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Aside from conspiracy-theorizing about current events (and I don't use that term pejoratively), people tended to discuss the same topics. New cyberpunk media do

by x220 8y ago

Aside from conspiracy-theorizing about current events (and I don't use that term pejoratively), people tended to discuss the same topics. New cyberpunk media doesn't come out very often, so people tended to talk about the same books, movies, manga, anime, videogames, and fashion. Some of the alt-chans with dedicated cyberpunk boards would run out of ideas to talk about pretty quickly, since there weren't enough posts that the website had to prune old threads like 4chan did. Another hypothesis I have is that cyberpunk media is not as captivating as it used to be since we arguably live in a cyberpunk world. In America there is unimaginable wealth inequality, with some cities having insane costs of rent for cramped apartments, with access to the best technology and medicine in the world but only if you can afford it. We also don't have to use media to imagine a world where digital corporations have a huge amount of power over daily life and the government spies on everyone all the time since both of those things are happening right now. I think we live in a cyberpunk world, it just doesn't have huge buildings, neon lights, and widespread punk fashion. I came in contact with a few guys who wanted to make another alt-chan with a different model (see what other users are typing in real-time, and all posts get deleted early in the morning) but it never materialized as far as I can tell. Edit: do any of you want to join an online cyberpunk community?

n-exploit 8y ago
Maybe it's time to create anew.
starbeast 8y ago
Not an online one. If it was a BBS running on a cube sat, then maybe.
eindiran 8y ago
Are you considering making it materialize now?
- x220 8y ago
  I'm considering making an alt-chan that cyclically purges content.
  - miss_classified 8y ago
    By now, it should be obvious that your efforts to attenuate the duration of long-running content won't prove to cultivate an increase in the quality of participation. There are (at least) three aspects of online community participation, that seasoned users are pretty well-versed in: 1. Archiving, mirroring and back-ups. 2. Leaked screen captures and scrapes of private direct messaging. 3. Back-end aggregation of logs and messages, even for supposedly private SMS interactions. Forget it dude. We all know that whatever signals get placed onto the wire turn out to be spliced through passive beam splitters and land in an open S3 bucket. The ones that don't? Your girlfriend just screenshots it, and and tweets it out in the open for the world to see anyway. Whoops! There are no more online subcultures. Only distortions of perception enforced by impulsive, would-be moderators.
    - jniedrauer 8y ago
      There is still one place left on the internet where conversations more or less fade away forever after they end: IRC Sure, there are probably logs somewhere. User logs and server logs. But in all the decades I've been using IRC, I've never seen my chatlogs show up on a search engine before. It's just obscure enough and just low value enough to slip under the radar.
      - executesorder66 8y ago
        What about bash.org?
    - claudiawerner 8y ago
      The point of imageboard-style thread pruning isn't to erase the content from the Internet (after all, there's a small archive for every board on 4chan on 4chan itself and much larger ones elsewhere on the net) but rather it's to keep the content fresh and encourage new material rather than ruminating on old material - it's much easier to notice new posts when threads are small, instead of scrolling through 1000 posts that most people never bother to read. HN deals with it with the fact that if you comment on a HN post two weeks after it was posted then it won't bump the thread.
ip26 8y ago
Another challenge is when your alt culture goes mainstream, now it's just culture. The alt community has to tack deeper to the extremes to stay alt. You don't need an alt board to talk about current events (aside from conspiracy theories)
- ebullientocelot 8y ago
  While this is true, I still experience a little of that early-exposure-to-the-Internet sense of wonder when I stumble across a community that's off the beaten path technologically. sdf.org's Gopher service was such an experience in the past couple years.
ebullientocelot 8y ago
I don't think your two points are mutually exclusive, and suspect they are both correct to one degree or another. I live in a second-tier city working for a second-tier company and my daily life is already fairly cyberpunk! During the day I actively work on the advertising economy surveillance state, and at home I do things like install the Pi-Hole for my family and try to help anybody who will listen reduce their target profile for the eye in the sky. I mention this, particularly that my city and company are second-tier, because you don't have to work at FAANGM in SV to experience these things. There is definitely a sense in which I would be interested in at least checking out a cyberpunk community, but as other have mentioned, it's more or less culture now.
StanislavPetrov 8y ago
>Edit: do any of you want to join an online cyberpunk community? I will when Cyberpunk 2077 comes out next year. That game has been in development for more than 7 years and looks absolutely insane. They have released 48 minutes of gameplay for anyone who is interested (I have no connection or monetary interest in this game). https://www.cyberpunk.net/en/news/22523/gameplay-reveal-48-minute-walkthrough https://www.cyberpunk.net/en/news/22523/gameplay-reveal-48-m...
- erikb 8y ago
  If you can't recognize that this game will be mediocre at best, I'm already sorry for the amount of disappointment you will have on release date.
celticninja 8y ago
I think you nailed it there. We live in the cyberpunk world envisioned by so much if great cyberpunk media. Sure it's not as gritty and bleak, at least not in the West but I'm pretty sure that there are less fortunate places, where hi tech resides alongside low-tech in the cyberpunk aesthetic. Wikileaks, Anonymous, bitcoin, data heists, billionaires going to mars, VR, AR, stuxnet and cyberwarfare. The real world has it all. Edit: yes to joining a cyberpunk community.
claudiawerner 8y ago
>Edit: do any of you want to join an online cyberpunk community? I'd be interested in that, but I stopped browsing Lainchan a while ago, for instance.

