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An anecdote, at the risk of sounding old: Back when I was a kid, if we had internet access at all, we mostly used it for the community aspect. A fan of some bo
by elric 6y ago
An anecdote, at the risk of sounding old:
Back when I was a kid, if we had internet access at all, we mostly used it for the community aspect. A fan of some book? Search for it on Altavista and you likely found some kind of fan site which had a little bulletin board community organized around it. Or maybe a usenet group. A few minutes down the road you were talking to strangers on the other side of the planet about something you were all actively interested in. Hell, even radio stations had their own chat rooms and forums. Many free software tools had dedicated IRC channels. Mailing lists and usenet groups abound.
These communities were all interest based, and there were sooooo many of them. Because they were interest based, they mostly attracted people who at least had something in common with you, which made it easy to relate to them. And because people are not onedimensional, they were often part of many different communities. Which, aside from being fun, was also a great way to learn how to interact with people all over the world.
Sure, flame wars were a thing, and I'm sure people were bullied and whatnot. Community moderation worked pretty well, though (as someone who administered a 10k+ members forum) it could be a lot of work. But no one ever damaged their mental health by frequenting a knitting forum.
Facebook pretty much destroyed all of these (or at least decimated them). Perhaps these groups are still around, but it's now actively hard to find them. FB does not foster a sense of community. It's not a platform where you will learn anything about any topic. It's not an environment that's conducive to improving personal interactions. It attempted to centralize those things, and it failed. Instead of paying attention to things that interest us, we now have FB and its ilk begging us to please pay attention to their garbage. I miss actual communities, warts and all, and I think that young people's mental health would be better off if they made a return.
Final note: yes, there are exceptions, I know it's not all quite as bad as I'm dramatizing here.
- __turbobrew__ 6y ago> I miss actual communities I have found that Discord has become the closest contemporary thing to the old communities you talk about. Many niche interests now have small Discord servers with like minded people, and if you hang around long enough you will become integrated with one of these niche communities. I have been a part of several Discord servers for 5 years and I feel like they truly are communities: there is a deep history of the active members; people who met on Discord have visited each other in real life; members have gotten married; members have shared in grief as other members committed suicide; over time people have come and gone, but they have always had the Discord community to come back to when a relationship falls through, or they just need companionship in a tough time.
- ED_Radish 6y agoYeah, discord has pretty much become the de facto place for that. I'm in my late teens rn and its basically all I've ever used.
- ptudan 6y agoFacebook groups is one of the shining features that brings people to the platform. While I also prefer the PHPBB days of old, FB groups are indeed interest based places that foster communities.