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To dive a bit further into this, I was very socially active on the Internet 20 years ago, and it was a magical thing. I made friends that I still communicate wi
by haswell 5y ago
To dive a bit further into this, I was very socially active on the Internet 20 years ago, and it was a magical thing. I made friends that I still communicate with today, and I credit the amazing community I aligned myself with for helping me become the person I am today (in a good way).
Social media today is nothing like those early communities, and I rarely participate for that reason. Some of the core motivations (e.g. desire for connection/community) exist in both places, but the similarities pretty much end there.
The closest modern day equivalent (for me) is HN and some very niche subreddits.
- mattgreenrocks 5y agoDitto. The important thing about the forums of yore were that they were largely composed of users who self-selected into it, and were oriented around a particular topic. They didn't have the thing were tons of people latched on and then just hung around for no reason other than their own boredom. I think there's a fundamental difference in how forums are used vs social media. The catch-all nature of social media molds it into a device which people use to construct an idealized representation of themselves. Forums seem to head more in the direction of discussing/arguing about focused topics, rather than identity-creation.