by x220 8y ago

n-exploit 8y ago

Maybe it's time to create anew.

starbeast 8y ago

Not an online one. If it was a BBS running on a cube sat, then maybe.

eindiran 8y ago

Are you considering making it materialize now?

x220 8y ago
I'm considering making an alt-chan that cyclically purges content.
- miss_classified 8y ago
  By now, it should be obvious that your efforts to attenuate the duration of long-running content won't prove to cultivate an increase in the quality of participation. There are (at least) three aspects of online community participation, that seasoned users are pretty well-versed in: 1. Archiving, mirroring and back-ups. 2. Leaked screen captures and scrapes of private direct messaging. 3. Back-end aggregation of logs and messages, even for supposedly private SMS interactions. Forget it dude. We all know that whatever signals get placed onto the wire turn out to be spliced through passive beam splitters and land in an open S3 bucket. The ones that don't? Your girlfriend just screenshots it, and and tweets it out in the open for the world to see anyway. Whoops! There are no more online subcultures. Only distortions of perception enforced by impulsive, would-be moderators.
  - jniedrauer 8y ago
    There is still one place left on the internet where conversations more or less fade away forever after they end: IRC Sure, there are probably logs somewhere. User logs and server logs. But in all the decades I've been using IRC, I've never seen my chatlogs show up on a search engine before. It's just obscure enough and just low value enough to slip under the radar.
    - executesorder66 8y ago
      What about bash.org?
  - claudiawerner 8y ago
    The point of imageboard-style thread pruning isn't to erase the content from the Internet (after all, there's a small archive for every board on 4chan on 4chan itself and much larger ones elsewhere on the net) but rather it's to keep the content fresh and encourage new material rather than ruminating on old material - it's much easier to notice new posts when threads are small, instead of scrolling through 1000 posts that most people never bother to read. HN deals with it with the fact that if you comment on a HN post two weeks after it was posted then it won't bump the thread.

ip26 8y ago

Another challenge is when your alt culture goes mainstream, now it's just culture. The alt community has to tack deeper to the extremes to stay alt. You don't need an alt board to talk about current events (aside from conspiracy theories)

ebullientocelot 8y ago
While this is true, I still experience a little of that early-exposure-to-the-Internet sense of wonder when I stumble across a community that's off the beaten path technologically. sdf.org's Gopher service was such an experience in the past couple years.

ebullientocelot 8y ago

I don't think your two points are mutually exclusive, and suspect they are both correct to one degree or another. I live in a second-tier city working for a second-tier company and my daily life is already fairly cyberpunk! During the day I actively work on the advertising economy surveillance state, and at home I do things like install the Pi-Hole for my family and try to help anybody who will listen reduce their target profile for the eye in the sky. I mention this, particularly that my city and company are second-tier, because you don't have to work at FAANGM in SV to experience these things. There is definitely a sense in which I would be interested in at least checking out a cyberpunk community, but as other have mentioned, it's more or less culture now.

StanislavPetrov 8y ago

>Edit: do any of you want to join an online cyberpunk community? I will when Cyberpunk 2077 comes out next year. That game has been in development for more than 7 years and looks absolutely insane. They have released 48 minutes of gameplay for anyone who is interested (I have no connection or monetary interest in this game). https://www.cyberpunk.net/en/news/22523/gameplay-reveal-48-minute-walkthrough https://www.cyberpunk.net/en/news/22523/gameplay-reveal-48-m...

erikb 8y ago
If you can't recognize that this game will be mediocre at best, I'm already sorry for the amount of disappointment you will have on release date.

celticninja 8y ago

I think you nailed it there. We live in the cyberpunk world envisioned by so much if great cyberpunk media. Sure it's not as gritty and bleak, at least not in the West but I'm pretty sure that there are less fortunate places, where hi tech resides alongside low-tech in the cyberpunk aesthetic. Wikileaks, Anonymous, bitcoin, data heists, billionaires going to mars, VR, AR, stuxnet and cyberwarfare. The real world has it all. Edit: yes to joining a cyberpunk community.

claudiawerner 8y ago

>Edit: do any of you want to join an online cyberpunk community? I'd be interested in that, but I stopped browsing Lainchan a while ago, for instance.