5 ms·

> Back when people posted things just because they wanted to share something they thought other people would find interesting. That's pretty much the entire pr

> Back when people posted things just because they wanted to share something they thought other people would find interesting. That's pretty much the entire premise of twitter, instagram, facebook, reddit, 'hacker' 'news', etc today...

rdiddly 7y ago
Not the entire premise. There's an additional desire or hope for attention and money now. That's the piece that was absent and relatively impossible back then, that is obviously being eschewed by "Cat Man" to the delight of the author. Edit: and those platforms actively work to "optimize" the former into the latter wherever possible.
- dymk 7y ago
  > There's an additional desire or hope for attention and money now Maybe not "money" because there weren't ways to easily monetize content, but Web 1.0 certainly was about hoping people would see what you posted. Let's not re-write Web 1.0's history with an aura of innocence, as if human motivation for attention somehow changed in the last 10 years.
  - rdiddly 7y ago
    Then: attention. Now: attention and money. You kind of summarized my comment.
    - dymk 7y ago
      Well, you said attention and money were the new desire
      - rdiddly 7y ago
        Yeah I probably should've refined it. Actually now I'm thinking about it and there's probably even a qualitative difference between "attention" 1.0 and "attention" 2.0. To use a metaphor, it's kind of like artisanal attention vs. mass-produced attention. 1.0: One or two people find your site organically and engage with it on a deep level (because maybe there's nothing else out there for that particular interest). 2.0: You're hoping thousands of people see it and click "like." So I'm using the mass-production analogy to capture the fact that there's more of it, an abundance of it, yet each one individually is less special or lower quality (but good enough), and mediated by a machine. You can buy 20 sweaters at the store, all identical, all knitted in minutes by a machine, vs. having your grandma slave away over one sweater for two weeks of evenings. The machine-made sweaters are more precise and excellent in the technical sense, and there are more of them, while the grandma one is more special and one-of-a-kind, and has flaws, and has "flaws." (The part that didn't change is that people still need sweaters.)
madaxe_again 7y ago
No, now people post things for Internet Points - likes and follows, rather than for the joy of sharing - and it shows in the kind of content that is popular. Some folks have optimised the hell out of their Skinner box solutions.
- qznc 7y ago
  I believe there are still plenty of them. We just don't see them because the point-hunter swamp us. This suggests a new kind of search filter: Exclude anything which advertises multiple social media accounts.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  There is a joy in sharing, but is it really sharing if we're shouting into the void? People want to be part of a community, even if it's just a tiny one. We need that part of the web back.
  - ryacko 7y ago
    I think that has changed to the off topic or memes channel of a Discord server.
    - cameronbrown 7y ago
      When I mean the web, I really mean the open web. Not Discord. Maybe I'm just nostalgic for how it used to be.
  - rikroots 7y ago
    Most of my personal websites shout into the void. Their content is so niche (poems, conlangs, web coding experiments, etc) that I would be genuinely surprised if any of them suddenly got popular. I keep on doing my personal sites because I love creating stuff, and I love coding up quirky sites to display my mad work to those rare whoevers out there who share my niche interests and/or stumble across them by accident. Building quirky websites is also a good way for me to relax because the sort of sites I get to work on professionally - almost always driven by this or that CMS or framework ... they don't inspire me anymore: samey samey samey stuff with just a tiny odd fun effect here'n'there.

rdiddly 7y ago

Not the entire premise. There's an additional desire or hope for attention and money now. That's the piece that was absent and relatively impossible back then, that is obviously being eschewed by "Cat Man" to the delight of the author. Edit: and those platforms actively work to "optimize" the former into the latter wherever possible.

dymk 7y ago
> There's an additional desire or hope for attention and money now Maybe not "money" because there weren't ways to easily monetize content, but Web 1.0 certainly was about hoping people would see what you posted. Let's not re-write Web 1.0's history with an aura of innocence, as if human motivation for attention somehow changed in the last 10 years.
- rdiddly 7y ago
  Then: attention. Now: attention and money. You kind of summarized my comment.
  - dymk 7y ago
    Well, you said attention and money were the new desire
    - rdiddly 7y ago
      Yeah I probably should've refined it. Actually now I'm thinking about it and there's probably even a qualitative difference between "attention" 1.0 and "attention" 2.0. To use a metaphor, it's kind of like artisanal attention vs. mass-produced attention. 1.0: One or two people find your site organically and engage with it on a deep level (because maybe there's nothing else out there for that particular interest). 2.0: You're hoping thousands of people see it and click "like." So I'm using the mass-production analogy to capture the fact that there's more of it, an abundance of it, yet each one individually is less special or lower quality (but good enough), and mediated by a machine. You can buy 20 sweaters at the store, all identical, all knitted in minutes by a machine, vs. having your grandma slave away over one sweater for two weeks of evenings. The machine-made sweaters are more precise and excellent in the technical sense, and there are more of them, while the grandma one is more special and one-of-a-kind, and has flaws, and has "flaws." (The part that didn't change is that people still need sweaters.)

madaxe_again 7y ago

No, now people post things for Internet Points - likes and follows, rather than for the joy of sharing - and it shows in the kind of content that is popular. Some folks have optimised the hell out of their Skinner box solutions.

qznc 7y ago
I believe there are still plenty of them. We just don't see them because the point-hunter swamp us. This suggests a new kind of search filter: Exclude anything which advertises multiple social media accounts.
cameronbrown 7y ago
There is a joy in sharing, but is it really sharing if we're shouting into the void? People want to be part of a community, even if it's just a tiny one. We need that part of the web back.
- ryacko 7y ago
  I think that has changed to the off topic or memes channel of a Discord server.
  - cameronbrown 7y ago
    When I mean the web, I really mean the open web. Not Discord. Maybe I'm just nostalgic for how it used to be.
- rikroots 7y ago
  Most of my personal websites shout into the void. Their content is so niche (poems, conlangs, web coding experiments, etc) that I would be genuinely surprised if any of them suddenly got popular. I keep on doing my personal sites because I love creating stuff, and I love coding up quirky sites to display my mad work to those rare whoevers out there who share my niche interests and/or stumble across them by accident. Building quirky websites is also a good way for me to relax because the sort of sites I get to work on professionally - almost always driven by this or that CMS or framework ... they don't inspire me anymore: samey samey samey stuff with just a tiny odd fun effect here'n'there.