just looks like text and photos. If I deny access, I can't do anything.
- ziqiaojin 9y agoJust curious are you aware of a quite similar Chinese app which have been running some time? it is called "BaoBao"
- calebm 9y agoCouldn't help thinking of this: "If you find yourself struggling with loneliness, you're not alone. And yet you are alone. So very alone." (https://despair.com/products/loneliness https://despair.com/products/loneliness)
- calebm 9y agoJoking aside, it seems like a great idea for an app.
- hrasyid 9y agomaybe it's a silly question. When I opened it from desktop it tells me to go to my phone, and then I open it from my phone, and then it shows me this mobile web app (not a native app). What's the point of telling me to open from my phone if it's only a web app anyway?
- cstigler 9y agoReminds me of this famous forum thread, composed of people who Googled "I am lonely" and found themselves routed to a movie codec site via impressive SEO. https://www.salon.com/2014/11/19/i_am_lonely_will_anyone_speak_to_me_inside_the_saddest_thread_on_the_internet_ten_years_later/ https://www.salon.com/2014/11/19/i_am_lonely_will_anyone_spe...
- sattoshi 9y agoIs there no archive of that thread? archive.org got nothing, archive.is got only the first page.. The forum went down in 2016, where are the archives?
- dannyr 9y agoProps for continuing the project. Here's the original post from July 2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7985932 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7985932
- Void_ 9y agoOkay I get it that people are lonely, but this app is nuts. I would understand network like that for diabetics. Being lonely is not a sickness. Seriously this crowd acts like everything is a sickness. You have ADHD because you can’t focus for 5 minutes straight, but you don’t think of deleting facebook from your app first, see if that works. Same here. I’m-so-lonely, boo hoo go out and make some friends! Did we really become so passive? Don’t you think it would be better to sign up for a boxing class and meet some people as opposed to making an app about how sad you are?
- jeswin 9y agoI am not alone any longer, so I don't think I can legitimately post on the site. But I love the app and that it is just a plain web app. No play store or app store, and no nagging data collection. I hope this is the future of apps.
- anonytrary 9y agoAs someone who is alone, yes, I get lonely. Everyone who wants for more gets lonely, and it isn't necessarily a compliment -- it applies to idiots as well as geniuses and everyone in between.
- tehabe 9y agoI remember that there was an anonymous social network a while ago. The screenshots for this service look similar. Maybe someone got nostalgic for that long lost application. Edit: I think that was "Secret", it shut down in 2015.
- JensRantil 9y agoTried searching for the app in Google Store. Does the app exist for Android?
- progval 9y agoIt's a website, not an app. You have to access http://sharesolo.com/ http://sharesolo.com/ from your phone.
- doctorstupid 9y ago"Solo connects us in these moments when we are most authentic to ourselves" If we were authentic to ourselves we wouldn't need to share experiences. We wouldn't need an audience to authenticate them if we valued ourselves as worthy witnesses.
- jesperlang 9y ago> If we were authentic to ourselves we wouldn't need to share experiences And sometimes, the experience is already shared with other people!
- doctorstupid 9y agoVery true. When friends fetch their smartphones to 'capture' the moment I suddenly feel lonely, getting the feeling that we no longer value our own memory, that only what can be digitally shared and verified is real. So we end up talking to the digital middleman whilst failing to remember the 'shared' moment.
- urbanjunkie 9y agoOh fuck off.
- Froyoh 9y agoCan you cut the "like" system? In some ways it contributes to the problem we see with people on most social media.
- freeloop3 9y agoIt's even lonelier when you post to a site intended for people who are alone and your post is silently rejected.
- sattoshi 9y agoThe relevance of this on the Holiday season is tragic.
- sattoshi 9y agoThere is an easily-fixable bug that breaks it on Firefox, Change `$('#cameraInput').change(function (e) {` to `$('#cameraInput').change(function (event) {`